It’s the Gunshine State — an argument at Publix or road rage on I-95 could get you killed | Editorial

Customers yelling at store attendants about masks. Protesters threatening school officials over pandemic restrictions. A spike in unruly passengers prompting an airline to ask the federal government to create a no-fly list.

And don’t even mention the vitriol on social media.

We’re a society on edge.

In a state that preaches residents should be armed to the teeth, shoot first and ask questions later, anger can be easily explode into violence — and death. The weekend shooting of a man in a Coral Gables Publix lottery line makes that clear.

Police said two men were seen on surveillance footage arguing, and the confrontation escalated with one of them getting shot in the chest. Franklyn Pineyro died in the hospital. Osmel Lugo-Gutierrez, who, the Herald reported, admitted to police that Pineyro was unarmed, was charged with second-degree murder on Monday.

Another rage-fueled incident in Miami-Dade County last summer made national news after footage was recently released of a man who opened fire while driving on Interstate 95 in North Miami. The incident reportedly began when Eric Popper’s car changed lanes and cut off another driver going south near Northwest 151st Street. The other driver beeped and threw a water bottle, the Herald reported, and tailgated Popper for a short time, making hand gestures out of his driver’s window. In the video, Popper waits until the other driver passes him and, with a gun taken out of the center console, aims and fires through the right front passenger door and windshield. He shot 11 rounds. Luckily, no one was hurt.

Common encounters

Popper, who’s facing felony charges, told Local 10 News that he believed the water bottle hitting his car was gunfire and that “I was in fear of my life 1,000 percent.”

In Lugo-Gutierrez’s case, his lawyer declined to comment and said, “We’re still conducting our investigation,” the Herald reported.

Both men, of course, should be presumed innocent. We will leave it to the court system to determine their culpability. But we should ask why these common — albeit contentious — encounters ended with someone dead and two people potentially facing prison time.

How do we explain a seemingly “regular” person shooting someone in line at a Publix? Or firing 11 rounds at a moving car on an interstate? These weren’t acts committed by, say, armed robbers.

Is it a matter of bad temper? Self-defense? Are there details about the cases not yet disclosed that will help us better comprehend them? Or is this the result of a culture that teaches citizens to think of their fellow citizens as potential threats to be neutralized with the exercise of our Second Amendment rights? A pressure cooker where tensions — already heightened by a disruptive pandemic that has divided us — come to fruition through the barrel of a gun?

Culture of violence

We might never know what was truly going through the minds of these two men. But we know the steps Florida has taken to live up to its reputation as the Gunshine State.

Florida was one of the first states to pass a so-called Stand Your Ground law in 2005 that eliminated citizens’ duty to retreat before using deadly force to counter a threat if they “reasonably believe” their lives are threatened. In 2017, the Legislature made it easier for defendants to successfully claim protection under the law by shifting the burden of proof in pre-trial hearings to prosecutors, rather than defendants, to prove if force was used lawfully. Gov. Ron DeSantis floated the idea of expanding the law even further when he proposed an “anti-riot” law in the wake of nationwide protests for racial justice, some of which turned violent, in the summer of 2020. Luckily that didn’t make it into the law the Legislature passed last year.

It’s unclear whether Lugo-Gutierrez or Popper will seek immunity under the law, but Stand Your Ground is more than just a legal matter. After all, no one engages in a legal analysis of state statute before they pull the trigger. Stand Your Ground, coupled with the state’s lax regulations on guns and background checks is an attitude. It’s the message that anything goes in your exercise of your constitutional rights, whether it be vigilantism or recklessness.

Once you consider that, ending an argument at a grocery store with a bang, sadly, doesn’t feel out of the ordinary.

This story was originally published February 9, 2022 at 4:27 PM.