Ionia, Michigan.  Two men, two concealed weapons, two cases of road rage, two shots fired, and two men lay dead.   It sounds like the stuff of movies, a shootout at high noon.  To the victor go the legends.  The undertaker carries away the bodies.  Life goes on.

The difference between movies and real life, however, is that the real life outcome is permanent. One man left his family sitting in their car wondering what happened as he exchanged deadly fire with a stranger.

What could be a more unlikely place to die than in a parking lot near a car wash in a small town somewhere in Michigan over an issue that should have a shelf life of a few seconds?   Road rage.  Anger about what?  A momentary place in a lane that reappears every few seconds?  

We have many mixed issues to think about:  Is it about driving permits and concealed weapons permits held simultaneously by those who are too immature to have them?   Is road rage a far more dangerous phenomenon than heretofore believed?  Are men too immature to be trusted with more than one permit at a time?   Would mandatory training in all these areas help before any permits are issued?  Or is this just another good way to thin the hotheads from the herd of humanity?

More importantly, how can we digest these kinds of outcomes and file them into our mental survival kits for future reference?  

I once was confronted by another driver while we were driving along at 70 mph.  He had pulled alongside me and was yelling something about “being cutoff.”   The incident had occurred 30 minutes earlier at a toll booth.  Apparently, he and I were among the 50 or 60 vehicles approaching the 15 or so toll booths on a major highway.  As we each jostled for a position in line to pay the toll, he came up one position less than he felt he was entitled to have.   And 25 miles later he was still fuming about it.   I offered him one dollar, and he drove away in disgust.   I had trivialized the trivial.

How can we protect ourselves and those we love from such incidents?   To carry a weapon is to confound the issue with more potential violence.  To not carry a weapon is to make ourselves vulnerable to every nut who has one.  

To me it seems trivial and irrational in dying to satisfy a stranger’s momentary anger or to satisfy my own.   Either way, I’m dead.   As a survivalist, I don’t stop to vent anger.  I drive on knowing that time and distance make me a receding target while my marksmanship skills remain intact and way above average.