Store owner shoots would be robber

[Shaul]

That just over the top.... they should get fined for that!

To be completely fair, I understand that one of the robbers now has a partial disability of an arm with a gun shot wound.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Yes he should have just handed over his money and died, like a good little subject of the system.

Thanks for the admission you have not at all been paying attention to what I said.
And, yes, I do think people are idiots if they don't cooperate during a robbery because **** the money, the robbers can have whatever they want so long as it gets them out. My life is more important than paper.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Are you just venting about the state of Ameristan,
or making an argument to advocate something?

I've been advocating that America needs to sober up and quit its gun problem. It needs a diet and exercise of healthy attitudes towards guns instead of touting how people live's being at risk and lost is a good thing so long as in the end the bad guy is shot dead by the good guy.
America can be made safer but it's attitudes that find violence as a primary means of conflict resolution and dumb *** macho dudes who won't budge on it, fuel the lobbyist arm of groups like the NRA, and what we live in today is far more wild and dangerous than the so-called "Wild West."

 

[idea]

Why not post the vast majority of stories about guns which involve the innocent getting killed.

This might be a story about an innocent person being shot - unless I missed it, was it shown he actually was a robbing the store?

 

[Shadow Wolf]

This might be a story about an innocent person being shot - unless I missed it, was it shown he actually was a robbing the store?

It seems so this time, but many times it's innocent people getting killed or people who don't have to die but died anyways at the hands of those who took the entirety of the law into their own hands.
When Hatred Collides With Texas' Stand Your Ground Law

It was the second week of Ramadan and Ziad Abu Naim was fasting. He was about to head to the mosque for Friday prayers when his wife, Lisa Aimone, decided she’d go with him.
...
The couple had driven only a block from their home on a residential street when they came to a four-way stop. They were turning left when a BMW X6 M with dealer plates and custom rims pulled into the intersection at the same time. The two nearly collided. Abu Naim paused to let the visibly angry driver pass. Instead, the man — a 43-year-old Houstonian named Robert Craig Klimek, who owns a security firm called Templar Security — made a right turn and pulled alongside Abu Naim’s Porsche SUV. Both men rolled down their windows. Aimone sat forward in her seat to catch a glimpse of the man in the other car, and that’s when she heard it: “Go back to Islam!” Abu Naim opened the door and stepped out of the car. Aimone kept her eyes on his back. Within a few seconds, she heard a single gunshot.

In late September, a Harris County grand jury declined to indict Klimek for murder. Klimek’s defense centered on Texas’ Stand Your Ground law, one of the most expansive in the nation.

Steller: In Arizona, if you get scared to death, you can kill the person scaring you

Then Mota, 21 at the time, saw the Grand Am pull forward through the light at Pusch View Lane, and thought maybe the driver was going to turn back and follow him. Mota turned and fled.

In Mota’s view, firing the shots was natural and instinctive, the reaction of a man who was scared and believed he was in imminent danger.

“It just scared me. I freaked out. I seen him bend down,” he told me by phone Thursday from his home in San Manuel.

But here’s the catch: He shot and killed a man, Joshua Switalski, 22, who never made any clear physical threat. Switalski yelled slurs, he gestured and he paused next to Mota in his car, but he didn’t say he’d kill Mota, he didn’t get out of his car, he didn’t pull a gun. He didn’t have a gun.

In Arizona, in 2014, that doesn’t matter. Feelings matter. Fears matter.

Facts don’t matter.

On March 26, a Pima County Superior Court jury acquitted Mota of all charges: first-degree felony murder, drive-by shooting and aggravated assault.

The prosecutor, deputy county attorney Bruce Chalk, and the defense attorney, Natasha Wrae, largely agree on why Mota was acquitted. Arizona’s 2006 “stand your ground” law makes it hard to convict a defendant with even a slightly credible claim of self-defense.

Even RAND (a conservative think tank) has realized these policies do not deter violence but only create it.
The Effects of Stand-Your-Ground Laws

How Stand-Your-Ground Laws Affect Gun Use Outcomes
May Increase

• Violent Crime

May Decrease
We found no qualifying studies showing that stand-your-ground laws decreased any of the eight outcomes we investigated.

 

[idea]

It seems so this time, but many times it's innocent people getting killed or people who don't have to die but died anyways at the hands of those who took the entirety of the law into their own hands.

It seems strange conservatives do not support everyone's right to a fair trial. I thought freedom was built on innocent until proven guilty.

 

[Revoltingest]

I've been advocating that America needs to sober up and quit its gun problem. It needs a diet and exercise of healthy attitudes towards guns instead of touting how people live's being at risk and lost is a good thing so long as in the end the bad guy is shot dead by the good guy.
America can be made safer but it's attitudes that find violence as a primary means of conflict resolution and dumb *** macho dudes who won't budge on it, fuel the lobbyist arm of groups like the NRA, and what we live in today is far more wild and dangerous than the so-called "Wild West."

OK.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

It seems strange conservatives do not support everyone's right to a fair trial. I thought freedom was built on innocent until proven guilty.

It seems strange they are ok with this level of gun violence and think it is acceptable to do nothing about except put more guns on the streets.

 

[Revoltingest]

It seems strange they are ok with this level of gun violence and think it is acceptable to do nothing about except put more guns on the streets.

While liberals want to disarm only the legal owners.
(I can play this game too.)

 

[Shadow Wolf]

While liberals want to disarm only the legal owners.
(I can play this game too.)

I'm not a liberal, so it's a game you play with yourself.

 

[Revoltingest]

I'm not a liberal, so it's a game you play with yourself.

You've played the game more than you know.

 

[Aštra’el]

This might be a story about an innocent person being shot - unless I missed it, was it shown he actually was a robbing the store?

^
I think we can agree that this criminal is not “innocent”.

And, yes, I do think people are idiots if they don't cooperate during a robbery because **** the money, the robbers can have whatever they want so long as it gets them out. My life is more important than paper.

This goes against my nature.

If someone points a gun at my head while committing an armed robbery, I can take their life the moment the opportunity presents itself. No emotion, no pity. No trial. They die, and the community is better for it.

Not everyone is so willing as you, to just bend over backwards, give up, and hope for the best. Give criminals what they want. No. Some people- many people- can and will stand up for themselves, and those they care about. They fight back. I commend them for it.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Quite. Hold-ups like this occur so regularly because of the ready availability of GUNS. And so the reaction of storekeepers is to arm themselves with GUNS. And so lots of people live in fear and get killed or seriously injured, by GUNS. Every few months, dozens of schoolkids get mown down by some nutter, with GUNS. The nation shrugs, and argues for more GUNS.

Other countries look at this and no longer even shake their heads and frown. Sympathy has run out. They just laugh.

I don't laugh, but...

When I was living in PNG I carried a knife, and if I had to move around after dark (only time I could access a phone to call home from office), my mate's trained attack dog would come with me, off leash.

In Australia I carry no defensive items, and it would be illegal to train a dog in the manner that dog was trained, have him off leash, etc.

But I feel infinitely safer here, despite the fact we have crime, and violence, etc.

Now, I'm the same person, and am basically a pacifist. But I made very different decisions on my personal safety/level of armament based on my environment.

Many posts I see from (mostly) Americans seem in response to their current environment, or in relation to documents written generations ago. I see less posts from gun lobbyists or pro guns folk about what they want fifty years to look like and how to get there. I was like that in PNG, since it wasn't my country and I wasn't staying longer than 2 years. But I wonder what impact it would have had if it WAS my country, and the cyclical violence was used as justification of armament by unregulated civilians.

Just my take from a distance.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

This goes against my nature.

My nature is not risking myself over such petty crap, especially and doubly so when it isn't even mine.

If someone points a gun at my head while committing an armed robbery, I can take their life the moment the opportunity presents itself. No emotion, no pity. No trial. They die, and the community is better for it.

I am so very sure.

Not everyone is so willing as you, to just bend over backwards, give up, and hope for the best. Give criminals what they want. No. Some people- many people- can and will stand up for themselves, and those they care about. They fight back. I commend them for it.

It's called priorities. I care about my own Self far more than I do about the paper in a cash register that's going to some wanker anyways. Just not worth it. If the owner wants the crap back, the owner can go after it.
But this does not mean I won't fight if the priorities are higher. Those higher priorities just tend to be much more meaningful and valuable, like close family members and very good friends. Those are things I'm more willing to actually risk my Self for. But if I was robbed when I worked at a gas station? I'll offer them some packs and cartons of smokes just to keep things smooth. And then just call the cops when its done because there was nowhere to actually run to where that place was located. So enhanced survivability during a robbery of something that does mean crap to me and the robber goes to jail anyways.
Priorities.

 

[Wildswanderer]

Thanks for the admission you have not at all been paying attention to what I said.
And, yes, I do think people are idiots if they don't cooperate during a robbery because **** the money, the robbers can have whatever they want so long as it gets them out. My life is more important than paper.

So be a sheep but don't expect others to think like you and give up their rights just because you are willing to.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

So be a sheep but don't expect others to think like you and give up their rights just because you are willing to.

Armed shopkeepers like the person you're proclaiming as a hero are the reason why criminals like the robber in this story arm themselves.

Both sides share responsibility for increasing the potential for violence and the risk to innocent bystanders.

 

[Revoltingest]

Armed shopkeepers like the person you're proclaiming as a hero are the reason why criminals like the robber in this story arm themselves.

Both sides share responsibility for increasing the potential for violence and the risk to innocent bystanders.

Are you suggesting that being unarmed, & fully
cooperating with robbers would improve things?

 

[Stevicus]

Are you suggesting that being unarmed, & fully
cooperating with robbers would improve things?

An improved society would be one where people would not become robbers in the first place.

 

[Revoltingest]

An improved society would be one where people would not become robbers in the first place.

No argument here.

But I wonder....
Why do the anti-gun rights types not admit that this
is a case of responsible gun use for self defense?
Instead, they take umbrage, & one even claims that
it makes things worse.

 

[Wildswanderer]

Armed shopkeepers like the person you're proclaiming as a hero are the reason why criminals like the robber in this story arm themselves.

Both sides share responsibility for increasing the potential for violence and the risk to innocent bystanders.

Nonsense... common sense has officially died.