A Feeling of Power

I have often noticed that peaceful, calm, rational people, when placed in the driver’s seat of an automobile, can become, almost immediately, total rage monsters who can be triggered into violent streams of profanity by rather minor infractions, such as someone driving too slow, or accidentally leaving their turn signal on or, God forbid, being a pedestrian.
It’s traffic, and people should be able to move through it without the rage. The other day I collided with someone while changing from the yellow line to the red line at Florenc. Don’t know whose fault it was but I said excuse me, and he said no worries, and we both continued on our way. People on foot are reasonably cool. It’s having that heavy piece of machinery, with a powerful engine at your command, which makes people feel that they are the lord of the fast lane, the king of the road, and everyone else’s imperfection becomes infuriating.
I suspect it’s the same with guns. Yesterday my gun nut brother-in-law (No disrespect intended, but the man does love his guns. He probably owns more than 20, and his favorite things to post online are memes about guns, how much he loves guns, and how much he loves buying guns. Sometimes girls with big tits holding guns.) posted a meme showing a family at the shooting range – mother, father, and son who appeared to be about 14, who was lying in the prone position with an AR something or other.
The point of the meme, I guess, is that a family that goes out shooting together is a solid family. I’m not against family bonding, of course, but you can say the same about a family picnic at the beach, or a family day at an amusement park. Time spent together is quality time, most of the time.
Anyhow, someone commented that it builds character and I pointed out that the kid could be a young Kyle Rittenhouse, as an example of the kind of character parents shouldn’t want to be building. Damn, did that ever open up a can of worms. Highly toxic, racist worms. Kyle Rittenhouse did the world a favor, that kind of thing. There were also words of praise for George Zimmerman.
I’m not saying that gun ownership and racism, or even gun ownership and aggression are automatically linked, but there is obviously a huge overlap in the Venn Diagram.