"Just give them the money..."

[ELB]

In discussions of robberies and how to react to them, the argument "if all they want is money (or some other material object), just give it to them, it's not worth shooting someone over property..." comes up.

The rub is, from my point of view, that one cannot tell if all the robber wants is your money until a) he leaves, or b) he tries to kill/maim/rape/etc you.

One data point I have in mind is when an assistant DA of Bexar County showed our CHL class a video of a San Antonio convenience store robbery where the clerk obligingly raised his hands and was shot and killed for his trouble. He told us the number of robberies in SA for the previous year -- I don't recall the exact number, but it was a big one, and most robberies went unsolved.

Anyway, I ran across another data point that makes me skeptical that "just giving them the money" is a viable strategy:

Go to:
http://www.nbc5i.com/index.html
then you have to click on a link that starts "KFC Employee Fights for Life..." which will take you to a slide show of a security camera film. (It takes forever to load if you are on dial up like me.)

Key phrases that caught my eye...

- After hitting the employee over the head, the gunman got impatient.

(As the employee was trying to open the safe:)
- "You've got one more spin, then I'll shoot you, right now."

- With the gun pressed against the employee's head, the masked man pulled the trigger, police say.

You can go to the link to find out the rest of the story (and there twist to the story that I didn't include above...).

elb

[Mithras61]

Sadly, we cannot depend on them having any respect for life when they do not have respect for us or our property. The fact is that increasingly the BGs kill even when you comply with their demands.

IMHO, anyone who is willing to pull a gun to rob is willing to kill to help conceal his identity, and I will have to handle any situation that involves someone like this as a life or death situation (statistically speaking, and under Texas law, it is).

[mr surveyor]

in the late 60's, during the early years of the "NOW gang", Equal Rights Amendment, and other progressive(?) movements, women were being told by so-called experts on the subject that if they were in a position of being a rape victim to just lay back, don't fight, stay calm....

That was during my teenage "formative years", and was at the same time I first started to wonder who was really in charge of controlling the direction for societal changes. My faith in those that were supposed leaders of major "causes" was shaken at the same time I was discovering "causes". Now, after years of hindsight, I figure that most of these ideas originating in the 60's came from a combination of the huge popularity of "psycho-babble" during mid twentieth century and "know-it-all acedemia". Just my personal opinion (from observation) that those factors were in part responsible for the "give them what they want and they will go away and leave you alone" mentality. Bullys will never leave you alone as long as they are allowed to be bullys.

[phddan]

Dan

[RubenZ]

Exactly.


I remember that whole lay back and don't fight during a rape. What a bunch of crap.


Seriously we as a society have gotten so scared of not just the bad guys, but of the judicial system and we shouldn't.

[Rex B]

Didn't work out well for Clayton Williams, as I recall.