WA:Store clerk pulled out his “big gun” and chased away would-be robbers

westseattleherald.com ^ | 24 November, 2013 | Detective Renee Wit

[marktwain]

The clerk recognized that the gun the suspects were using was a fake, so he reached down and brought his own gun up, telling the would be robbers that his gun was “bigger”. The suspects ran out of the store, and quickly left in their getaway car.

[marktwain]

People who are familiar with firearms can often detect a fake from a few feet away.

[TurboZamboni]

Reminds me of a scene from “Crocodile Dundee”.

[smokingfrog]

That orange cap on the end of the barrel was a dead giveaway.

[Kartographer]

"That orange cap on the end of the barrel was a dead giveaway."

Naa.... I think it was the compass in the stock that gave it away.

[ImNotLying]

Wrong Wrong Wrong. You don’t pull out a “big gun” and chase robbers away. You blow the sumbitches to smithereens and call the cops to bring the body bags. They will be back and this time all four robbers will have real guns. They ain’t gonna be dissed by a store clerk.

[Oatka]

That orange cap on the end of the barrel was a dead giveaway.

Fortunately, to their detriment, some idiots are using a black marking pen to eliminate the orange, giving the store owners a valid excuse to ventilate them.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

The clerks errors are twofold.

1) He did not kill the armed robber(s), thus giving them another chance to rob or kill innocent people.

2) “His gun was fake? It looked real to me, officer. I wouldn’t have shot him except he said he was robbing me, was pointing his gun at me in a menacing fashion, and I was in fear for my life.”

[Right Wing Assault]

Yes, this fellow did a disservice by not shooting these guys. I am sure some other store in the area is going to have these losers try to rob them. Let’s hope some old storekeeper doesn’t die of a heart attack due to the holdup.

If he didn’t want to kill them, he should have at least put a few holes in one or two of them so the cops could maybe get some info from him about the rest of the thugs.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

It’s far worse than potential heart attacks. This time, they used a fake gun and it didn’t work, so my assumption would be that next time they’ll get and use a real gun.

And police have long known that violent criminals tend to become more violent, the more crimes they commit. So down the road, assuming these robbers continue to rob, they are increasingly likely to wound and even kill not just managers and clerks, but innocent people at the scene as well.

It’s a big psychological jump for LEOs to get over their natural impulse to *not* shoot a child or woman aiming a gun at them. But a child or woman are just as capable of killing as are adult men.

And afterwards, there is the 15-year-old “child’s” mother, weeping and gnashing her teeth at the “unfairness” of her “child” being killed while robbing a store with a gun, threatening to murder others, and even shooting at people.

“He was a good boy. He shouldn’t have been killed.”

No, Ma’am, he was a vicious and calculating criminal, different from a rabid dog only that the dog is not rabid by choice. Your “child” had to make a whole bunch of choices, and every one of them he made was wrong and evil. He is dead by his own actions, and others are blameless in his death.