> Deciding to shoot/not shoot is difficult.
The clerk is an idiot. He should have killed the gunman when he caught him off guard. He had no way of knowing the gunman would run. He should have opted for the safest option, i.e., a dead armed robber.
Exactly! In a situation such as he was in (gun pointed at him), you don’t pull your gun unless you are going to pull the trigger and KILL the person who is threatening you!
Absolutely! You are exactly on point when you say the clerk had no idea what the criminal might do. I consider that clerk damned luck to be alive. I wonder if he knows how close he probably came to being a dead clerk.
I guess it will sound cruel or cold or whatever to the gun-hating crowd for us to say the clerk should have fired without hesitation, but in that brief moment when two armed men are face to face the clerk made a mistake, a mistake that could have cost him his life.
Plus think about the two different messages sent to would-be robbers. Had he shot, he'd have probably been robbery-proof for five years. This way, he's probably MORE likely than the average store to get robbed, cause they know he doesn't want to shoot first.