Road rage. Is it a problem?
Sure, most people have had to deal with feeling anger about the awful drivers that are out there on the roads (thinking of you, guy-who-drives-55-in-the-left-lane-in-a-70-MPH-zone). But the vast majority of people don’t take any action because of that irritation. They let it go and get on with their day.
Of course, there are some people who seem to look for any excuse to do evil things to other people. Road rage would be just another excuse in their minds for those actions. But those people with that evil intent would have found another excuse if they didn’t have road rage to “blame.”
Leave it to former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his anti-2A organization Everytown for Gun Safety, though, to try to blame gun owners for the evil actions of people. In this case, they’re trying to tie road rage shootings to legal gun ownership (of course). Michael Clements writes,
Gun control organizations report that the number of shootings associated with so-called “road rage” events has increased sharply over the past decade, coinciding with more states allowing the unlicensed concealed carry of firearms.
However, Second Amendment advocates claim that those who call for stricter gun regulation are using questionable data and scare tactics to advance their political agenda.Last March, Everytown for Gun Safety—an organization started by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2006—reported that “Road Rage Shootings are Continuing to Surge.” The post was an analysis of data gathered by The Gun Violence Archive (GVA) between Jan. 4, 2014 and Dec. 31, 2023.
Clements continues:
Mr. [John R.] Lott told The Epoch Times that GVA’s data is suspect at best and biased at worst. He said the source of most of GVA’s data is hostile to the Second Amendment.
“The Gun Violence Archive relies on media reports. So what you may be picking up is what the media thinks is useful to report,” Mr. Lott said.
A GVA representative who asked not to be identified confirmed in an email to The Epoch Times that the data comes primarily from news reports. The email writer stated that the data was labeled road rage shooting data because the news media or local police used that term.
An ardent critic of news media, Mr. Lott, said the vast majority of news stories on firearms don’t provide enough information to determine precisely what happened in a specific incident. For example, he said simply labeling something a road rage incident while leaving out key details makes it impossible to know whether the shooting was justified.
“If somebody uses a gun defensively, you’re not going to get all the information,” Mr. Lott said.
So, what we have here is another example of taking incomplete data, removing all context (as in what happened before, during, and after the shooting other than the shooting happened), and, then, creating a narrative around that incomplete data that pushes the policy position that the legacy mainstream media and anti-2A politicians, like Bloomberg, want to push.
Guns are one of the few topics that it’s nearly impossible to get complete contextual data about from the mainstream legacy media because they are so vested in pushing gun control.
It’s absolutely disgusting.
Frankly, the American people deserve better. They deserve better, more complete information from their media sources, and they deserve to hear the truth instead of lies pushed by anti-2A propagandists.
