Summations Only

So, in Georgia a man shot a woman in the back because he felt she was driving too slowly.The police response is a bit bizarre. In today’s time, I’d encourage anyone to avoid confrontation with motorists out on the roadway, said Major Stephen Fore, of DeKalb County police. You just don’t know what’s in that other person’s mind.

It's all part of the same pro-gun narrative - line up as much as you possibly can to blame, apart from gun ownership. In this case, Major Fore seems to be suggesting we blame the victim.

"Major Fore seems to be suggesting we blame the victim."In Fore's defense, we don't know exactly what question he was responding to when he made his statement. Generally, the advice about confronting people on the highway is a good idea. You aren't going to accomplish much by confronting someone who acts a fool on the highway.His advice is similar to the advice to just give a robber your money if he points a weapon at you. That advice is appropriate. But it just seems bad timing to give it when we are discussing a shooting victim.

Oh I've no doubt that it's sensible not to get involved in altercations if you can avoid them. And I take your point that we don't know the context of the remarks.But we've moved away from (for example) examining how short a rape victim's skirt was, because we recognise that the question introduces an attribution of blame to someone other than the scum who did it.I get the impression that the pro-gun movement is all too happy to throw blame absolutely anywhere other than guns - including onto victims. I think that's a narrative we should constantly challenge.

Yes. For rape we have made that call. But we have not made the call for every other situation.We still tell people to drive defensively because there are idiots out there and it is still good practical advice not to defend your wallet with your life. While I probably would not give my adult daughter any fashion advice, I might warn her about messing with dickhead drivers with anger management issues.

Sure, but in this case "messing with him" amounted to not driving as fast as he wanted, so the cop's advice boils down to "if some jerk is tailgating you, you should speed up or he might shoot you." Which, if followed, would probably cost more lives than it would save.

The official advice for coping with tailgaters is to pull over and let the arsehole past.Then lift the Remington M2010 ESR off the rack and shoot him in the back of the head from a safe distance.

By that logic a proportion of 70% of American's who identify as Christians are choosing not to pray to stop mass shootings.Bad Christians! Bad!

I understand that, Dr. Adequate, but we don't know what question the advice was offered in response to, so we might not be able to blame the sheriff for the connection between the advice and the incident.Of course it is entirely possible that the sheriff did offer some really bad advice. But his advice would be so astoundingly bad in this case, that I thought we might consider other possibilities.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

These are of course the stupid people that pull up behind you and sit for 5 minutes before they consider passing ... even when the highway is completely empty.And pulling over for someone with road rage may not be a good idea either.I usually put on my 4-way blinkers, and they generally back off.Enjoy

But, you know, right to bear arms. Yeah.

I am not sure what you are trying to prove Dr. A. As anyone who knows anything knows, within the last 3 years, 3 people have died and literally hundreds injured in the USA as a result of malicious use of the APC:

Yeah, but those are all other people's toddlers, Dr A - they don't count :-/

It appears that Praying only works if you're praying for the thing that god was going to do anyway.

Did you know about 30 people are shot to death every day in America? I contend the greatest threat to America is another American with a gun.