Bowling For Columbine highlights gun culture in America with shocking stories of school shootings in poorer areas of America such as Littleton and Buell. Michael Moore is agitation in his interviews to put who is interviewing on the spot. His clear anger and upset to the heavy gun culture in America is effective in getting across opposing views.
The tone of the opening is contradicting to the tone of the remainder of the documentary. Michael Moore shows images of an idealistic American life. Using this opening to establish a distorted view of America is instantly contradicted by Moore walking into a bank and asking for a gun. In this scene, Moore is clearly agitational to get his message across that later runs on through the rest of the documentary. Asking questions such as "is it dangerous handing out guns at a bank?" can be seen to raise these questions to the audience rather than the person he asks as their reaction is cut out.
One scene that can particularly raise questions is when the school shooting is introduced. Footage of bombings in Serbia is shown, a title screen of "1 hour later" is shown than it cuts to cctv footage of the shooting at Columbine High school with 911 call recordings played over it. On one hand this can be seen as Moore highlighting the severity of the shootings and almost comparing the Columbine shootings to the bombings in Syria. On the other hand, it can be interpreted as Moore depicting how violent America is. They are breeding violence not only at home but in other countries. During the footage of Syria being bombed, a Syrian news channel is played highlighting the fact that innocent areas are being bombed such as hospitals. This is another way Moore questions Americas integrity.
To present opposing views, Michael Moore cuts between a speech from Charlton Heston, who was holding a pro gun rally, and a father of a victim of the Columbine shootings. The editing effectively allows the two views to argue with each other to present the two common views on gun culture in America. Using heartbreaking footage of a father who has lost his son to gun violence and contrasting it with a pro gun who has never been effected by violence and showed up to Columbine 10 days after the shooting causes the audience to favour the father and present Charlton Heston as an evil man. He is clueless and deluded by the idealistic view that is sarcastically highlighted in the opening scene.
The popular view of blaming rock culture is presented in the documentary. Moore interviews Marilyn Manson in order to enlighten the audience on how this view is wrong. Gaining the opinion of a person who is being blamed for such horrible events and teenagers obsession with gun culture is extremely useful and helps Moore to achieve the purpose of the documentary. Marilyn Manson's mentions what he think causes the violence is America and criticises popular media for brainwashing the population. he believes that "violence in culture and gun control" are to blame for the increasing violence. In relation to criticising the media he states "keep everyone afraid and they'll consume.
When Moore visits LA, the issue of race is the topic of discussion. During the opening scenes in La, news casts are edited together to show how the masses are starting to blame "black males". To contradict this Moore, shows the huge gun culture in Canada even though there are minimal killings of people by guns there. He questions if it's America's society that fuels gun violence.
Paranoia in America is depicted, such as people hiding guns under their pillows and keeping multiple loaded guns in their own homes. This can put the blame on how a six year old picked up a gun from his uncles house and shot a fellow student in his class. This shooting at Buell elementary school was the youngest shooting. The young boys mother was not able to monitor him as she was already working through the welfare to work programme. The welfare to work programme was criticised as it was forcing people to work long hours for low pay
As a way ton protest against the pro gun culture, Moore took two victims of the Columbine shooting, headed to K-Mart HQ and asked them to stop selling the ammunition that shot them. After being rejected the brought two bags of ammunition and to it to the HQ. This made a difference as they vowed to stop selling ammunition within 90 days. Moore protesting this and gaining a response through his documentary is extremely moving. Being agitational and using victims of the shootings and not giving up can make a difference.
In the final scenes, Moore finds Charlton Heston on a star map and gets an interview. He highlights the fact that he is a lifelong member of the NRA but is extremely agitational. Heston claims having loaded guns despite the fact he is far away from violence in his house gives him some kind of comfort level. Despite finding this out, he walks away and refuses to answer any question when Moore question why he had pro gun rallys just days after devastating shootings. As a final statement, Moore leaves a picture of the dead six year old on his doorstep, this is effective to the audience as it is forcing them to live with the fact knowing they live in gun culture.
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