I Wish They’d Just Tell The Truth

So I just read this Examiner Article on a Store in Tennessee that has decided to put up one of those binding “No Guns” signs. Go read the whole thing, and I if you’re in the area I strongly suggest you follow his lead in boycott and communicate your reasons. What I want to address is this bullshit:

Thank you for your letter concerning our concealed carry signs. We have chosen to ask both our employees and our patrons to leave their firearms at home when visiting or working in our stores to provide a safe environment for all. In the event of a robbery, our employees are instructed to comply with the robber’s demands…no life is worth what is in the register or what can be carried out off the floor.

First we talked about the core of this right here complying with a robber in no way means he’ll also comply on not hurting you. I agree nothing in your store IS worth dying for, frankly nothing in an Aston Martin dealership is worth it either…plus its insured. (More on that later)

But when somebody says “Give me X or I’ll Kill you” giving of X in no way guarantees your safety, any more than a “No Guns” Sign on your door will cause the guy to not come in with a gun. Though this stream of reasoning it does NOT make it a safer place because danger is functionally illiterate.

Now what it DOES do is make the store owner’s MONEY safer. My Father-in-law owned a Liquor store, and it was robbed at gun point several times. He’s a gun guy, he may have even had a gun in the store, but he was hiring the standard-issue people who were willing to work minimum wadges to run the register. Students, people looking for a second job, and people who were down-on-their luck, either through no fault of their own, or through bad life choices. I’m sure he had a few felons running the register who couldn’t handle a gun legally, as with people under 21 who couldn’t handle or carry a handgun. Furthermore he wasn’t interested in vetting their skills. I think we can all agree that a moderately competent shooter/situationally aware person is ALWAYS better off with a gun on them. But what about a totally INCOMPETENT person? Things can get worse.

And then there’s golden rule #1 of surviving a gun fight: Don’t get into a gunfight! Any time deadly force is introduced into a scenario there is a chance SOMEBODY will be hurt or injured. This rule applies evenly to both the attacker AND the defender.

The employees are instructed to comply with the robbers so that if they DO defend themselves and the store, they can be terminated, and not held liable for any of the fallout, be it injuries, bereavement, or a suit on behalf of the scumbag who started the damn fight.

But let’s go a little deeper in that money thing. My wife and I grew up in the same town, and we lived maybe 3-5 miles apart, and she had a convenience store/Gas station on the corner by her house. She once told me it was robbed about a dozen times while she was living there. I was unaware of this mostly because it had never come up in conversation, and the news didn’t see fit to cover it. Now that I think about it, the only convenience store robberies I’d heard of on the news was one where the clerk was killed during the robbery…and I know of two of those.

Convenience stores get robbed, its what happens to them. Why? Well because the Clerks are ordered to comply with the robber if its a national chain. I haven’t looked at the numbers, but I suspect the chain stores are most often robbed, compared to the Mom-and-Pop operations, where a shotgun or a pistol is probably on property, and the robbery is probably going to be committed against somebody with a family interest in the store.

Furthermore the goods are insured. The 7-Eleven gets all the money in the till BACK after a robbery, thanks to their insurance. So no big deal, right? WRONG. First they have to PAY money to KEEP their money. Second every time their money gets stolen the rates go up…not just for that store but ALL stores.

Long-story short, robbers make an awful mess. They threaten and take lives, they make certain places more dangerous by mechanism of compliance, they cause insurance rates and the prices of goods and services to go up…and frankly their right assholes!

If you see a robber, do the world a favor and shoot the bastard. You’ll be doing everybody a favor!