The Occasional Dissident

“You just don’t know what you’re up against if you get into something with another motorist. This went back to whatever happened on that merge. We tell people: Don’t engage with aggressive drivers. Don’t give in to that inclination. Let it go.”
- Corinne Geller, Virginia State Police spokeswoman (“Drivers charged in road rage case,” Washington Post, March 25, 2010)

Dear citizens, I am going to reveal a darker side of my personality today. While many know me to be a decent person, I also harbor some disdain for, shall we say, average Americans. I would blame the Air Force—the institution spent twenty-four years enforcing discipline and instilling self-discipline in me. However, I know that I am to blame. I should be more able to tolerate a lack of self-discipline in my neighbors, but instead, I resent that lack. I have gone so far as to tell others repeatedly that the difference between an adult and a child is that children require an adult to control their behavior. I make the comment derisively as I point to a driver pulled over to the side of the road by a policeman. I call the driver a child and then I salute the cop.

We, most of us, too many of us, have too little or nearly no ability to control our behavior. We eat too much—not occasionally but all too often. We spend recklessly—immaturely—beyond our means, not for one month but for months at a time. We cannot drag ourselves to a voting booth once every two years. We cannot follow the news to learn what issues and what candidates threaten our interests. The examples go on and on and cover most aspects of our lives. However, perhaps no area more readily displays our lack of self-discipline, our lack of maturity, our childishness, than our behavior on and around roads.

I live in Shirlington, a portion of Arlington, Virginia, just a bit south of the Pentagon. In this wonderful little community, I am a bit of an oddity at times. Specifically, I stand out when I approach the main intersection and stop at the curb, waiting for a light to change before I cross the street. As I wait, I watch all manner of people walk past me, crossing against the light and often without regard to oncoming traffic. I have watched cars sit through the first thirty seconds of their green light while oblivious, undisciplined pedestrians cross in front of them. My eldest grandson—he is six—already knows things like patience, sharing, and waiting his turn. I hope his brother and sister will master the same. But, I see the lesson does not always stick. Young “adults” ignore the rules. Gray-haired couples refuse to yield the right-of-way. Parents, with children in tow, hustle across the traffic as cars bear down on them. Heaven forbid they should apply the lessons my grandson has learned and suffer a twenty- or thirty-second delay.

One block up the street is a bus station and a four-way stop. I have nearly been struck a number of times crossing here by drivers who run past the stop sign and stop line and come to a reluctant halt in the crosswalk. What they plan to do with the five seconds they might have spent following the law perplexes me. I have nearly hit pedestrians who ignore the crosswalk (twenty feet away) and dash across traffic. Shirlington has two exits on Interstate 395, and out there our lack of discipline becomes even more hazardous. Merging onto the road is challenging enough at the posted speed of fifty-five miles per hour. Few observe that limit, however. Sharing the road, indeed, doing anything that makes the travel safer for all, is inconceivable. Traffic on this road, the escape route for those fleeing work at the end of the day to Interstate 95 and points farther south, is not a commute as much as it is a battle—an effort to beat the others home without regard for laws or fellow travelers—without regard for patience or sharing or waiting one’s turn.

Dear citizens, we might wonder if gun laws are not appropriate for a population like ours—for a population that is so challenged to act as adults. Today, the Supreme Court ruled against the City of Chicago’s handgun ban. Good, some will say. The Court is protecting our right to bear arms. But, that is inaccurate—a bit off target, if you will. Chicago’s citizens have not prohibited themselves from owning arms. Rather, they have prohibited, in the interest of their safety—to protect themselves against the fully grown children in their midst—the ownership of a particular type of firearm. Likewise, the Court did not preserve or protect a right. Rather, the Court decided it likes handguns and ruled people should have them. It is not that the Supreme Court’s majority thinks you or I should have unrestricted access to any and all arms—they have not ruled that you can have a howitzer or I can drive an M1A1 Abrams battle tank up and down I-395. The court has merely expressed a preference for a particular weapon and insisted, as it did earlier in the case of the District of Columbia, that they—not the citizens of Chicago or DC—will decide which weapons will be tucked under beds or the front seats of cars. This, of course, is judicial activism. It is legislating from the bench as five Justices decide which guns the residents of Chicago and DC may possess. And it is worse. The Supreme Court ruling is an attack on the right to self-govern more than a preservation of a general right to bear arms.

Of course, deciding that handguns—rarely in use when the Second Amendment was drafted—were meant to be in the hands of Americans is not without consequences.

Dear citizens, I have before me two Washington Post stories that have waited beside my desk for a moment like this to make their appearance. The first is cited in the quote at the top of this essay. The second, appearing the next day, is headlined, “Trucker charged with attempted murder in I-95 case,” (March 26, 2010). I will let those stories describe the events by employing a few relevant snippets from both.

The Interstate 95 road-rage incident that left two Woodbridge men jailed and facing attempted murder charges began with jockeying at a merge lane, escalated to demolition-derby-style ramming and ended with gunshots.

Bringham was in a white 2007 Ford 550 dump truck. Poventud drove a silver 2004 Jaguar.

The exchange played out over four miles and 20 minutes starting near the merge area from Route 123, where Bringham entered I-95 southbound. Poventud already was traveling in those lanes.

Traffic in that area of I-95, with the Occoquan River to the north and the Marine Corps Base Quantico to the south, was moving at about 30 mph at the time, said Corinne Geller, spokeswoman for the state police.

In a complaint filed in court, a Virginia state trooper wrote that “both drivers stated that Mr. Bringham rammed Mr. Poventud’s car. Mr. Poventud then got out of his car and fired 13 rounds from a handgun at the other vehicle.”

“There were twelve bullet impacts to the truck. Four of them would have hit the cab if they had penetrated the dump bed,” the complaint stated.

Dear citizens, I used to hunt and I plan to hunt again with my son-in-law and my grandsons, who will be raised to learn self-discipline, raised to understand the value of patience and sharing and waiting their turn. I am not for the repeal of the Second Amendment. I am not for ignoring it. Nonetheless, I think the essence of a Democracy is that we may govern ourselves and protect ourselves from harm—that we may limit our Second Amendment rights just as we do those of our First. Just as we may protect ourselves by not allowing our neighbors to own a .50 caliber machinegun and may prohibit the same from being fired through the windows of our homes, we may enact sensible, reasonable prohibitions against handguns or at least some handguns. Supreme Court Justices, after all, have noted in the past that our Constitution is not a suicide pact. Many police agencies hope for a reinstatement of the “assault weapons ban” and would prefer that pistols, which allow their holders to fire thirteen or more rounds without a pause to reload or to think, be kept out of the hands of most people, limiting private ownership to revolvers, which fire six times only before they must be reloaded. Here is another quote from the Washington Post stories:

Virginia law requires permits for concealed weapons, but “you can carry one on each hip and two over your shoulders as long as it’s not concealed,” said Prince William Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul B. Ebert.

Had Mr. Poventud been limited to just one revolver, he would have been required to reload twice to get out the thirteen shots he fired—two chances to think again about what he was doing, two chances to limit the danger to himself and to others. He might have recongnized that by blazing away at his rival over who gets temporary ownership of a piece of asphalt he was overreacting. He might have realized that by pulling out his pistol he was inviting Mr. Bringham to return fire in his direction, possibly endangering others. Some would argue that had Mr. Bringham been armed, he could have “protected himself.” Of course, the quote above indicates that, had the two been more exuberant in their celebration of their Second Amendment rights, the spectacle might have been far grander and bloody. All this brings us to one last quote from this terribly interesting tale. Here is the opening paragraph of the March 25th story:

With his 2-year-old daughter in a car seat inside, Gabriel Poventud of Woodbridge threw open the door of his silver Jaguar on the shoulder of southbound Interstate 95 in Prince William County and fired 13 shots at a dump truck, terrifying Tuesday evening commuters, Virginia State Police said.

And that brings me to another potential area for sensible, reasonable laws tangentially related to gun control. If we cannot act like adults, if we are not willing to have patience, to share, and to wait our turn, if we lack self-discipline, and if the Supreme Court insists that—Constitution be damned—we may not govern ourselves where guns are concerned, states and municipalities at least might consider passing laws urging parents not to take their toddles to the gunfight. Of course, we will need an adult to enforce that.

- Alan Howe, June 2010