Over the past two nights, we watched Michael Moore’s stark documentary Bowling for Columbine. This film delves into the disastrous results when America’s culture of guns is coupled with its media-and-politically-driven culture of fear. If you haven’t seen this film, give it a chance. The images of NRA poster boy Charlton Heston praising guns in Littleton, Colorado, just over a week after Columbine, and in Flint, Michigan, just days after one six-year-old shot and killed one of his classmates with a gun, will make your blood boil.

The film isn’t all negative and shows how two survivors of Columbine go with Moore to K-Mart headquarters to ask them why they sell ammunition, the same ammunition whose spent bullets are still in their bodies. After staying in the corporate headquarters lobby and demanding to speak to someone with answers, they are poorly handled by a communications hack. The next day, they return with two things: the local media and shopping bags full of all the ammunition they could buy at a local K-Mart store. A VP comes out to talk with the crowd and reads a statement that says K-Mart will eliminate the sale of all ammunition from all its stores within 90 days. Wow! Now that’s activism. And, according to Moore and the two students, they were looking for answers and didn’t expect (though certainly embraced) this corporate policy change.

So, after last night, I was depressed but had a glimmer of hope. This morning, while scanning the wires, I ran across this amazing story. Cincinnati set a record last year in number of homicides. Just recently, a student was shot and killed at an event that was promoting nonviolence. In response, Cincinnati’s Democratic Mayor Mark Mallory has decided to not use a starter pistol to begin a 5K race this weekend. Instead of firing blanks from a pistol, he’ll use a whistle. The mayor said, “I think the symbolism is just bad. It’s just something I don’t do.”

Hats off to you Mayor Mallory. You’ve given this blogger a jolt of hope.