By Major Van Harl USAF Ret
Wisconsin –-(Ammoland.com)- It was Friday afternoon rush hour traffic in Milwaukee.
I was headed east on I-94 going into the city. It was bumper-to-bumper traffic. I was crawling along in the middle lane of a three lane stretch of the highway.
I could not move forward, backward or to my left or right. I was just stuck in the annoyingly slow big city traffic.
From behind me, a car driver laid on his horn. He kept honking as if that would clear the frustrating traffic (to include me) and allow him to speed on down the road. Somehow he would then avoid the traffic snarl that all the rest of us drivers had to deal with, with as much rational patience as we could muster.
He just kept inching closer to my rear bumper and honking incessantly. I actually began to think there was something terribly wrong with my vehicle. Perhaps it was on fire and this driver, in position directly behind me, was frantically trying to warn me of the danger. But no, that was not the case.
Eventually the traffic opened up enough to allow the driver to come up along the right side of my vehicle. I looked over thinking he was going to be pointing at my car trying to warn me about the not yet (by me) understood danger manifesting itself in the operation of my vehicle.
What I got was the extremely harsh facial looks of a very angry man of color and the “finger.”
Now this was not the usual middle finger you receive that is meant to advise you to “f-off”. No this was the “I am going to shoot you” hand gesture. The driver had bent his lower three right hand fingers back into a fist. Extended his index finger in my direction and kept bending his thumb forward as if firing a handgun.
I had never had anyone do that to me before while driving in my vehicle. He continued to make the threatening gesture and demonstrating his anger by mouthing the words “I am going to shoot you,” (I presume.) If a handgun had materialized at that point, I was not going to be surprised. I am a retired cop and in the past have received drivers’ training in this area.
I had already in my mind factored a plan of action if a firearm appeared. I was going to sideswipe the angry black man’s car and do everything I could to interrupt his shot. I am old and have good auto insurance. Fixing the damage to the right side of my vehicle was going to be a lot easier than trying to survive multiple bullets penetrating the relative soft shell of my car. Bullets that would easily pass right through the vehicle and still have enough energy to enter my body.
This was all going quickly through my mind as the angry black man was mimicking shooting me with his loaded finger.
What about the average person who does not have the benefit of my years of training dealing with violence? The traffic was too chaotic to feasibly get his license plate number. If I had passengers, I would have had them pull out their cell phones to take a picture of the plate and then call the police.
Of course if I had a passenger, it would have most likely have been, my wife or daughter. That in itself would have raised the bar on how I was going to respond if the angry man had pulled a firearm. Protecting my family would have been paramount. I have no idea if this man was armed with a firearm.
Actually, I am glad I did not find out the hard way, but you need to look at the statistics of violent crime in Milwaukee. Only a handful of victims and perpetrators are not minorities. Overwhelmingly the shooters and the shot-to-death victims are black. I have been to the Milwaukee County jail on a Saturday night and seen the holding room full of newly arrested and processed prisoners sitting there waiting to be taken upstairs to a cell.
The first time I was there, I thought I was back in Mississippi and that is not meant to be a smart-ass comment. I may have seen one or two white faces in the entire crowd.
After I got home I started thinking that perhaps my angry black man was in such a hurry because he had other angry black men pursuing him on the highway. Then I watched the late news and saw that thirteen people were shot in Chicago because angry men of color were shooting at other angry men of color.
If you look at how few people are shot and killed in this country relative to our overall population, you will discover we do not have a major gun killing crime problem. We do have a minority killing with guns crime problem and most obviously, we have an angry black man out of control gun killing crime problem. In nine out of ten cases, they kill fellow blacks. [And you wonder why liberal comedians think the “Black NRA” should not own guns]
I know it’s not politically correct, but there are an awful lot of dead black kids in this nation, because “PC” means we are not allowed to “see”.
Sunday morning –Milwaukee newspaper— seven more black Americans shot—sadly nothing new.
Major Van Harl USAF Ret / vanharl@aol.com
About Major Van Harl USAF Ret.:Major Van E. Harl USAF Ret., a career Police Officer in the U.S. Air Force was born in Burlington, Iowa, USA, in 1955. He was the Deputy Chief of police at two Air Force Bases and the Commander of Law Enforcement Operations at another. He is a graduate of the U.S. Army Infantry School. A retired Colorado Ranger and currently is an Auxiliary Police Officer with the Cudahy PD in Milwaukee County, WI. His efforts now are directed at church campus safely and security training. He believes “evil hates organization.” vanharl@aol.com