Aim Well

Lately in LA there have been a lot of highway shootings. Not, mind you, people actually shooting the highways, but people shooting at other people on the highways. It's lovely, really, imagining yourself cruising along at a pretty good speed with the radio on -- and the windows are rolled up because the smog and vehicle exhaust will kill you, but still -- the freeway lanes are (relatively) clear and you're moving along at 60 mph and not caught in a traffic jam for once, and then you hear a car backfire (you think) and an Escalade comes careening into your lane, taking out your front bumper and causing you to sideswipe the car on the other side, as the original Escalade plows into the guardrail because it's driver has just been shot.

Therein lies my concern -- beginning, middle, and end. I don't want some dead guy's vehicle crashing into me. The media has been sort of sketchy on the details. They make it seem like this string of shootings is of epidemic proportions, a plague upon all our houses. Anyone can get shot - so be careful! Except when you read the seventh and eighth paragraphs of the newspaper articles you see all of these shootings started as arguments back at gas stations or something like that. With rare exceptions, people who haven't done anything don't get shot. Perhaps their actions didn't deserve a shooting in response, but chances are they did something.

Driving in LA is horrible because a lot of people are either a) idiots; b) assholes; or c) both. If highway shootings are going to thin out their ranks, so be it. I'm more worried about a car losing control and crashing into me, and the douchebags on the roads here seem to be good at doing that on their own.