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Crooks in three different robbery attempts got more than they bargained for when they ran into gun-wielding citizens.
All three demonstrate what gun rights supporters call the “equalizing” power of firearms.
In the first incident, the owner of a jewelry store in Alcoa, Tennessee, shot one of two suspects attempting to rob his store, according to the news station WBIR.
The Alcoa Police Department said the two suspects entered the store, and while one asked about merchandise, another jumped behind the counter and ran into a back room. Both suspects tried to leave with some money, but the owner shot one of them with his handgun. Authorities arrived on the scene and arrested both suspects.
Bobby Love, general manager of Bullpen bar next door to the jewelry store, told the TV station the jewelry store owner uses a wheelchair and is a nice man.
“But, at the same time, he has a wife and kids that he wants to make it home to,” Love said.
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The store owner was unhurt, and one of the suspects was in stable condition at an area hospital.
Alcoa Police Department Detective Kris Sanders had a word of caution to any would-be robbers looking for an easy stick-up.
“Everybody has a gun permit nowadays,” Sanders told the station. “So, I don’t think it’s safe to assume you’re going to go into a business where there’s not a weapon.”
In another attempted robbery in another part of the country, 20-year-old Tajuan Boyd tried to hold up a pizza delivery driver in the Detroit suburb of Redford around 11 p.m. on a Monday night, according to KNXV-TV. But the driver produced his own handgun and opened fire, killing Boyd, who was pronounced dead at a Michigan hospital.
“He just said he was robbed,” witness James Wethers told KNXV-TV of the driver. “The guy put a gun up to his head and he had to shoot the guy. He was freaked out … he didn’t know what to do.”
Witnesses told the station they saw a possible accomplice speeding from the scene. Police detectives are still investigating.
In St. Petersburg, Florida, a robber who brought coffee to a gunfight is on the run from police.
According to the Tampa Tribune, a man tried to rob a 7-Eleven by throwing coffee on a clerk but fled when the clerk pulled out a handgun.
The would-be robber entered the store around 5:30 a.m. on Oct. 12, walking back to get a cup of coffee and then waiting for the clerk at the counter, police told the Tampa Tribune. After the clerk arrived, the man threw his coffee on the clerk and then tried to grab cash from the register. The man then pulled a knife on the clerk, who drew a handgun, causing the man to flee.
Gayle Trotter, a lawyer and senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum, gave testimony before a Senate committee earlier this year calling guns the “great equalizer” in violent encounters. She was referring to women who have guns, but the three robbers learned it can apply to anyone with a firearm.
As previously reported by Off The Grid News, a 2007 study published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy found that European countries that had higher legal gun ownership rates also had less violent crime.
“Gun ownership spread widely throughout societies consistently correlates with stable or declining murder rates,” the authors wrote. “Whether causative or not, the consistent international pattern is that more guns equal less murder and other violent crime. Even if one is inclined to think that gun availability is an important factor, the available international data cannot be squared with the mantra that more guns equal more death and fewer guns equal less death. Rather, if firearms availability does matter, the data consistently show that the way it matters is that more guns equal less violent crime.”
