3/26/23
I wish Florida gun laws weren’t what they are. I wish people didn’t have the ability to just shoot each other because they had a messed up childhood and then have Florida’s gun laws to protect them. I wish I could leave the house and feel assured that I wouldn’t get shot by a road-rager. I wish Santa Claus was real.
When Donna ran to the store this morning, I gave no thought to her safe return. The store is five minutes away. Who has a potentially life-changing event while picking up bagels? She told me what happened hours after the incident.
“I was just driving. Maybe I was driving a bit slowly for the car behind me. It was a one-lane road, so they passed me real fast and then cut me off. But instead of driving away, they put on their brakes in front of me.”
It doesn’t sound like the road-rager was in too big a hurry if they had time to linger and try to harass Donna. It makes me wonder where all this road rage is coming from all of a sudden. It wasn’t something I remember from childhood. Did I miss it? Does it go all the way back to the covered wagon days? Did wagon masters speed their horses up just to cut off other wagons and then taunt them when they reached the watering hole? (“You had that coming for moving slower than molasses?”)
Donna’s story brought to mind a road rage incident that made the news earlier this month in Miami. You may have seen the video below. It shows a driver behaving like a madman and shooting through the windshield of his own car at another vehicle as it drives past him.
Last week the case was dismissed on the grounds that the road-rager believed he was in danger. He claimed he believed the other driver had fired on him first. But it turned out that the other driver had only thrown a water bottle at him. But because of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, the judge ruled that the shooter had the right to defend himself. Defend himself against what, an assault with a non-caloric beverage?
#Iwillneverunderstandthatlaw