Family Upset Brother Killed

Mercy. Things have truly gone mad. Thankfully, the employees and customers weren’t hurt.

I imagine they’d be equally outraged if the police shot him.

~Bella

Their sibling brought a gun to his 'work', so why is it wrong for the clerk to do the same?

I guess its a case of perspective. While I can see Americans are dismayed that there is a complaint he was shot, for me, as a non-American, I am dismayed that they had guns at all. To me that's the elephant in the room that's never noticed by Americans, but obvious to everyone else outside of America.

Zoii said:

I guess its a case of perspective. While I can see Americans are dismayed that there is a complaint he was shot, for me, as a non-American, I am dismayed that they had guns at all. To me that's the elephant in the room that's never noticed by Americans, but obvious to everyone else outside of America.

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I know it's tempting to think that everyone in America is in love with guns and wants them around all the time and all this, but that's really a myth. A large swath of American society can't stand guns, others are more ambivalent, and some do love them.

And many Americans (myself among them) are also distressed and saddened that anyone had guns in this situation to begin with, but also recognize the reality of life in America in many places. I don't know if they have dollar stores in Australia, but here they can be in rather rough areas (not always), and crime targeting them is not uncommon. At the "Family Dollar" store only a few blocks from my former home in Albquerque, NM (a medium sized city of about 560,000 people in the American southwest) there was a robbery and the clerk did not have a gun, while the robber did. In that case, the clerk was in a sick way rather lucky that he only got shot in the leg. Granted, if both men had had guns it could've escalated really quickly, and being shot in the leg is more than bad enough already, but it is not my place or anyone's to tell the clerk in that situation that it's a good thing they didn't have a gun for their own defense, because there was really nothing to stop the robber from shooting the clerk even more than he did other than the fact that a shot in the leg is non-fatal (usually), and so would lead to less jail time if he was caught (and I don't remember if he was or not). It is a tough situation either way, so we shouldn't 'arm-chair quarterback' it, as we say.

It would be great if nobody had guns in this or any situation. It would be great if nobody ever robbed anyone. It would be great if nobody died. That doesn't change the fact that none of these things are actually true in the case presented in the OP.

dzheremi said:

I know it's tempting to think that everyone in America is in love with guns and wants them around all the time and all this, but that's really a myth. A large swath of American society can't stand guns, others are more ambivalent, and some do love them.

And many Americans (myself among them) are also distressed and saddened that anyone had guns in this situation to begin with, but also recognize the reality of life in America in many places. I don't know if they have dollar stores in Australia, but here they can be in rather rough areas (not always), and crime targeting them is not uncommon. At the "Family Dollar" store only a few blocks from my former home in Albquerque, NM (a medium sized city of about 560,000 people in the American southwest) there was a robbery and the clerk did not have a gun, while the robber did. In that case, the clerk was in a sick way rather lucky that he only got shot in the leg. Granted, if both men had had guns it could've escalated really quickly, and being shot in the leg is more than bad enough already, but it is not my place or anyone's to tell the clerk in that situation that it's a good thing they didn't have a gun for their own defense, because there was really nothing to stop the robber from shooting the clerk even more than he did other than the fact that a shot in the leg is non-fatal (usually), and so would lead to less jail time if he was caught (and I don't remember if he was or not). It is a tough situation either way, so we shouldn't 'arm-chair quarterback' it, as we say.

It would be great if nobody had guns in this or any situation. It would be great if nobody ever robbed anyone. It would be great if nobody died. That doesn't change the fact that none of these things are actually true in the case presented in the OP.

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Heck. I am not sure what to say in response - It was quite depressing reading that..... a - this is how it is - nothing will change, and guns and violence are just how it is in America, and nothing can be done about it - nor does many want to do anything about it.

I guess I can only say - stay safe. It sounds like a very frightening place to live.

The bad guy is dead.

The good guy is alive.

Once the bad guy initiated the robbery, this is the best of all possible outcomes.

Zoii said:

Heck. I am not sure what to say in response - It was quite depressing reading that..... a - this is how it is - nothing will change, and guns and violence are just how it is in America, and nothing can be done about it - nor does many want to do anything about it.

I guess I can only say - stay safe. It sounds like a very frightening place to live.

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I'm not sure nothing will change. Gun laws are modifiable/adoptable, and it is generally fairly popular among a large number of American voters to suggest stricter gun laws (while others hate the idea; see again the reality that we run the gamut from very anti-gun people to very pro-gun people). I meant more to discuss the reality on the ground, because in some places having a gun for protection is a real concern, so it seems wrong to me to moralize about what other people do if I'm not in their situation myself. I believe that there is such a thing as justifiable homicide, even though it still remains murder in the end (in the most basic sense, the deliberate taking of another life).

And you're right, it is depressing and frightening. I don't know anyone who looks at gun crime statistics in the USA and says anything other than that. But there is nuance to this topic that is often overlooked. As in most societies, the statistics can't tell the whole story, and the chances of you being a victim of a violent crime involving a gun probably has a lot more to do with your specific zip code than with the laws concerning guns in your state, or at the federal level.

Sometimes guns save lives. The problem really is the heart and mind of the person who owns it. There are so many evil people, mentally ill, angry, etc. Some people kill with poison, some with knives, some with beating, some suffocation or strangulation, some use fire, others drowning. I live in a peaceful neighborhood in America.

A drunk driver caused my cousin's death when he was only sixteen.

dzheremi said:

I believe that there is such a thing as justifiable homicide, even though it still remains murder in the end (in the most basic sense, the deliberate taking of another life).

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Justifiable homicide is, by definition, NOT murder. Murder is the illegal killing of one person by another with malicious intent.

dzheremi said:

violent crime involving a gun probably has a lot more to do with your specific zip code

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Thats a very concerning point - When I heard those people speaking on the youtube clip I just thought - Really? People like that can legally own guns, and their right to do so is vigorously protected? Then its like - heck that zip code is dangerous - Can you not see the irony or lunacy of this?

His siblings said that the clerk shouldn't have brought a gun to work. I believe the clerk's family and friends are very glad the clerk did.

An honest clerk gets to enjoy life for another day while the criminal got his days accounted for.

Zoii said:

I am dismayed that they had guns at all. To me that's the elephant in the room that's never noticed by Americans, but obvious to everyone else outside of America.

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You should study why the American founding fathers put the second amendment into their constitution. Given their history of being oppressed by the British crown last time, it was meant to ensure that no future government can so easily steam roll over civilians. A fail-safe. If push come to shove at least the civilians can at least fight back.

To me the problem is never the guns to begin with. It is the people. In my country where guns are banned from civilians there are armed robberies and assassinations. Why? Because if there is a will there is a way. And criminals are not known to follow the law.

The UK has strict gun control laws but stabbing are abundant along with acid attacks. Given the facts should we now demand UK to ban knifes and acids?

Gun like knifes and acids are just inanimate objects. Can both be used for good or evil. It's not the object but the people.

The only thing I can agree is guns are deadlier and relatively easy to handle.

Darkhorse said:

Justifiable homicide is, by definition, NOT murder. Murder is the illegal killing of one person by another with malicious intent.

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Sorry. I didn't mean that in a legal sense. Thank you for the correction. It is not legally murder.

IceJad said:

The UK has strict gun control laws but stabbing are abundant along with acid attacks. Given the facts should we now demand UK to ban knifes and acids?

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hmmm...dont think Ive heard of any mass killings in the UK with a knife, or someone going to a school with a knife and killing a bunch of kids.

Ana the Ist said:

During an armed robbery...

Ohio clerk pulls out own gun and shoots armed robber dead

There's nothing truly remarkable about this incident...except the audacity of the family of the slain. His sister (?) literally acts like it's wrong to shoot someone who sticks a gun in your face and demands money. She has a really casual attitude towards armed robbers and a really antagonistic attitude towards people who defend themselves against armed robbers.

It makes one wonder how one's perspective becomes so backwards.

Thoughts?

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That’s one dangerous society you have there.

IceJad said:

Given the facts should we now demand UK to ban knifes and acids?

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That's exactly right - In my country, you are not allowed to carry them. Its common sense for goodness sake. Don't allow people to carry weapons or they will use them. Just because you do it in Malaysia, It's not sound advice to copy your country or that of the USA

Zoii said:

Thats a very concerning point - When I heard those people speaking on the youtube clip I just thought - Really? People like that can legally own guns, and their right to do so is vigorously protected? Then its like - heck that zip code is dangerous - Can you not see the irony or lunacy of this?

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How is it ironic that they live in a dangerous area? And I don't recall writing anything about the legality of the robber's gun ownership.

I don't know if you're under the impression that if we were to magically snap our fingers and get rid of all the guns, then people wouldn't commit violent crimes, but that's very much not the case. Generally speaking in the USA, the case made is that there already are so many guns that banning them would just guarantee that only people already involved in crime would have them (crime separate from the possession of the gun, in this scenario), and they would have many times more victims to perpetrate that crime upon, since now nobody who was law abiding would have sufficient ways to fight back. There is of course the question of whether or not guns don't actually act as a means of escalation in some instances (e.g., the Family Dollar robbery I mentioned in my other post), but in general criminals don't want to get shot to death any more than the rest of us do. Or so that is the thinking behind the "gun as deterrent" idea (which is not always true in reality, of course). Another argument in the gun control debate is that guns facilitate mass killings in a way that other weapons do not, which is undoubtedly true, but also not what was brought up in the OP, which is a single instance of gun crime.

Perhaps it would be much easier to have a gun-free society in a country like Australia rather than the USA, which has a much smaller population and no neighboring countries with which it shares a land border (obviously). But in the USA it is not presently feasible. Maybe in the future it could be, but a lot would have to change about our society for it to be so, and probably a lot of people would regret those changes. (A smaller population along the lines of Australia's would probably have to come about as a result of some kind of pandemic or something, since if it came about as a result of anything violent it obviously wouldn't get people to give up their guns.)

Darkhorse said:

Once the bad guy initiated the robbery, this is the best of all possible outcomes.

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A person’s death was the BEST outcome?

-checks to see if this is Christianforums-

Wow.

We're veering a bit off topic - the thread isn't asking a question on your views of gun rights and politics about it.

As for the article, it's a sad situation when anyone is killed because they make the wrong choice, but it's a risk you take when you rob someone - sometimes they will fight back. It reminds me of a story I read the other day where a man who raped a woman - and had previous charges of the same against other women - was attacked by the woman and lost...let's say, important pieces - and is now complaining about lifelong injury and repair and blah, blah. That's the risk he took to rape a woman that some are able to get the upper hand for a second and fight back.

The family can be sad that their brother is dead, and I sympathize - but they need to understand it is his actions that led to this. Perhaps in time they will.