Personal Defense Tip: Cars Are Deadly Weapons

It’s been a busy few days in the state of Minnesota. The Land of 10,000 Lakes made headlines recently for a rather impressive daycare fraud scandal, the state’s ultra-manly governor abandoned his reelection campaign, and now the North Star State in the news yet again after an ICE agent fired on an advancing vehicle.

Minnesota was already becoming a tough environment for anyone who loves freedom (they really love their gun control measures). We’re going to look at the shooting, not from the perspective of tossing out ill informed opinions. It’s too soon, and I prefer to wait 72 hours no matter what my inner voice is screaming. Instead, we’re going to look at it from a different perspective: Is a vehicle a deadly weapon? Feel free to fight me in the comments, which I may or may not bother reading.

Wait, What Happened?

You might be wondering what I’m even talking about. Here’s a breakdown courtesy of the New York Post:

In footage, ICE officers approach a plum-colored Honda Pilot and order the driver out of the vehicle after she blocked the path of their truck.

As one of the agents attempts to open the door, she quickly throws the car into reverse before trying to speed forward in the direction of another agent in her path.

That agent dodges the SUV, swings around the side and fires three shots before the car crashes into a white sedan parked nearby on the side of the street and comes to a stop.

Another video taken from a different angle appears to show the SUV strike the officer who fired the deadly shots as he leaps out of the path of the rapidly accelerating vehicle.

The driver is dead but her passenger and the passenger’s dog weren’t hurt.

Why was ICE there?

A large number of ICE agents were recently deployed to Minnesota. While Minnesota isn’t technically a “sanctuary state,” the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul aren’t cooperating with federal efforts to locate and deport illegals. The agents are currently there doing their jobs, meaning they’re stopping, detaining, and arresting illegal immigrants. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

The ‘But It Was Just a Car’ Crowd

No sooner did the ICE agent-involved shooting hit the news than all the “experts” and wildly opinionated social media warriors began running their mouths, opining on what they think happened. A common refrain was the idea that the deceased driver of the vehicle didn’t really pose a threat to the agent in front of her car at all. She was “barely moving” or “not even going anywhere,” they say. The general consensus among this crowd is that a vehicle isn’t really dangerous—at least not if it isn’t going 100mph. The ICE agent could have simply gotten out of the way and there’s no reality in which the vehicle and its driver posed a threat of any kind.

Here’s the thing about vehicles that we need to make clear right away: vehicles are unquestionably deadly weapons. In fact, vehicular homicide isn’t that unusual. Take three seconds and think about road rage, angry exes, and rather recent terrorist attacks involving vehicles. Cars, trucks, and vans have been used to deliberately take lives for as long as automobiles have existed. And now, those of certain political persuasions are trying to justify what the driver did in, shall we say, creative ways.

Guns, according to the average left-leaning social justice warrior, are bad. They’re black, they’re scary looking, and they’re well known to grow legs and embark on murder sprees (cue the requisite screeching from the anti-gun crowd).

Cars, however, aren’t scary at all. They’re vehicles we all use every day to get from point A to point B. They’re inanimate hunks of metal that some average dude in garage fixes if they break, so what’s so scary?

This is a question you should ask Springfield, Massachusetts resident Robert Crane. Oh wait you can’t, he’s dead. On January 6—that’s right, one day prior to the events in Minnesota—Crane was run over by his neighbor. Twice. The neighbor was driving his SUV and witnesses state Crane yelled, “You’re a coward” at him before the SUV was used to apparently prove otherwise. Crane is dead and the driver of the SUV is being held without bail. The charges? Murder and assault and battery with a deadly weapon.

 

Play the video in slow motion.

It says everything.

The ICE agent, in Minneapolis, defended himself against the attempted ramming of the late Renee Nicole Good.

The ones saying otherwise are GASLIGHTING you. pic.twitter.com/GGch5iFDhy

— Arnie Hernandez (@Arnie4USA) January 8, 2026

I like to point out that anything is a deadly weapon if it’s used properly. That isn’t so much a joke as a statement of reality. In Minnesota, one fact that’s easy to confirm, thanks to endless photos and videos, is that the driver was operating a Honda Pilot SUV. The weight of a Honda Pilot varies by year and drivetrain, but it comes in between 4000 and 4750 pounds. I’ll skip the math to spare you the headache, but a 4250 pound vehicle moving at a speed of 5mph delivers the potential crushing force of 21,754 pounds of force.

Remember, lots of factors come into play so the exact calculation can’t be done without more information. Obviously, this varies according to the part of the vehicle that contacts the victim’s body, but there’s really no good way to be hit by a car, especially one that’s accelerating.

Let’s break this down further with breaking bones. The human femur is one of the strongest bones in the body. The impact from an SUV like a Honda Pilot going 5 mph can snap a femur like a toothpick. Insert “the more you know” meme here.

If you claim vehicles can’t be weapons, you’re being willfully naïve. In fact vehicles make such stellar weapons that people looking to inflict terror and kill a lot of people at once like to use them to drive through markets, parades and other gatherings. Your vehicle is a weapon and so is the one being driven by the dude in the lane behind you.

Doubling Down on ‘Just a Car!’

You’re used to seeing vehicles in an innocuous way and so is just about everyone around you. We’ve become so used to cars that we now have self-driving and driverless vehicles (which hasn’t always worked out great in some circumstances). Cars do it all from transporting you to work, helping you get groceries, and dropping the kids off at school. We take naps in cars in parking lots, get laid (well, some of you do), and put all kinds of tender loving care into cleaning and customizing them. Without cars American and the world would be very different places.

There are pros and cons to that, of course. Because if you stop and think about it, it’s absolutely terrifying that we think it’s normal to speed around in big, heavy metal machines that can play a role our demise in horrific, painful ways. We do that while balancing a double bacon cheeseburger in one hand and consulting Google maps without a second thought.

Bottom line? Cars can and are used to kill. Vehicles are deadly weapons and it’s vitally important you remember that. The ICE agent standing in front of the one coming at him certainly knew that.

One day, your vehicle might be the only tool at hand to protect your own life, so it behooves you to know that it can be used that way. Does that mean vehicles should be used to drive at ICE agents for funzies? Of course not (and I’ll throw it out there, I absolutely stand with ICE generally, although I can’t yet make any statements about this specific incident).

Side note: Although we haven’t hit 72 hours and I won’t comment on yesterday’s incident beyond proclaiming that all y’all who think vehicles aren’t weapons are idiots. I will also say that doxxing or otherwise damning the agent in question is disgusting. I am looking at you, Alt National Park Service Facebook page. You’re not the only offender by any means, but it’s truly despicable the way you’ve shared his photo and encouraged people to act badly in response to these events. Shame on you.