From The Bowling for truth website:
It’s an accurate depiction of the intent of the scene. The scene, dubbed Michael at the Bank is a good example of what can be brushed off and casually justified as what has been called ‘artistic lying.’ The scene opens in a branch of the North Country Bank, with Moore supposedly receiving a free gun in exchange for opening an account. North County Bank like several other banks in the United States allows people who buy a Certificate of Deposit to receive their interest in the form of a rifle or shotgun. The depositor thereby receives the full value of the interest immediately, rather than over a term of years. The scene has Moore discovering an ad in a local Michigan paper touting that if you open an account at North Country Bank & Trust, the bank (more bang for your buck!) will give you a gun.
Moore goes to the bank, is greeted by a customer service representative and moves on to an unnamed teller who goes through the necessary paperwork (which looks ridiculously simple) for Moore to open an account. Moore goes through the process of buying the CD and answering questions for the federal Form 4473 registration sheet. Although a bank employee makes a brief reference to a “background check,” the only thing we see is Moore filling out a form where he says he is not crazy, or a criminal - and of course, that he’s white; although he stumbles on spelling the word ‘Caucasian’ (which I actually had to just fix on spell checker) to further paint the process as unofficial and unsafe while feeding his ‘Stupid White Men’ theme in the same punch.
The audience never sees the process whereby the bank requires Moore to produce photo identification, then contacts the FBI for a criminal records check on Moore, before he is allowed to take possession of the rifle. Moments later, Moore is handed his new rifle in the North Country Bank & Trust lobby, at which point he asks another unnamed bank employee, Do you think its a little dangerous handing out guns in a bank?
Before the employee can respond, Moore turns his inquiry into a punchline by immediately cueing Teenage Fanclubs rendition of the song Take the Skinheads Bowling, the tune to which he marches out of the bank, to be followed by the opening credits featuring black and white footage of silly white folks bowling.
It is a dazzling opening, full of energy, irony and Strangelovian absurdity. Only one problem plagues it’s cleverness: It was staged.
Staged scene
Indeed, there’s more, a lot more, to this story. In an interview, Jan Jacobson, the woman at this bank shown in the movie, says they were filmed for about an hour-and-a-half during which she explained everything to Moore in detail. But, the way things were presented in the film, Jacobson says, it looks like “a wham-bam thing.” She says she resents the way she was portrayed as some kind of “backwoods idiot” mindlessly handing out guns. She says Moore deceived her into being interviewed by saying of their long-gun-give-away program: “This is so great. I’m a hunter, a sportsman, grew up in Michigan, am an NRA member.” She says: “He went on and on and on saying this was the most unique program he’d ever heard of.” This is the first example of how Moore completely deceives and manipulates his subjects to be made to look stupid in his film. Unfortunately, it is not the last and more unfortunately, an ignorant audience plays patsy to Moore’s dishonest depiction.
Jacobson says the movie is misleading because it leaves the impression that a person can come in, sign up and walk out with a gun. But, this is not done because no guns are kept at her bank, although one would think so. She says that ordinarily a person entitled to one of the long-guns must go to a gun-dealer where the gun is shipped.
In fact, despite what BFC wants us to believe, Jacobson says there are no long-guns at her bank. The 500 guns mentioned in the movie are in a vault four hours away. But wait a second… Didn’t I see some long guns sitting right there on the rack above her shoulder? Yes - you’re not going crazy - those guns you saw (as shown in the picture up the page) are models.
She says that Moore’s signing papers in the film was just for show. His immediately walking out of the bank with a long-gun was allowed because “this whole thing was set up two months prior to the filming of the movie” when he had already complied with all the rules, including a background check.
Jacobson says the bank’s so-called “Weatherby Program” has “absolutely” been a smashing success. She says their corporate office was braced for some possible criticism because of BFC. But, they got only two calls — and these were from people wanting to know the details of the “Weatherby Program” so they, too, could get their long-guns!
A non-issue point in the first place
So the audience is left with a smug sense of the pro-gun bank’s careless craziness. Yet, aside to the falshoods the audience isn’t aware of, just a moment’s reflection on the given information shows that there is not the slightest danger. Aside from the thorough legal background check and paperwork we didn’t see, there are fundamental common sense flaws to the scene. The process of getting a ‘free gun’ isn’t quite as easy as Moore wants you to believe, and it’s not dangerous unless the person tries to use the gun as a club and wants to be quickly caught by the police.
To take possession of the gun, the depositor must:
Produce photo identification; making it inescapably certain that the robber would be identified and caught.
Give the bank at least a thousand dollars — (an unlikely way to start a robbery) (1).
Spend at least a half hour at the bank, thereby allowing many people to see and identify him, and undergo an FBI background check, which would reveal criminal convictions disqualifying most of the people inclined to bank robbery.
The label of this process being ridiculous is in fact ridiculous itself. A would-be robber could far more easily buy a handgun for a few hundred bucks on the black market, with no identification required, and would want to zip in and out of the bank as quick as possible.
Also - the bank is a licensed firearms dealer - not shooting range. They don’t hand bullets to you. Moore had to buy them later, as seen in the barbershop scene. If Moore brought his own bullets and tried to load them into the long-gun right there in the bank, it would be obvious and he’d be immediately stopped.
The ‘artistic lying’ illustrates the genius of Bowling for Columbine, in that the movie does not explicitly make these obvious points about the safety of the North County Bank’s program. Rather, the audience is simply encouraged to laugh along with Moore’s apparent mockery of the bank, without realizing that the joke is on them for seeing danger where none exists.
This theme is developed throughout the film.
