I recall watching this MOW when it was on originally, which may have been the only showing of it to a national audience. Even at my young age (IMDb calls this movie 1986; I seem to recall it was earlier), in my early teens, I distinctly recall thinking that people just don't act the way they were depicted in this movie.
The basic crux is this -- a grieving father never wants anyone else to lose a child to a gunman, so he pushes to have carry laws in his town liberalized so that all citizens may carry a gun. The idea is that armed citizens can fend off a criminal's attack.
Of course, what ends up happening is that every little verbal spat ends up in a shooting, and the town is in chaos. The POINT, as if no one can figure it out, is that guns turn otherwise rational people into mentally depraved, frothy murderous lunatics.
It was a silly display. Just because you CAN kill someone doesn't mean you'd try, no matter how flippant he's being about your fender-bender. Most people know the difference between a heated argument and lethal violence; even if they'd be inclined to throw a punch, they're not going to take it to the level of death.
Much to the producers' chagrin, of course, subsequent to the movie, many states liberalized their carry laws, and instead of this morass of carnage, crime in each of those states experienced an immediate, dramatic, and permanent drop in crime. The fender-bender shootings never materialized (with one notable exception of which I'm aware -- between two women. Draw your own conclusions). In fact, several municipalities throughout the country have gone the extra step of REQUIRING gun ownership, and they are among the most crime-free anywhere.
This movie was made as propaganda for an extremist political agenda, and nothing more. Thankfully, no one remembers it -- because that's all it's worth.
