The Gary Fadden incident is one of those American folk tales that sounds like it was generated by a gun-store campfire: road rage, a 17-mile chase, a 6’8” weapons salesman named Gary, the Ruger AC-556 made famous by The A-Team, and a jury that ultimately decided the machine-gun shooting was self-defense.
The Fadden case is not just weird because a machine gun was involved. It is weird because, legally speaking, the machine gun was not the weird part. Fadden was a licensed weapons salesman, the gun was legal for him to possess, and the jury apparently believed the part where a long chase ended with him cornered, threatened, and defending himself. It is a story about road rage, self-defense, American gun law, and the terrible discovery that even when the jury says you were right, the process can still grind your life into expensive dust.
Gary survived the road rage, then had to survive the justice system, which is less loud but much slower.