Sometimes fate brings two idiots together.

And in cases like this, where one of the idiots has a gun, things have a tendency to turn very bad indeed.

Michigan Man charged with muder in apparent road rage shooting.

To sum it up, two idiots joust with each other in traffic. One finally passes the other and it seems to be over, but then at the next red light, the second idiot pulls up behind the first one, gets out of his car, and storms up to the driver's side of the first idiot's truck, at which time first idiot shoots second idiot in the face, killing him. First idiot, who had a CCW permit, claims "self defense", but self defense requires a good-faith belief of immminent serious bodily harm or death AND "clean hands", meaning that you cannot have provoked your alleged attacker or otherwise contributed to the affray.

As it stands now, first idiot, a 69 year old man name Martin Zale, is facing murder charges, and the second idiot, 43 year old Derek Flemming...well he's dead and his family is out doing sob stories about how his daughter will have to grow up without a father now as they beat the drum for a Gofundme account to raise money for his funeral or a party or whatever. But I won't be contributing, because Derek Flemming wasn't a victim here. He was a wanna-be tough guy who decided to run up on some old man that he didn't know in a fit of rage and it was just his dumb luck that the old man that he ran up on had a gun and an impulse-control problem of his own. Flemming, in his fit of ego-driven anger, pretty much killed himself and it's as much his fault that his daughter has to celebrate her birthday without him there as it is Zale's. There were no winners here, only two losers, and the only real victims are Flemming's children and the vast majority of law-abiding gun owners who are now being tarred with the dirty brush in the media even though they know better than to engage in road rage incidents or whip their pistols out to get them out of trouble that their own poor judgement got them into. Zale knew or should have known better at his age, especially after taking the required coursework for a Michigan CCW that includes a lecture on self-defense and the law, and Flemming was also old enough to know better than to jump out of a car and challenge perfect strangers to a fight.

And I know that all of you reading this, many of you CCW holders yourselves, are mature enough to avoid getting into situations like this, so pass this lesson along to anyone else you know who might be considering a CCW. Let them know that one bit of bad judgement combined with a firearm concelaed or openly carried can and will destroy one or several lives. But then again, I'm pretty much preaching to the choir as, despite isolated incidents like the one above, people with concealed weapons permits are more law-abiding and much less likely to be arrested for violent or nonviolent crimes than the general population as a whole.