Lori Falce: Rage is driving Americans crazy

When tragedies like the Highland Park parade shooting or the Uvalde school shooting or the Tree of Life synagogue shooting or (insert whichever shooting hit you hardest here) occur, there is always the division between people who want to do something about guns and people who say regulating guns won’t help.

It is an exhausting exercise in what seems like a deliberate effort to not find common ground. That was all the more frustrating when Highland Park came so soon on the heels of the first meaningful cooperation of the two sides in decades with the passage and signing of a new law that has flaws but puts us closer to where we were under Ronald Reagan.

Then there’s the argument that follows about mental health. That’s where we should focus our attention, one side shouts. That’s a straw man argument, the other responds. And all the while, people who desperately want mental health access for themselves or their loved ones still go without help.

What is even more exhausting is that the fighting does nothing to identify the biggest fuel behind the violent fire:

Rage. Regardless of the weapon, we are a society of powder kegs waiting to explode at the faintest spark.

Take the shooting of Charles G. Stipetich, 23, of Blawnox, an off-duty Oakdale police officer who might have been the person to respond to a call about a traffic incident that got out of hand. But on Sunday, Stipetich died at the intersection of road rage and a handgun, an incident that is becoming all too common.

Data from Everytown for Gun Safety shows an alarming increase in the number of people shot in connection with road rage. In 2021, it hit an all-time high of 728 overall incidents involving guns. Of those, more than 500 ended in someone being shot; 131 people of those people died. The shootings averaged 44 per month.

That’s one person every 16 hours and 24 minutes being shot because of the rage that boils over when cut off at an exit or passed on the highway. People — including children — dying because someone wanted to drive faster.

The guns are only part of the story there. In addition to shootings, aggressive driving puts people in danger in other ways. It causes crashes. It also can mean legal and financial problems.

PennDOT stresses there is a difference between aggressive driving — speeding, tailgating, failing to yield and generally treating driving like a competition — and road rage, its even more dangerous and criminal counterpart. The National Highway Transportation Administration identifies road rage as traffic-­related behavior likely to injure others.

What we do know is that, what starts with tension grows to anger and explodes into action. That isn’t just limited to what happens behind the wheel. You could explain the behavior of mass shooters the same way — and as more of them play out their dramas online, like the Highland Park shooter, that path is easy to follow.

Americans are angry — about politics and government — and it’s growing all the time. While people argue about guns and knives, about mental health and regulation, the rage grows, feeding a beast that is in no danger of starving.