She deserves exactly the same amount of blame as a rape victim does for wearing a low cut shirt walking home on a poorly lit street. None. Absolutely fucking zero. The only person in this situation who comes out of this thread looking worse than you is the fucking shooter.
You wrote: "So curious. If the OP kept the sexist trolling out of the post would it have found some agreement?
Say this was a dad with a MAGA hat who got into genitalia swinging contest with another man while with his kid? If the op in that case said most of the blame was on the shooter but a father should be aware that getting into a road rage altercation is taking on a risk of harm, not just to himself, that subjecting your child to that risk is reckless, and that he should keep his toxic masculinity in his pants at least while parenting? That he is not blameless for the tragic outcome.
FWIW and a bit of an aside, this is not blaming the victim. The victim is the kid, not the parent who engaged in aggressive maybe even bullying behaviors to an unknown person."
Ah you forgot this was the SDMB, where you’ll always find a white knight so the troll can catch that second wind. @DSeid looks like he wants that tile role today.
The person I can remember with the who swore the most was my grandmother – she’s where I LEARNED all those words. So now I find out my grandmother was “unwomanly”!
And just what does it mean to “dress inappropriately”? Like, wearing sneakers to a formal event? Not wearing a jacket when it’s cold outside? Please tell me! I don’t want to be “unwomanly”!
Guinastasia wrote:
The person I can remember with the who swore the most was my grandmother – she’s where I LEARNED all those words. So now I find out my grandmother was “unwomanly”!
And just what does it mean to “dress inappropriately”? Like, wearing sneakers to a formal event? Not wearing a jacket when it’s cold outside? Please tell me! I don’t want to be “unwomanly”!
I think the person driving the car was foolish to flip off another driver, period. It’s never a good move, no matter how frustrated you are. That said, I’d never say they deserve part of the blame, even if I do think it’s was poor choice that lead to extremely unexpected consequences.
The other driver’s reaction was so disproportionate to the trigger, that I struggle with assigning any blame to the parent. Sort of like a spouse killing their partner for cheating on them. Cheating is bad, but the reaction is so horrible that I can’t have them share the blame for the outcome.
And the parent is a victim too. They lost their child.
I think it’s dangerous in this day and age to flip off another driver, but that doesn’t give the flippee to take it as a license to harm or kill the flipper.
If anyone was wrong in this case it was the first driver who first cut off the other person and then used the the gun. I don’t assign blame to the flipper.
But I like that he’s woke enough to specify that this is a woman mom, recognizing that there are a small number of men moms these days.
My thought on this was well stated by IvoryTowerDenizen.
Just from the quote, I had assumed that she gave the guy the finger, and then he cursed back, and there was some distracted driving, and she got into a traffic accident. And I was thinking she had some blame in that. But then I read what the article was actually about. And the shooter’s response was so grossly disproportionate to her actions that I can’t see how she gets any blame at all. And her sex, politics, etc. are completely irrelevant. Shooting a rude driver wearing a maga hat because he gives you the finger (or his kid) is freaking murder, and “stranger was rude to me” doesn’t come close to provoking murder.
But I guess I see the potential for the crazy in the other car as less absurd a worry than most. Not completely unexpected. There are lots of violent insane people out there. Violent road rage events are not uncommon and the world is armed in America. My chest thumping with one of them out of a sense of bravado or bravada or just because I have had a bad day and a faceless rude person seems like the person to take it out on, is stupid enough under any circumstance. A non-zero risk. My doing it with a minor in the car? Irresponsible.
I’ll concede a parent losing a child makes them a secondary victim as well.
Someone endangered her child by driving aggressively and recklessly. All she did was to flick them off. She didn’t do it because she was having a bad day and wanted to take it out on someone, she did it because that specific someone put her and her child in danger.
Your need to blame this woman for her loss is inexplicable and disgusting.
So was mine! She was a very devout Catholic. But she was also a heavy smoker, and she had a vocabulary that would make a trucker blush. Go figure.
The woman has any blame? She gave some guy the finger. No, it’s not exactly the smartest idea, but what the fuck, that somehow puts the blame on her for her child’s death? She was pissed because someone cut her off in traffic. Oh my god.
And as for a “bad example”, if they’re like most kids, they’re probably already familiar with such language already. (Well, I was.)
Reading the article I have little idea what happened.
She was cut off. And then she was in front (?) of the car that cut her off flipping them the finger in the rear view mirror. Then a sociopath who was a passenger in that car behind her shot into her car with bullet going through the trunk and killing the child.
Something is missing. Nothing I can imagine that excuses murder but something.
I have no “need” to blame the woman. I also have no need to completely absolve her having had some responsibility for the tragic outcome. She was as described by @IvoryTowerDenizen: irresponsible … which was an abrogation of her responsibility as a parent.