I actually thought that Michael Moore did a pretty good job in Bowling for Columbine. He at least some serious and valuable questions out to millions of people. He pointed out that violence and guns don't necessarily go together. Canadians own as many guns as Americans but have far less gun violence. If you've seen the movie, you'll remember the bit about the American and Canadian cities facing each other, with very different societies.

Still, there are American guns in every corner of the globe, and somebody's paying, somebody's profiting. Amnesty International has a webpage about international arms trade , and certainly there is as much money in pushing guns and other weapons around the world as there is in pushing cocaine, heroin, etc. As Amos pointed out, there's a very great deal of money in it, which makes it nearly impossible to fight -- like corporate greed. And the US society isn't the only one that's sunk in violence. Iraq and Afghanistan were both putting on a heart-breaking show of violence, by men against women, by local warlords, by Saddam, even before the US showed up, and they haven't really calmed down any.

The Bible says that the love of money is the root of all evil. I don't know if that's true or not, but there's an awful lot of love of money woven into the web of violence that's strangling the world.