Phil and I went with Berni from work to see Bowling for Columbine last night. Highly recommended, by the way – it should be on the Must See list for all Americans. Strange and interesting to watch it as the only American in a room full of Brits, though. They laughed a lot more in the beginning than audiences back home would have. It would have struck more of a nerve back home. Hey, I obviously grew up in a gun culture: my family hunts, my father was a cop, we always had guns in the house. I’ve owned a gun. But he’s right about the violence, fear and paranoia in the States…it’s what we live with every day. I’ve lived in Oregon, home of survivalists living in compounds behind razor wire, ready to defend their piece of America to all comers. Kudos to Marilyn Manson for one of the most intelligent, reasonable and sensitive (without being sentimental) views of all the interviewees. What is the solution? I don’t know. As he pointed out, Canada has more guns per capita than the US, and yet they only have a fraction of the gun-related deaths that we do.