The truth about gun violence! I can't believe that a mainstream film critic had the courage to say what I've been saying all along:

When not subjecting Charlton Heston to his customary oozing of mock politeness or humiliating people in the gun and missile or other businesses, Moore went to Canada and learned that Canadians have as many guns as we do but a lower crime rate. This could have led to an exploration of the "third rail" in American social analysis: race. Heston almost spoke the awful truth when he hinted at "ethnicity" as the problem but, alas, pulled back. Although gun crimes occur in every segment of American society, disproportionately this is a problem among non-whites. (Columbine and similar atrocities, perpetrated by whites, are aberrations; the yearly toll of death by gun in Boston, for instance, almost 100 percent black and Hispanic in perpetrators and victims, is the rule.) FBI and local police stats show that although blacks are 12 percent and Hispanics 9 percent of the population, considerably more than half of all crimes are committed by them, overwhelmingly by blacks, especially guns crimes. In Canada a similarly disproportionate incidence of crimes comes from its small black population. When violent crimes including gun crimes by blacks are extracted from the total, American gun crime data reduce the incidence to one more resembling those in other largely white First World nations. Race plays a crucial role.

I'm shocked, shocked. (And no - not "shocked, shocked!"). If Instantman is linking to this (oh yeah - link from Instapundit) - he may know the score as well. Like Nick Wade at the NY Times, he may be quietly getting the truth out. As I said before:

So, way back at the beginning of this blog I argued that the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" slogan was about putting responsiblity for gun violence on the shoulders of those who commit the crimes. It is well known that the threat of gun violence mainly comes from young black males. I argued then that an actuarially determined differential ownership rate was in the best interests of society, but difficult to implement in practice due to political and practical problems. That is, in principle an asian female is "safe to carry" at pretty much any age, but a black male might have to age beyond 30 before the probability of a violent firearm incident began to drop substantially. But how do you sell to one individual and prevent them from reselling to another individual illegally? You can't. Furthermore, calculating such probabilities is different from formulating policy on them, and I didn't think that much could be done about this in today's mixed society.

Like many of today's key domestic issues (e.g. education, affirmative action, welfare, violent crime), gun ownership cannot be discussed in public because it would mean embracing the third rail of race. I'm gratified that this author had the courage to state the truth in print...