Thanks for your response, Claymore - certainly calling the guy an "expert" doesn't make him one, I agree. But what I was asking was about US military training, specifically is it true that "the key to military training lies in breaking down the natural human aversion to killing"? If you have US military training (or if others have had military training) can you/they enlighten me about this please.

We got in to see Columbine last night. A great movie, I thought as I watched it, and then over time, last night, today, thinking and talking about it, I thought more and more that he got it wrong, EXCEPT for the fear bit. "Guns don't kill people, people kill people", the standard defence I've always heard for no open gun ownership, he suggests is TRUE (I don't know if he knows he's doing it). He interviews Charlton Heston, and points out that Canada has way more guns per capita than the US but doesn't commit 1% of the murders. Why not? he asks. Heston didn't know but thought the "ethnic mix" might be part of the answer. (This is certainly not true in Canada with a very wide ethnic mix). This should have been the centre of the movie, but in my view Moore was all over the map, attacking and defending gun ownership at the same time. The point I took from it all is the fear question I brought up in the earlier post. Why are Americans so fearful, as compared to e.g. Canadians? Are they, in fact, more fearful? Crime is going down, but the fear seems continually to mount.

Jon Bartlett