Another Tragedy MADE IN USA

How many tragedies fit into one lesson?

While the public discourse around the ICE killing of Minnesota woman Renee Good has all the right ingredients for a hot stew of opinions—spicy camera angles, juicy legislation, and a good pinch of political finger-pointing—it is lacking a solid portion of clear-cut common sense. Something that isn’t mush. Something we can all agree on.

Believe you me, I am a devoted evangelist of nuance and context; but is there really a scenario in which an unarmed mom driving off in a car should end up with a bullet in her head and two in the chest? Seems like a textbook case of excessive force.

The only way to justify this away legally (not morally), is to claim that Good was endangering agent Ross’ or someone else’s life. Something quite impossible if you apply the laws of physics our universe is known for. Because momentum, velocity, stuff like that. You don’t kill someone standing—voluntarily—in front of your parked car just by driving off. Of course, reality has never stopped this White House administration from creating strange parallel worlds with otherworldly upside-down narratives: Renee Good was a dangerous domestic terrorist who intended to and succeeded in running over poor agent Ross who acted in self-defense and followed protocol.

the bogus claim of running over an ICE agent

Pathologically incapable of self-criticism, admissions of failure, or condemnation of even its most unhinged henchmen, the administration has to author this wild narrative, the same way it branded the January 6^th insurrectionists as “peaceful protesters.”  But these fables don’t fly if tethered to the abundant video footage. In fact—emphasis on fact—this one doesn’t even take off, if grounded by common sense:

• Which mother would drop off her kid at school and then uproot their entire life by running over a law enforcement officer, standing to gain absolutely nothing, and to lose absolutely everything?

• How incredibly talented at running people over would you need to be to do so with that kind of slow maneuvering and steering away from the person?

• How clumsy would an officer need to be to get run over in that fashion?

• How acrobatic would he need to be to take out and fire his gun several times while being run over?

• Doesn’t run-over imply being run over, as in a vehicle passing over your body, or at the very least knocking you off your feet? That never happened, from whatever angle you look at the footage.

This kind of wild west shooting is uniquely American, a completely evitable tragedy MADE IN USA.

It seems like Good made an unfortunate snap decision to drive off. But it is plain obvious that she was nowhere near killing a federal agent in the process.

There goes any justification for the use of lethal force. Neither agent Ross’, nor anybody else’s life was in danger. And if Agent Ross was indeed traumatized—as claimed by the administration—by a 2025 incident in which he was dragged along by a car, he could have avoided positioning himself in front of the car or moved aside easily once it started moving.

In fairness, probably Ross’ was a snap decision too. But if you are that snappy, you shouldn’t be allowed around guns, especially not in an official capacity.

Believing that Agent Ross is so clumsy and delusional that he actually thought his life was in danger at any point of this interaction with an unarmed mom—smiling into his cell phone cam and uttering the words "that's fine, dude. I'm not mad at you"—is a painful stretch of common sense. It is hardly the stuff of action movies or vivid associations triggered by the phrase “domestic terrorism.” What I can believe though, effortlessly and without twisting everything I know about life, people, and the laws of physics, is that Agent Ross—who was recorded saying “fucking bitch” after shooting Good—is a trigger-happy US law enforcement officer with a shoot-first-justify-later attitude. And that this is what really led to this tragedy.

How many tragedies fit into one single lesson?

No law enforcement agency outside the US would have handled such an innocent situation so brutally. This kind of wild west shooting is uniquely American, a completely evitable tragedy MADE IN USA. No other country has gun laws that crazy or a gun culture that insane, presaging one tragedy after another after another after another. Outside the US, private citizens don’t own guns, don’t need guns, don’t care about guns, and law enforcement officers’ first reflex is not to unload their clip at everything that moves. US gun laws contribute to a Hollywoodish gun-mania where discharging a weapon is normalized to an abnormal degree. To shoot an unarmed woman in a maneuvering car instead of just moving aside and shooting her tires or whatever (really, whatever, anything that avoids shooting someone in the face), is a terribly poor understanding and handling of the lethal responsibility that comes with a gun. That US gun culture is at the heart of many domestic tragedies is the commonest of senses.

without common sense, it is a senseless debate

Unfortunately, common sense is uncommon in public debates. While the White House is trying to frame Renee Good as a victim of her own actions rather than a gunshot victim, the NY Times is gathering camera angles and interviewing law professors in a noble effort to paint a more nuanced picture until all the evidence is in. But everybody applying our common lens—common sense—sees clearly what happened here: a woman was killed and a child orphaned over nothing. Over a traffic incident. If agent Ross had applied common sense, Renee Good would still be alive. Outside the US, Renee Good would still be alive.