Smitty Two wrote:
I have my own opinions about things, but rarely participate in OT
stuff here, partly because I don't want to encourage OT threads, and
partly because I'm not all that interested in arguing with people who
are too stupid to see things my way. (you can imagine a smily
emoticon here if it makes you feel better.)

I'm with you. Emoticons are for inarticulate ****ers.


That said, here I am. When I think about the things that could have
gone wrong in that scenario, I think, I would not have pulled a gun.
It seems it was a simple robbery, and that no lives were directly in
jeopardy.

A responsibility of gun owners is to decide *in advance* how they will
respond to various hypothetical situations. I wonder whether the
so-called hero of the story did that. If not, why not? If so, why did
he think it was a good idea, in a store full of innocent people, to
play the hero role to save a few hundred dollars of the store's money?

If the robber had done anything other than comply with the directive
to put the weapon down, things could have gotten very ugly very
quickly, with no real assurance that the bad guy is the one, or the
only one, who would have gotten perforated.

Again, I'm with you. Of the three choices: Do nothing, confront the squint,
or smoke the goblin, the guy picked the worst of the three.