GA: Store Owner Proud of Armed Employee

Suspect in five crimes

In Georgia, on Sunday, 24 August, a criminal attempted to rob the Shell Food Mart at about 4 a.m.  It did not turn out as expected.   The clerk pulled out his own gun and chased the robber from the store.   The suspect (perhaps accidentally) fired his gun as he ran off.  From wjcl.com:

Surveillance video shows the suspect approach the counter, pull out a hand gun, and start waving it around. Patel then reaches under the counter and pulls out his own gun.

The suspect ran and Patel is seen on video chasing him out of the store. Patel said the suspect’s gun went off as he ran toward the self storage business next door. Patel said he’d do it again if he had to.

This sort of incident has been seen over and over again.   It is fairly common for crimes to be stopped by armed citizens.   What is seen less often is the attitude of the store owner:

 “I’m really proud,” said Shell Food Mart owner Bhinder Singh Dhiman. “Whatever he did I’d like if everybody started doing it that way, the robbery will be stopped, especially for convenience stores.”

Bhinder Singh is exactly correct.   The effect of disarming yourself so as not to present a threat to armed robbers only encourages more armed robbery.   It is why ransoms should not be paid to kidnappers.   It encourages more kidnapping.  On a national scale, Rudyard Kipling captured the essence of it in his poem,  Danegeld:

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray,
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:

   “We never pay any one Dane-geld,
   No matter how trifling the cost,
  For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
  And the nation that plays it is lost!”

  The robber in this story held up five stores that night, and got money from three of them.

©2014 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
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