Gun control advocates would have you look at this video [NSFW] and conclude that gun owners are mentally unstable. Then they’d assert that everyone is mentally unstable. In the right set of circumstances, anyone is capable of “snapping” and shooting someone to death. So no one should have a gun. Except the police, who are carefully vetted and perfectly trained. In theory. Meanwhile, out in the real world . . .

studies have proven that licensed gun owners are far less likely to commit a crime than the general population (or the police). Duh. Not that you should have to, but concealed carry licensing involves a criminal background check. Here’s a fun fact from 2004 illustrating the point.

A citizen in the Sunshine State is far more likely to be attacked by an alligator than to be assaulted by a concealed carry holder.

During the first fifteen years that the Florida [concealed carry] law was in effect, alligator attacks outpaced the number of crimes committed by carry holders by a 229 to 155 margin.

Remembering that the crimes committed by Sunshine State concealed carry license holders during the study period weren’t all violent, while all the alligator attacks were. [Note: There was no statistical overlap; none of the alligators had a Florida or out-of-state concealed carry license.]

The above text and video combo is meant to highlight the fact that A) gun control advocates are projecting when they portray lawful gun owners as borderline homicidal maniacs and B) there are armed mentally unstable people out there, somewhere. Like many people most of them own cars.

The best way to avoid road rage killers: avoid road rage. Don’t drive aggressively. Don’t respond to aggressive drivers. No shouted expletives. No flipping the bird. No tailgating retribution. No horn honking. No flashing lights. And no stopping to argue with another driver about anything ever. Just keep calm and motor on.

Whenever possible, leave enough space to maneuver around a vehicle in front of you. Never get so close to the vehicle in front that you can’t see both tarmac and tires. Have an exit plan. In the video above, the driver who’s cut off could have easily driven around the vehicle in front of him. You know, if he’d wanted to . . .

Truth be told, I reckon the video shows some kind of criminal-on-criminal hit, rather than road rage retribution. Still, scary stuff, eh? Brutal. Enough to make you think that maybe it’s not a good idea to start a fight with a fellow motorist? Hey, if it saves one life . . .

34 COMMENTS

  1. “everyone is mentally unstable. In the right set of circumstances, anyone is capable of “snapping” and shooting someone to death. So no one should have a gun.”

    everyone is mentally unstable. In the right set of circumstances, anyone is capable of “snapping” and shooting someone to death. So EVERYONE should have a gun.

    there, fixed ya

    • If anyone tells you to (instead) ‘take one for the team,’ be too busy being ‘unstable’ and ‘snapping’ to listen.

      • If you then need to shoot them that’s their tough sh_t, they should’ve had their gun.

        If they have their gun, and they prevent you from shooting them well then (maybe) good on them.

        If they have their gun, and with it they prevent you from having a gun, drive your car through their house while they are sleeping. BECAUSE NOT HAVING A GUN IS NO GUARANTEE YOU ARE NOT MENTALLY UNSTABLE AND POSSIBLY ‘SNAPPY’, and again that’s their tough sh_t, they knew that.

  2. I feel even more inclined to let shit pass when I am carrying.. I’ll go out of my way to avoid any confrontation. An armed society… You all get it.

    • This. Either it’s a byproduct of passing age 50 or the CCW, but I don’t suffer the level of irateness that I had with the general public as I used to.

    • Yes, if you carry you need to eat a lot of humble pie. Walk away and don’t escalate anything….it sucks, but the outcome if you don’t won’t end well for you….

  3. Anyone know when this took place? I don’t recall any news stories on this shooting. Thanks. That really did look like some kind of hit. More than just road rage, IMO.

    • Haber Turk TV is a Turkish national TV network headquartered in Istanbul. So this viddy comes from Turkey, but the city is unknown.

      • Also, please note the shooter used a long arm. Most “road rage” does not include a rifle.

        Also, that was a slow approach on the second van’s part. No screeching tires. Look like something else outside of the video was driving the situation.

        • It appears to me that the van driven by the soon to be deceased was reacting to an earlier event that happened off-camera. I get the impression they felt the soon to be shooter had somehow pissed them off and they wanted to get back at him. Unfortunately for them, the target of their vengeance was a homicidal maniac with a taste for point-blank shotgun executions.

          All this video does is reinforce for me that the further you go east the less a human life is worth.

        • “…. the further you go east the less a human life is worth..”

          Unfortunately, that applies to the city I live in here in the US as well. What has happened to our beloved Republic. Oh how I wish I had some land in the middle of nowhere lately.

  4. “… concealed carry licensing involves a criminal background.”
    Huh? I have a Concealed Carry License, despite my complete lack of a criminal background.

  5. More projection from the antis. Most of those I know fly off the handle and scream when the topic of guns comes up.

    • ^ . . . and, if so, what the predominant caliber of gator? (don’t say 9mm because .40 S&W is too snappy)

  6. studies have proven that licensed gun owners are far less likely to commit a crime than the general population (or the police).

    I think you just made an argument in favor of universal background checks, Bob.

    • Ya, but background check everyone, and the same population would be the “trouble makers” (the gun-grabbers that is).

    • UBCs, FFL-BCs, NICS. We all need to look at these BCs in multiple ways; re-framinging what they really mean and how we can use them to our advantage in the debate.
      For example, what is the real difference between Shall-Issue vs. Constitutional-Carry? The citizen of a State might wonder: ‘Why is my [any] legislature willing to abandon our Shall-Issue law and allow people to carry with no BC at all?’ It’s a perfectly reasonable question; but, the answer is NOT found in any appeal to the 2A or natural rights. Instead, it is simply that the Police have a BC system (rather like NICS) that enables them to ascertain whether a person with a gun is a prohibited-person or not. It takes a couple of minutes, but the info is up-to-date; a CWP card may be out-of-date.
      Nothing compels us to look at our CWP(s) as some infringement upon our liberty; the CWP is merely a certification that – at issue date – the holder had no record of a disqualifying incident. The backbone of the system is the FBIs set of databases (which exists irrespective of gun laws); it’s not the card.
      No prohibited person can acquire or possess a gun without jeopardy of being charged with felon-in-posession. This fact prevails whether straw-buyers, traffickers, burgers or smugglers are guilty of “transferring” without performing a UBC. Neither municipal police nor the ATF are going to be any more vigorous about prosecuting straw-buyers, etc., of skipping a UBC law then they are about prosecuting them for transferring to someone they know/believe to be prohibited.
      We should be proclaiming the great advancement of technology as enabling the abandonment of race-based gun control in favor of behavior-based gun control. Prior to the 1990s society discriminated against Blacks, native Americans, Asians and immigrants in its feeble attempt to control guns. Today, we can hold whites and minorities accountable for their behavior and extend the liberty of self-defense without discrimination. This was a primary goal of the 14A.

      Observe that, here, I am making NO defense of BCs as a prior-restraint on transfers.
      Nor am I attacking the existence of the databases underlying NICS nor the NICS/police inquiry systems.
      Nor am I attacking the NICS check in the context of an FFL.

      Instead, I’m simply embracing the database/communications technology that allow LEOs to distinguish prohibited-persons from 2A-able persons; and, observing that this is a marked improvement over the previous race-based system.

      Once we get voters thinking of “BCs” along these lines – i.e.,: ‘Why is my [any] legislature willing to abandon our Shall-Issue law and allow people to carry with no BC at all?’ – then our battle over UBC will be mostly won. Isn’t that what we want? To WIN!

      I will grant that many of us have serious objections to several (perhaps all) of the prohibiting criteria (e.g., domestic violence misdemeanors). Perfectly legitimate; but these objections are properly directed at the prohibited-persons law(s), not UBC.

      I will further grant that almost all of us object to the 4473 form. (I, for one, regard this to be the most serious and looming threat.) Yet, this too is a distinct issue from UBC and FFL-BC. On this point, our efforts should be on rolling back the 20 year retention period (along with the ATF archiving 4473 forms in perpetuity). THIS – i.e., the making and retention of 4473 forms – really has NOTHING to do with BC. WE are being foolish to base our objections on UBC/FFL-BC on 4473 forms. We should be objecting to the record keeping of 4473s on its own demerits.

      Our objections – and righteously so – to UBC ought to be based squarely on the injustice of punishing a peaceful transferor for neglecting to jump-through a regulatory hoop when lending/selling/giving a gun to a 2A-able person. It’s as simple as that!

      Suppose, gentle voter, that YOU were subject to arrest, conviction and jail for handing your car keys to a valet without first validating his driver’s license with the DMV. Would a DMV-check law strike you as reasonable? Or, as tyranny?

  7. Nice little road rage incident here in Houston over the weekend. Porsche driver and a BMW driver in the snooty uptown Galleria area got into it: horns, shouts, gestures, all over some kind of slight.

    Next stop, Porsche guy exits his vehicle, storms over to BMW guy’s open window and rains blows down upon him (says BMW guy). BMW guy produces a firearm and delivers one round into Porsche guy’s face, about mid afternoon at a busy intersection.

    Now, BMW guy is pacing a cell and has a date with the Grand Jury. Porsche guy is circling the drain and may soon meet his Maker.

    Be safe out there, people. Make smart decisions.

    • UPDATE: Porsche guy died yesterday. Expect BMW guy’s charges to be bumped up from Deadly Conduct to some form of criminal homicide.

      New detail: BMW guy supposedly shouted during the altercation “Go back to Islam!” at Porsche guy, who appears to have been of Middle Eastern lineage. So now they want hate crime charges brought. Be careful what you say in the heat of anger, folks.

  8. In my 32 years driving the nations roads and highways, I have found that it is generally the BMW driver who is the a-hole. YMMV

  9. in Miami, theres road rage everywhere and everyday. Like you mentioned, I dont pay them any attention. No matter what theyre up to in the other vehicle, I give them room and stay in that condition yellow/orange zone.

    See them off and make sure youre not followed home.

  10. “During the first fifteen years that the Florida [concealed carry] law was in effect, alligator attacks outpaced the number of crimes committed by carry holders by a 229 to 155 margin.”
    Yeah but Alligators can’t hep themselves. They get HONGRY!

  11. Beeping your horn because someone is texting instead of going when the light turns green or to warn someone they are about to hit you is not road rage. Flashing your lights to pass is not road rage. Being courteous and ignoring the stupid mistakes of others will take you far, but you also have to protect yourself from dangerous drivers.

    • “Beeping your horn because someone is texting instead of going when the light turns green …”

      I did this just the other day. I honked my horn because I didn’t want someone to plow into my stopped rear bumper in front of a green traffic light.

      Of course there is a difference between tooting your horn once and driving on without any further action or gestures — versus honking your horn multiple times, making gestures, riding someone’s bumper, etc.

  12. Im not for summary executions, but I am not for violence of any kind, either. I don’t see why we should have to accept street fights breaking out everywhere, all day. To hear the liberals say “what happened to settling things with your fists” like they were Lawrence Fishburn is infuriating. First of all, douchebags, you never settled a damn thing in your little gated communes with fists, you just listened to way too much rap music in high school. Second, what happened is that (most) of us moved away from violence of ANY KIND, even fist fights. To me mutual assault is not even acceptable; if there is a problem between adults that can’t be solved without a fistfight I would say the ACTUAL problem is that there are two violent criminals living too close together.

  13. Those are good driving tips to maintain at all times because sometimes the road ragers can not be avoided. Not long ago I was driving home at about midnight after picking my wife up at the airport. A couple of lights after exiting the freeway one of them found us. They had been sitting at a red light waiting to turn onto the street that we were on. I guess they thought the light was taking too long and decided to make their turn into crossing traffic, namely me. One emergency lane change maneuver and some squealing tire noises later we were safely past them. Just a couple seconds later they were on my bumper though, flashing their headlights and honking.

    Four right turns later with no complete stops (fortunately there was no additional traffic to contend with) we were right back around the block where it started. Assholes in the black sedan still following. They had backed off far enough that I could see their now steady high beams in the rearview mirror but we had established beyond any doubt that they were intentionally following us. Nearest PD is several miles and many stop lights away so that is a no go. I am certainly not going to lead them to my home which was actually close enough to see. Fuel light is on (had planned to get gas on the way to work the next day) so we will be stopping soon.

    So we found the next empty, well lit gas station that was sure to have cameras and prepared for the worst. Fortunately, instead of following us into the gas station they simply slowed down to honk, gesture and yell out the window. Potentially very very bad situation turned out to be no more than an unanticipated adrenaline rush.

    Lessons learned . . . 1) Top off the tank when there is 1/4 tank left. Without that fuel I was unable to flee or even drive in circles while waiting for the police to come save the day. 2) When picking up one’s wife from the airport, bring her EDC with you as well as my own. If the SHTF it would have been me -vs.- two unknown occupants in the car with my wife running for cover instead of able to defend herself. 3) While I am not a fan of bumper stickers and have never put them on my own vehicles, I do wonder if the “INSURED BY COLT” bumper sticker on my wife’s SUV (that would have been just a few feet from the drivers nose) may have helped convince our assailants not to stop with us.

    Previous knowledge reinforced . . . 1) Evil does not need a reason or provocation to be evil. 2) It is up to me to make sure I have the best chance possible of surviving it.

  14. Im generally against gun themed bumper sticks, i think they would increase the chances people would break into my vehicle. The same with a sign outside my house. It might deter some idiots but others would say hey if no one is home, theres gotta be guns in there and its real easy to turn guns into crack…..

    I used to rock pro law enforcement stickers in the hopes that it might get me out of a speeding ticket, not sure i would do that these days….

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