Michael Moore: ‘We as Americans believe it’s OK to kill people’

On Tuesday night radical filmmaker and gadfly Michael Moore apparently equated U.S. soldiers and ordinary U.S. civilians with the sort of deranged killers who have have shocked and saddened the nation by gunning down dozens of innocent people in a string of recent massacres like those in Tucson, Ariz.; Aurora, Colo.; and, most recently, Newtown, Conn.

“We are a violent people,” Mr. Moore said in New York from the red carpet at the National Board of Review Awards, according to the Associated Press.

“We as Americans believe it’s OK to kill people,” asserted the auteur-activist, who won an Oscar in 2003 for his pro-gun control documentary “Bowling for Columbine.”

“We believe it’s OK,” Mr. Moore continued, “to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. We think it’s OK to invade a country where we think Osama Bin Laden is and he’s in the other country. So we just go in and we just kill. And we have the death penalty, we sanction it. Not talking about the insane people now. We’re talking about our government — which is of, by and for the people — says it’s OK to kill people. So why is it a surprise when the unhinged, who live in the same society, go ‘I feel like killing some people today?’ I think we need to take a look at ourselves.”