Local news reports
An armed man entered the store and pointed a gun at Jon Alexander. But the clerk, a 30-year veteran of the military, quickly pushed the robber’s gun away and drew his own — placing the gun at the robber’s mouth.
Well, I guess you could call that pointing a gun at the store clerk, but it really looked more like a slow-motion attempt at intimidation. That has to be one of the poorest excuses for an attempted armed robbery in history.
Nevertheless, the hero acted brilliantly. Kudos to Jon Alexander for not shooting the bumbling would-be thief.
But, what if the store clerk had shot him? What would the pro-gun crowd say about that? Clearly they would have called it a good shoot and "good riddance to bad rubbish." That's their typical response, which given this video is shown for the barbaric, unthinking, stupidity it is.
However, leaving the hypothetical scenarios aside, I unequivocally award a legitimate DGU to Jon Akexander, veteran of foreign wars and proud gun owner.
What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.
Mike,
ReplyDeleteBy shoving the gun away and pointing his own, the store clerk took a chance that the robber could do the same maneuver back to him. It was a calculated risk, and the clerk decided to take it.
Had he shot the robber, yes, our response would be that it was appropriate. The robber had used lethal force, pointing a gun at him, and the clerk would have been within his rights, and within the law, to respond with lethal force. Had he pulled the trigger, we wouldn't have second guessed him like you would because we would have understood that it was impossible to say, with 100% certainty, that this gamble--holding the robber at gunpoint--would work out.
You demand a level of prescience that is impossible under non-stressful circumstances--much less when a person has a gun pointed in their face.
As for your comment that we would say "good riddence," I won't argue that many of us would say that, but it is for completely different reasons than you think.
You think that we would say this because we have no empathy, have no conception of the tragedy of the death of even a criminal, and that we just want to see criminals die. This is not the case.
Instead, our feeling is that when a person wrongfully threatens or attempts to use lethal force on another by pointing a gun at them, that person has forfeited his right to complain if the same force he has threatened is used in defense against him.
This is not a completely foreign concept to you. During the debates over the Zimmerman trial, you and others repeatedly expressed opinions that Zimmerman had started the fight, and thus had no right to complain about getting his ass handed to him.
So you are able to grasp this concept and accept it when small amounts of force are met proportionally. All we are talking about is meeting lethal force proportionally. We acknowledge the tragedy of the death of the criminal, but we would far rather see the criminal die than the victim who the criminal has indicated a willingness to kill.
This outcome is the happiest because it allows the criminal to change his ways, but in the heat of the moment, this happy outcome cannot and does not always happen. In such a situation, the guilt for the criminal's blood lies on his own head and hands because he's the one who started using lethal force to try to gain property.
Tennessean: "So you are able to grasp this concept and accept it when small amounts of force are met proportionally."
DeleteMike took it further than that. He wasn’t just arguing proportional force in the Zimmerman case- he was arguing that an escalation of force was appropriate. A question that could be construed as aggressive (“what are you doing here?”) can be met with a physical beat down.
T, what parallel universe are you living in, man.
Delete"Zimmerman had started the fight, and thus had no right to complain about getting his ass handed to him."
Zimmerman won the fight.
"you and others repeatedly expressed opinions that Zimmerman had started the fight"
DeleteYOU kept insisting Martin started the fight and attacked Zimmerman; having no evidence to prove that.
Mikeb, he was quoting your position--namely that Zimmerman should have accepted a beating.
DeleteTS,
DeleteI know, but I was skipping that part to try to get the point across--the idea that, regardless of his understanding of what constitutes starting a fight, once you start one, you can't complain if it goes against you.
Obviously this point was grasped since he deflected immediately.
Mike,
DeleteYou know exactly what I meant. Before he used his gun, Zimmerman was getting the worst end of the fight, and according to you and your allies, this was fine and in no way justified his use of his firearm.
Your deflection shows that you understood what I was saying and didn't like that it hit so close to home, so you played dumb and deflected.
Jim,
DeletePlease stay on topic. We're not arguing over who did what to whom here.
Mike,
See--Greg understood what you pretend not to.
Of course I knew what you meant but I won't let it pass when you phrase things in a way that dishonestly supports your argument. GZ may have been losing the fight but in the end TM lost it, big time.
DeleteMy point, which perhaps you were pretending not to get, is that today's video shows that disproportionate force is not always necessary to stop an attack.
If you were the store clerk, what would have happened?
Mike,
DeleteOnce you point a gun at a person, you are threatening to use lethal force. The law treats that the same as using lethal force, so shooting the robber here would not have been the use of disproportional force.
As for the TM, GZ thing, how was I being dishonest in talking about your position on TM's use of force? I wasn't saying anything about GZ's use of his gun--I was talking about the fight up to that point and the fact that it showed that you did believe that it was fine to use force to meet force so long as the force used is only proportional to the force it is countering.
The problem I see, again, is that the robber isn't made to drop the gun, back up, and surrender. As long as that robber remains in control of his own gun, he remains a threat.
DeleteYou guys keep saying "pointing a gun at someone." Did you see the robber do that? I didn't. I saw what looked like a slow motion attempt to bring the gun up, which was interrupted by the quickness of the store clerk. It was little more than a brandishing. The would-be robber looked so loaded on oxy that he could hardly function. Let's keep that in mind as we crown Mr. Alexander the gun-owner hero of the day. What he did was like taking candy from a baby.
DeleteNevertheless, the would-be robber remained in control of his weapon. This raises a question:
DeleteYou object to unfit people--defined by you, naturally--having firearms, but you don't seem too concerned that this obviously unfit person was left in possession of one. Why is that?
It looked like he was used to not having to hurry. Surprise, surprise. As for whether it was a good shoot, would it have been cleared as a good shoot if he had been drawing on a policeman?
ReplyDeleteThe news article says that the robber kept his gun at his side and left. I'd say that an armed robber going free is a bad result.
ReplyDeleteBut there are two other sad facts in this story. One is that the store's owner said she doesn't like the idea of her employees carrying guns, though she tolerated this man doing it. The story doesn't say that she's learned her lesson.
The other problem here is that we have a thirty-year veteran of the military who ends up with a job as a night clerk in a liquor store. Now that may be what he wanted to do, but I find that hard to believe. It indicates to me that we're not doing nearly enough for our veterans.
"Bad result," huh? You'd rather that he was dead? That's why reasonable people, even some gun owners, think you're a dangerous man. Of course, you could be just all talk like the 3%ers who insist that they'll shoot it out before being disarmed. In a sticky situation you might just shit your pants and become paralyzed with fear. We don't know, do we?
DeleteYou're free to be as insulting as you wish. That's because you can't argue with the logic here.
DeleteOf course it was a bad result. the perp is still free to attack others. A good result would have been him being held for the police so he could be charged.
DeleteMikeB: “But, what if the store clerk had shot him?”
ReplyDeleteYou seem to like to consider the criminal as a static entity, and that the difference between deadly DGU cases and ones like this, is how the CCW person responds. The bigger variable is how the criminal responds to their attack being met with a gun. This guy lowered his gun and backed away. It was that action that deserves the credit for him not getting shot.
Wrong. Whether or not the bad guy gets shot and killed depends entirely on the good guy with a gun. In this scenario, you guys who comment here would have all killed the bad guy, or at least that's what you say. The way the thing actually went down proves that you guys would have done an unnecessary killing.
DeleteUnnecessary? Someone who pulls a gun on a store clerk is damned lucky if he doesn't get shot. The thug didn't disarm. He didn't surrender. That means he remained a threat.
DeleteWell done, sir. You just proved what commentators here *would have* done in a scenario that didn't happen to them. I didn't think it could be done, but you've managed to prove what can not be proven with that logic.
DeleteWe say we would have killed him? Where did you get that from my post? I merely said I wouldn't second guess the guy if he fired because it would be impossible to know that this would have been the outcome.
DeleteIn the situation, I can't realistically say whether I'd have taken the gambit this clerk took or not. I don't know what body language I would have noticed or how clearly I would have been thinking with all of the adrenaline flowing.
"The way the thing actually went down proves that you guys would have done an unnecessary killing."
DeleteMike, suggesting that just because it worked for this guy this time is like saying that because the bookkeeper that was able to talk the shooter in that Georgia school into stopping means that should be the new standard. It worked for him that time, good on him.
As I said before, what do you think the normal response would be from a police officer if you draw a gun on him from arms length and you're a bit slow? And when he does shoot you, do you think that showing him this video will convince him that it was an unnecessary shooting? Not likely.
The criminal in this case initiated this encounter with the threat of deadly force. And he likely did it with some confidence that the victim would be unarmed. The good guy would have been justified in shooting, just as would the police officer.
You are correct in that whether the bad guy gets shot depends entirely on the good guy. But in this case, the bad guy was very lucky that the good guy decided on an alternative.
“From what I have known of Jon, that handgun is kind of a part of him, like my handbag is to me,” she said. Knowing his background, the Dawsons agreed to let him carry the gun on the job."
Quit beating around the bush, what would you have done if you were the store clerk, TS, Tennessean, ss?
DeleteLike I said before: I can't realistically say. Anything we tell you is a guess.
DeleteI would have guessed that if my alarm ever went off, I'd grab the shotgun by the bed, rack in a shell, and start yelling. Then, one night, an alarm malfunctioned and went off. I woke up, grabbed the gun, and sat there pointing it at the stairs to the lower level where the alarm was going off. At that point, I found that my mouth was too dry to trust my voice to yell any warnings for several LONG seconds until I was already clearing the apartment. Thankfully, it was a false alarm.
You don't know what your reaction is going to be until you find yourself in the situation. The one thing that you can be sure of, though, is that you're not going to be making the calm decisions and observations you're making as you sit at your desk watching this video and pontificating about how easy it is to tell that this robber wouldn't try to turn the tables back on the clerk.
As Tennessean pointed out, making claims of “I would have…” is all blustering. But if you want some kind of answer out of me, I’ll tell you that I would NOT have done what this store clerk did. It would have been more like: shit my pants, hand over all my cash, pray he doesn’t hurt me. Remember, I live in California.
DeleteTS, I didn't know you live in CA, or maybe I did and forgot.
DeleteWas your comment serious about handing over the cash?
Missed the whole California state flag thing, eh?
DeleteYes, I was serious. Sticking my finger in the robber's mouth would most assuredly not worked as well as what the clerk did.
DeleteGreg, well... a slightly modified California state flag. There's no bear arms around here.
DeleteExactly.
DeleteWhat "California state flag thing?"
DeleteThe old state flag for a profile picture thing.
Deletehttp://www.50states.com/flag/caflag.htm#.UiwxTsu9KK0
Are you serious, Mikeb? I try to give you credit for knowing something, but every time, you prove me wrong.
DeleteGreg, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about but it's comments like that that are just begging for an expansion of the comment deletion policy. I'm really sick of your and Tennessean's useless personal attacks.
DeleteTS's picture is the California state flag--minus the bear's front paws.
DeleteLMFAO!
DeleteI don't think I've laughed that hard since we were watching Crocodile Hunter back in college and a girl asked "Does he have an accent?"
MikeB: “SWAT guys should chamber a round right before going in. Everybody else should stop pretending to be Clint Eastwood and keep the chamber empty. The one second it takes to rack the slide will probably never make the difference between life and death and will bring the chances of an ND down to nearly zero.”
ReplyDeleteMike, this video is a good example. Did the store clerk have the time or a free hand to rack the slide?
You're right. But how many times does the inability to rack the slide before doing your DGU makes the difference, compared to how many times having a round in the chamber results in an accident.
DeleteI'd say a very strong majority of DGUs outside the home are like this one. One can only draw their gun when a deadly threat is immediate. You don't want people drawing their gun in public and racking the slide on code orange, do you?
DeleteGiven the tiny number of accidents, I keep a round in the chamber of my carry gun.
DeleteTS, you have a good point. I'm becoming convinced that all Glock owners are irresponsible and should immediately switch to 1911s.
DeleteAnd why pray tell are Glock owners irresponsible? Because the gun doesn't have an external safety?
DeleteThat's not an issue if one takes the proper precautions--following the 4 rules and having a holster that properly covers and protects the trigger.
The same precautions apply to the 1911--especially since the external safety is no guarantee--it can be turned off by body movement, and its trigger pull is shorter and crisper than a Glock's.
Jeff Cooper is rolling in his grave...
DeleteYou're talking about Police departments too, right Mike?
DeleteI think we're seeing Mikeb's position evolving again. Watch for a proposed ban on Glocks.
DeleteGreg, I don't think I'll need to call for banning all Glocks. What T. said makes sense. Safety rules work for Glocks too.
DeleteIf you had ever owned a retail store, you would understand the reluctance of owners to allow their employees to carry. Again, you don't understand, but don't let that get in the way of your usual talking points.
ReplyDeleteI care more about my own life than about the property of my employer.
DeleteThanks for that off topic remark out of left field.
DeleteI know. Your life is the ONLY life you care about. Typical NRA position.
DeleteJim, are you capable of addressing what I actually said instead of what you wish I said?
DeleteT., what the fuck are you talking about?
Delete"Thanks for that off topic remark out of left field."
Are you attacking Jim for anything he says, even to the point of making no sense? You're pushing the evolution of my commenting policy, I swear. I ask again, stick to the discussion and stop with the fucking personal attacks and gotcha attempts, especially the ones that make no sense.
Personal attack? There was nothing personal about it--my comment was because you had raised the topic of whether it would have been appropriate for the guy to shoot the robber or just try to hold him at gunpoint as happened. The rest of us were discussing the matter on those terms when Jim tossed in his comment about stores wanting employees to not carry guns.
DeleteI thought he was being contentious about an off topic issue, hence the comment.
Jim's comment is out of left field, given the situation we're discussing here.
DeleteI don't find his comment off topic or our of left field at all. It's a legitimate tangent of the comment thread. But you guys have Jim down as the enemy and anything he says you attack, even with banalities like it being off topic. Why don't you - Greg and Tennessean - grow the fuck up and just stick with the discussion. You guys, as I've said too many times already, spend half your comments on bullshit attacks of the other commenters or myself rather than contributing to the discussion.
DeletePart of the post mentioned the owner was reluctant to allow the employee to carry while working. Seems a relevant comment to state most employers don't allow employees to carry, not, as NRA Greg states that employers are concerned about their property, but because they fear liability that could cause much greater loss, than just a few products, or money stolen.
ReplyDeleteI am a target now, because I make to much sense, and of course I carry, which makes these NRA dudes look LOONEY. They are.
Jim,
DeleteI saw that part of the article and knew that was what you were referring to. I said it was off topic because it wasn't the topic Mike had put forth for discussion and that the rest of us were discussing--it was a tangent topic from the source story.
Also, you came in with a confrontational tone that assumed that you knew everyone's position on the issue of allowing employees to carry. It was this tone, dripping with indignance as if made in response to something we said, that really made it feel like it came out of left field.
As for the issue itself, I have no problem with employers authorizing employees to carry. I may not like it if employers forbid it, but I understand the reasons why, and part of my commitment to the idea of rights and private property is that just as they can allow weapons on their property, they can forbid the same.
You say NRA as though that's a bad thing, but do tell: Under what circumstances do you carry?
DeleteI do consider the NRA a bad thing. They don't push gun safety, or instruct when is best to use deadly force, They only push guns.
ReplyDeleteWhere does the NRA sell guns? Said organization promotes gun rights. But they also have safety and skills programs--you probably already knew that.
DeleteBut now who's not answering questions. I asked when and where you carry.
Did I say sell? NO!
DeleteKeep those lies coming.
Oh, look, instead of answering a question, Gun-control Jim turns weasel.
DeleteOh look, instead of debating honestly, NRA Greg lies about what I said, then comes back to call me names. Typical NRA tactic. Childish and inexcusable for a professor.???
DeleteAnd where did I lie? You said the NRA pushes guns. I asked you where the NRA sells guns. Sell is a reasonable interpretation of push.
DeleteThis dishonesty of word definition from a professor! Read a dictionary.
DeleteTN, When you falsely accuse people of being liars and sock puppets, are arrogant and dismissive towards people, tell people to fuck off, it's clear you think that's the way to converse with people. Then act surprised when that same "tone" is used towards you, get incensed. Go cry to your mama.
ReplyDelete