Cleveland road rage incident - NO shots fired

Cleveland.com is reporting on a road rage incident involving two men who were armed with guns, the aggressor was carrying illegally, while the victim was legally licensed to carry.

Some may recall claims by gun ban extremists during the fight to pass concealed carry here in Ohio over a decade ago that normally non-violent encounters between drivers were going to turn deadly, that road rage incidents and fender-benders were now going to turn into shoot-outs at the OK Corral.

In this incident, however, no shots were fired - and after reading the details of how this license-holder was threatened, many readers may actually be left wondering why.

From the article:

A 28-year-old Parma man faces criminal charges after he pulled a gun on a North Ridgeville motorcyclist, police said.

Daniel Sadler is charged with aggravated menacing and improperly handling a firearm inside a car in the incident that began about 11:30 p.m. Saturday.

A 46-year-old North Ridgeville motorcyclist cut off Sadler's car as he pulled his bike out of a Jaycox Road gas station, a police report says.

Sadler got into a heated exchange with the man who pulled his motorcycle onto a nearby side street, police said.

Sadler parked his car and pulled a handgun out of the trunk. He shouted a few more words at the motorcyclist and then pulled back the slide on his pistol, loading a bullet into the firing chamber, North Ridgeville Police Capt. Marti Garrow said.

The motorcyclist responded by saying that he had a permit to carry a concealed weapon and told Sadler that he was going to call the police.

It was around this point in time that the aggressor rethink his decision-making process, and he left the scene.

According to the article, the motorcyclist did call the police, who were able to locate Sadler a short distance away. The arresting officer found a pistol in his glove compartment, but noted that he didn't have a license to carry the pistol.

Since there aren't many details presented in the article, it is hard to make too much of an analysis of this incident (in fact we technically don't know from the article alone whether the license-holder had his gun with him or what he did with it if so.) But assuming the license-holder did have his firearm with him and did draw it in preparation of defending himself once Sadler drew his own gun and chambered a round, it is truly amazing that this incident didn't turn into a firefight, as it sounds very much like the license-holder would have been justified in utilizing deadly force in this case.

As another leader at Buckeye Firearms Association observed when discussing this incident, with full recognition that we are arm-chair quaterbacking, is that the license-holder would have been more prudent in this case to have never stopped his bike in the first place. A motorcycle can put an amazing amount of distance from a car in a few seconds. If a person is exhibiting road rage behavior, it is better to keep moving and call the police than to stop and engage them.

So why didn't both parties in this case start firing? Gun ban extremists like to claim that the mere presence of a gun inevitably leads to more violence. The fact is that many anti-self-defense extremists are admitting their own fears of what they would do if they had a gun. Some years ago, Dr. Sarah Thompson, a psychiatrist who was also, at the time, Executive Director of Utah Gun Owners Alliance, published an excellent essay examining the anti-gun mentality from a psychiatric perspective. She observes that this phenomenon is a display of defense mechanisms including projection and reaction formation.

Projection

All people have violent, and even homicidal, impulses. For example, it's common to hear people say "I'd like to kill my boss", or "If you do that one more time I'm going to kill you." They don't actually mean that they're going to, or even would, kill anyone; they're simply acknowledging anger and frustration. All of us suffer from fear and feelings of helplessness and vulnerability. Most people can acknowledge feelings of rage, fear, frustration, jealousy, etc. without having to act on them in inappropriate and destructive ways.

Some people, however, are unable consciously to admit that they have such "unacceptable" emotions. They may have higher than average levels of rage, frustration, or fear. Perhaps they fear that if they acknowledge the hostile feelings, they will lose control and really will hurt someone. They may believe that "good people" never have such feelings, when in fact all people have them.

This is especially true now that education "experts" commonly prohibit children from expressing negative emotions or aggression. Instead of learning that such emotions are normal, but that destructive behavior needs to be controlled, children now learn that feelings of anger are evil, dangerous and subject to severe punishment. To protect themselves from "being bad", they are forced to use defense mechanisms to avoid owning their own normal emotions. Unfortunately, using such defense mechanisms inappropriately can endanger their mental health; children need to learn how to deal appropriately with reality, not how to avoid it.

Another defense mechanism Dr. Thompson identifies as common among gun ban extremists is...

Reaction Formation

Reaction formation occurs when a person's mind turns an unacceptable feeling or desire into its complete opposite. For example, a child who is jealous of a sibling may exhibit excessive love and devotion for the hated brother or sister.

Likewise, a person who harbors murderous rage toward his fellow humans may claim to be a devoted pacifist and refuse to eat meat or even kill a cockroach. Often such people take refuge in various spiritual disciplines and believe that they are "superior" to "less civilized" folks who engage in "violent behavior" such as hunting, or even target shooting. They may devote themselves to "animal welfare" organizations that proclaim that the rights of animals take precedence over the rights of people. This not only allows the angry person to avoid dealing with his rage, it allows him actually to harm the people he hates without having to know he hates them.

This is not meant to disparage the many wonderful people who are pacifists, spiritually inclined, vegetarian, or who support animal welfare. The key issue is not the belief itself, but rather the way in which the person experiences and lives his beliefs. Sincere practitioners seek to improve themselves, or to be helpful in a gentle, respectful fashion. They work to persuade others peacefully by setting an example of what they believe to be correct behavior. Sincere pacifists generally exhibit good will towards others, even towards persons with whom they might disagree on various issues.

Contrast the sincere pacifist or animal lover with the strident, angry person who wants to ban meat and who believes murdering hunters is justified in order to "save the animals" - or the person who wants to outlaw self-defense and believes innocent people have the obligation to be raped and murdered for the good of society. For example, noted feminist Betty Friedan said "that lethal violence even in self defense only engenders more violence."[16] The truly spiritual, pacifist person refrains from forcing others to do what he believes, and is generally driven by positive emotions, while the angry person finds "socially acceptable" ways to harm, abuse, or even kill, his fellow man.

In the case of anti-gun people, reaction formation keeps any knowledge of their hatred for their fellow humans out of consciousness, while allowing them to feel superior to "violent gun owners". At the same time, it also allows them to cause serious harm, and even loss of life, to others by denying them the tools necessary to defend themselves. This makes reaction formation very attractive from a psychological point of view, and therefore very difficult to counteract.

It is these defense mechanisms (and another known as denial), Dr. Thompson writes, that impede the anti-gun person's ability to understand facts about gun ownership:

Because defense mechanisms distort reality in order to avoid unpleasant emotions, the person who uses them has an impaired ability to recognize and accept reality. This explains why...anti-gun people persist in believing that their neighbors and co- workers will become mass murderers if allowed to own firearms.

People who legally carry concealed firearms are actually less violent and less prone to criminal activity of all kinds than is the general population. A person who has a clean record, has passed an FBI background check, undergone firearms training, and spent several hundred dollars to get a permit and a firearm, is highly unlikely to choose to murder a neighbor. Doing so would result in his facing a police manhunt, a trial, prison, possibly capital punishment, and the destruction of his family, job, and reputation. Obviously it would make no sense for such a person to shoot a neighbor - except in self-defense. Equally obviously, the anti-gun person who believes that malicious shootings by ordinary gun owners are likely to occur is not in touch with reality.

Dr. Thompson goes on to say that in her experience, "the common thread in anti-gun people is rage. Either anti-gun people harbor more rage than others, or they're less able to cope with it appropriately. Because they can't handle their own feelings of rage, they are forced to use defense mechanisms in an unhealthy manner. Because they wrongly perceive others as seeking to harm them, they advocate the disarmament of ordinary people who have no desire to harm anyone."

The entire article, entitled "Raging Against Self Defense - A Psychiatrist Examines The Anti-Gun Mentality" is well-worth the read.

While all of the details of this incident in the Cleveland area are not known, it is clear that this license-holder had anything but an "itchy trigger-finger," and demonstrated nothing of the stereo-typical behavior gun ban extremists project upon him and others like him.

Chad D. Baus is the Buckeye Firearms Association Secretary, BFA PAC Vice Chairman, and an NRA-certified firearms instructor. He is the editor of BuckeyeFirearms.org, which received the Outdoor Writers of Ohio 2013 Supporting Member Award for Best Website.