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Bowling for Columbine: Race, the NRA And Gun Control
by Taunya Lovell Banks
Who would ever think that there
is a connection between the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School
and race. Initially, I resisted an underlying premise of Michael
Moore's latest documentary film, Bowling for Columbine,
that there is a connection between race and the National Rifle
Association's (NRA) opposition to gun control. So what if the
NRA was founded in 1871 the same year that the Ku Klux Klan was
outlawed, mere coincidence. So what if student witnesses at Columbine
claimed that the one black victim of the massacre was killed
just because he was black, mere speculation. So what if former
NRA spokesman Charlton Heston attributes the significantly higher
rate of gun violence in the United States than Canada to our
greater ethnic diversity, even Moore admits that Canada is pretty
diverse too.
 Then
I remembered that the Virginia Colony in 1639 enacted a law providing
that "all persons except negroes to be provided with arms
and ammunition or be fined." Thus, one of the earliest laws
in English colonial America that distinguishes blacks from non-blacks
regulated gun possession. A year later a second law clarified
that "all persons" included any "capable"
unfree non-negro person (i.e., indentured servant). This mandate
to arm grew out of a well-founded fear by colonialists that local
hostile indigenous groups would massacre them. Understandably,
these Indians were hostile because the colonialists were taking
their land
Moore tries to convey the historical
connection between whites' fear of non-whites and the protection
of gun ownership using an eight minute cartoon. The cartoon starts
with the Mayflower, focuses on the colonists' fear of indigenous
people, and only links this fear to blacks as we approach the
civil rights era. Yet the Virginia colonial law illustrates how
these two fears combined from the beginning, suggesting that
European settlers feared armed black slaves or servants as much
as or more than attacking Indians.
In 1991 Robert Cottrol and
Raymond Diamond wrote a provocative article advancing what they
claimed to be an "African American perspective" on
the Second Amendment's right to bear arms language. They pointed
out that most colonies, while not prohibiting free blacks from
owning firearms prevented blacks, and often Indians, from serving
in the militia. After the Civil War black codes enacted by southern
states generally prohibited blacks from owning firearms. During
and after slavery blacks needed weapons to protect themselves
from white violence. The inability of blacks to protect themselves
from white violence, especially post emancipation, Cottrol and
Diamond assert, effectively undercut their constitutional and
statutory rights.
Once I opened my mind to Moore's
premise, I was reminded of more recent attempts to regulate gun
possession by blacks. Notable among them was the Chicago Housing
Authority's 1988 "Clean Sweep" policy authorizing warrantless
sweeps of public housing units and confiscation of unlicensed
or unauthorized weapons. The policy was instituted in response
to resident complaints about the unsafe living conditions resulting
from the widespread violence in the housing projects. Litigation
followed and the circumstances for conducting the searches restricted
until, in response to death of seven-year-old boy in fall of
1992, the housing authority instituted an even more aggressive
sweep program that resulted in further litigation. Although the
housing authority's policy was facially neutral, most of the
public housing residents affected by this policy were black.
Other cities, plagued by crime
and violence, instituted gun amnesty programs encouraging inner
city residents, most of whom are black, to turn in all unlicensed
guns, sometimes in exchange for money. Yet, no one would suggest
after the massacre at Columbine that police officials institute
a gun amnesty program or conduct clean sweeps of the houses in
Littleton Colorado. In fact, the response of many Americans might
be arm yourself to protect your family. Thus, Cottrol and Diamond
argue, black Americans who live in an environment where violence
is an everyday threat also should have access to weapons. Their
conclusion, while understandable, does not make the community
any safer. Just as selective access to and restrictions on guns
is not the answer to America's gun violence problem, neither
is arming everyone.
The consequences of unregulated
gun control are displayed in a chilling scene where we see the
actual tape of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Columbine shooters,
as they rampage through the school cafeteria. I kept wondering
whether the students in the cafeteria who survived the massacre
will ever fully recover from this trauma. Moore does not address
the psychic trauma of people and communities impacted by gun
violence. He simply questions American's love of guns.
Throughout the documentary
Moore, a life member of the NRA, carefully navigates the line
between being anti-gun and anti-gun regulation. His focus is
gun violence rather than gun use. Nowhere in the film is this
point conveyed so clearly as when he compares gun ownership and
gun violence in foreign countries, notably Canada (7 million
gun owners and fewer than 100 gun-related deaths), with gun ownership
and violence in the United States. Suggesting that there is not
necessarily a correlation between gun ownership and gun violence,
Moore effectively undercuts the traditional explanation for America's
gun violence.
In a funny, eureka-like moment,
Moore inserts a clip of comic Chris Rock questioning gun control
and asserting that bullets not guns kill people. Rock's solution
to America's gun violence -- make the cost of bullets so prohibitive
that people will think twice before shooting some one. The audience
laughed, but I bet some thought that Rock had a good idea. As
a follow-up, Moore accompanies two Columbine survivors to K-mart's
headquarter to ask the corporate officers to stop selling bullets
in their stores.
Whether you agree or disagree
with Michael Moore's point of view, Bowling for Columbine
raises provocative questions about the NRA, the prevalence of
gun violence in the United States and American's resistance to
gun control legislation. Occasionally Moore seems to stray far
a field alleging connections between gun violence and the Clinton
administration's "workfare" welfare reform policy.
There are other flaws as well such as the linking the Columbine
massacre to the presence of Lockheed Martin in Littleton. Moore's
self indulgence causes the movie to run about 30 minutes longer
than necessary. Nevertheless, Bowling for Columbine is
a must see film for the questions it raises about America's love
of guns and penchant for violence.
Posted November 25, 2002
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