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Columbine Shooting Analysis

550 Words3 Pages

America is a nation blossomed with prosperity, yet it is notorious for the proliferation of appalling violence and homicides. By focusing on the Columbine High School massacre, Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine explores the environment/causes that lead to shooting tragedies and exposes the culture of fear that governs the unstable American society. On April 20, 1999, two senior students, Erik Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered 12 students and severely wounded 21 others with a 9mm carbine and a 12-gauge shotgun at Columbine High School. The bloodbath is directly related to the extensive accessibility of ammunitions. Through an investigation, Moore shockingly discovers that a Michigan local bank rewards free guns to customers who open new …show more content…

immediately increased by 140 percent. Submerged in tremendous fear and uneasiness, citizens even practiced shooting at models of Osama Bin Laden for future self-defence. The climate of fear have shaped Americans’ aggressive attitudes and formulated their unrestful behaviours. To delve deeper into this problem, Moore traces the origin of their fears. He states that while corporations use fear to stimulate consumption (i.e. firearms consumption after 9/11), the government uses fear to justify its political actions. In addition, media also repetitively displays crimes to produce sensationalism and attract more audiences. In other words, fear is effective used as an instrument to manipulate the public and to achieve personal gains. However, the side effect is a violent, unstable society. Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine begins as an investigation of gun abuses but then expands to explore the causes of customary violence in the United States. Under his camera, Moore reveals a society destabilized and paranoid by a culture of fear and distrust, providing an insightful and unprecedented explanation of the United States’ violence and shooting

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