I have a poster on my wall that compares statistics of the average annual handgun murders in the U.S. to those of other countries. The numbers are astounding: 13 people killed in Australia, 30 in Great Britain, 106 in Canada, and 9,390 in the U.S. of A. And these are just the 1996 statistics; today the U.S. has topped 11,000, while Canada is still under 200.

Though numbers like these are hard to argue with, I've always been ambivalent when it comes to gun control. It wasn't so long ago that gun control legislation was used as a means of criminalizing groups like the Black Panther Party. It is clear to me, however, that America's relationship with guns is dangerous and unhealthy and that mainstream anti-gun groups are doing little to examine our gun-loving culture at anything beyond a superficial level.

In such a climate, Michael Moore's new documentary Bowling for Columbine helps to fill this analytic void. By sincerely and critically delving into the issue of gun violence in America, (in the uncompromising Hard Copy-meets-Adbusters style that he honed in Roger and Me and The Awful Truth) Moore exposes the fear and aggression that seethes beneath the surface of everyday America. By no means does this film pretend to know the cure to our gun-induced ailments; instead, it simply acknowledges that gun violence does not exist in a vacuum and tries to identify the social factors that drive Americans to kill one another as if it were a national duty.

Moore uses as his starting point the April 20, 1999, Columbine High School shooting in Littleton, Colorado. He talks to survivors of the shooting before moving on to other residents of Littleton, celebrities, politicians and ordinary folks throughout the U.S. and Canada. In one of the film's more controversial scenes, Moore interviews an executive at weapons manufacturer Lockheed-Martin, which operates a plant in Littleton. The executive decries the indiscriminate killing that took place at Columbine, and in the next breath extols the virtues of the missiles manufactured in his plant.

The film then launches into a montage, set to Louis Armstrong singing "What a Wonderful World," showing footage of international atrocities carried out (or at least backed) by the U.S. military. Scenes of dead civilians in Nicaragua, Viet Nam, Panama and Iraq are accompanied by captions explaining the role of the United States in these deaths. The montage closes saying that the U.S. armed and trained Osama bin Laden, among others, to fight against the Soviets as an image of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center fills the screen.

Critics have called this an instance where Moore attempts to reach too far in his analysis, that trying to tie together September 11th and the culture that birthed Columbine is too much of a stretch. I don't agree with these critics, and feel that this scene is one of the strongest in the film precisely because it is so ambitious. A movie that examines American gun violence as a unique cultural phenomenon should not be cautious in its conclusions, should not hesitate to make the painful and unsettling connections.

To refer only to Moore's critical edge, however, is to greatly undermine his sense of humor. Bowling for Columbine is often very funny (and I laughed at it more than Roger and Me, which I just found really sad). Moore is excellent at using jokes to articulate his points; his humor makes conventional essay tactics seem inadequate. For example, one lengthy section that accuses nightly TV news for spreading an irrational fear of minorities and inner-city crime concludes with one actual report from 1999 about killer bees. In the context of Moore's critique, the report (shown in its entirety) seems inexplicably, absurdly racist. The scary bees are repeatedly defined as "Africanized," and the bland reporter tells viewers that they can recognize the bees by "measuring their large parts." Moore doesn't have to comment on this footage; its bad taste is hilarious on its own.

On the whole, I didn't leave Bowling for Columbine feeling good, empowered, enlightened or hopeful. I did leave, however, questioning my previous assumptions about gun violence in America. I think Moore correctly uses shock to goad people into thinking about the flaws of isolating social ills from their surrounding context. His large-scale connections remind the audience that every event—be it a school shooting, a war, or a terrorist attack—occurs within a larger cultural context.

Such sentiments are echoed by a seemingly unlikely interview subject inBowling for Columbine. Moore speaks with Marilyn Manson about the Columbine shooting backstage after a concert. Many politicians and pundits, including Senator Joseph Lieberman, cited Manson's dark lyrics and deliberately shocking image as reason to blame him for the shootings. Manson responds to such finger-pointing by discussing the other big event that took place April 20, 1999. That morning, before Harris and Klebold went on their rampage in Littleton, the U.S. dropped more bombs on Serbia than it did on any other day during the Kosovo war. A hospital, power plant and houses were destroyed, and many civilians were killed. Manson finds it hypocritical of Americans to be so shocked by school shootings while hardly batting an eye at the idea of war.

I hope that the scene also works as a provocation, urging audiences to discuss these issues themselves. Obviously, a movie isn't going to solve any of the world's problems––people are. The most a movie can hope to do is push people in new ways and highlight problems in old ways of thinking about things. Moore does just that with Bowling for Columbine.