R.Ph fired for legally carrying

If you don't work for yourself (and can therefore make your own rules regarding firearms), then the best thing you can do is to hand the junk over. It isn't yours, it isn't your money. No point in engaging in violence over something that isn't yours. Drawing your own gun isn't a magic end to the robbery and can easily be what takes the robber's own threat and turn it into action on his part. Not a worthwhile gamble for something that isn't yours.

Yeah, except that, statistically, you're more likely to come out unscathed if you resist with force, per Kleck.

Gary Kleck, Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, Walter de Gruyter, Inc., New York, 1997.
 
A local private pharmacist near me shot dead a robber.

Also, there is a legal literature on liability and it clearly indicates that companies are told they face more financial risk if an employee does something bad with a firearm (shoots an innocent, goes nuts) than paying off an employee or their family if they get hurt in a robbery. Despite, the claim that you can sue them for not allowing you to defend yourself - the majority of legal sources doesn't support that.
 
Yeah, except that, statistically, you're more likely to come out unscathed if you resist with force, per Kleck.

My only question is if Kleck was talking about ALL robberies (including street muggings); we're discussing a narrow slice of robbery (robberies of businesses). The only reason to shoot someone in this kind of crime is either a calculated attempt to eliminate a witness (graduating from robbery to murder is not done lightly) or just because the perp is a whacked out evil person (not unknown).
 
My suggestion...

Turn on tv, watch a crime channel for an hour or two.... After watching many fully cooperating store owners and employees get shot or stabbed (in this short period) for not resisting in any way then consider your decision to protect your life or become a victim...
 
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Yeah, except that, statistically, you're more likely to come out unscathed if you resist with force, per Kleck.

I seriously doubt it. People and businesses are robbed every day with no resistence and come out unscathed. The vast majority do not resist with force and are completely unharmed. According to the FBI from several years ago, about 87% of those that comply are unharmed. That leaves 13% that comply that still get harmed and those aren't great odds, I understand. So that would mean that resisting with force would have to result with people being unscathed more than 87% of the time. Given that so many people aren't armed and resist via physical contact with their aggressor, the likelihood for them getting harmed will be increased.
 
I seriously doubt it. People and businesses are robbed every day with no resistence and come out unscathed. The vast majority do not resist with force and are completely unharmed. According to the FBI from several years ago, about 87% of those that comply are unharmed. That leaves 13% that comply that still get harmed and those aren't great odds, I understand. So that would mean that resisting with force would have to result with people being unscathed more than 87% of the time. Given that so many people aren't armed and resist via physical contact with their aggressor, the likelihood for them getting harmed will be increased.

You could be right. The studies Kleck referenced* said otherwise. Do you have a study to quote, or are you just going to serve up some alphabet soup and expect me to take it at your word?

*Kleck references the following:

Burglaries:
  • PhilipJ. Cook, The Technology of Personal Violence, 14 CRIME &JUST.: ANN. REV. RES. 1, 57 (1991).

Robberies:
  • MICHAEL J. HINDELANG, CRIMINAL VICTIMIZATION IN EIGHT AMERICAN CITIES(1976);
  • Gary Kleck, Crime Control Through the Private Use of Armed Force, 35 Soc. PROBS. 1 (1988);
  • Gary Kleck & Miriam A. DeLone, Victim Resistance and Offender Weapon Effects in Robbery,9 J. QUANTITATIVE CRIMINOLOG5Y5 (1993);
  • Eduard A. Ziegenhagen & Dolores Rosnan, Victim Responses to Robbery and Crime Control Policy, 23 CRIMINOLOGY 675 (1985).
 
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GLENN E. MEYER wrote: Also, there is a legal literature on liability and it clearly indicates that companies are told they face more financial risk if an employee does something bad with a firearm (shoots an innocent, goes nuts) than paying off an employee or their family if they get hurt in a robbery.

That's what I said back in post 28, in a nutshell...Thanks, Glenn.
 
Yep, I went and looked it up after seeing so many posts that you could sue if you weren't allowed to carry. Stores, schools, etc. - just sue 'em.

Well, the legal lit had quite a few review articles stating what we said and lawyers said they wouldn't take the case on contingency as the financial rewards wouldn't be enough and they would probably lose.
 
You could be right. The studies Kleck referenced* said otherwise. Do you have a study to quote, or are you just going to serve up some alphabet soup and expect me to take it at your word?

Well it seems you served up a name first, Kleck, but with no data and no context. With that said, the FBI report was something I saw on a documentary several years ago and your questioning of it is valid. So I will offer instead BJS statistics for 2006, see Table 68, Personal Crimes of Violence. It is the Percent of victimizations in which victims took self-protective measures, by type of crime and victim-offender relationship. All categories showing injury and non-injury indicate the victim was injured more often than not injured. In short, fighting back comes with some very real risks of injury that do result.

If you look to Tables 72 and 73, however, you will see that such measure were perceived to have helped the situation by the vast majority of the time. Of course, if you think you are going to be killed and anything you do that keeps you from being killed and you survive means you think your situation was likely improved by the act, but still, despite being injured more often than not, people felt there was an improvement.
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/cvus06.pdf

Also see other years...
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/cvus07.pdf
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/cvus08.pdf
 
Maybe I'm not reading it right, but I don't see anything in that study that suggests you're more likely to be harmed if you resist with force.

Anyway, Kleck has the following to say about the National Crime Victimization Survey (NVCS) which you reference.

Equally important, those who take the NCVS-based estimates seriously have consistently ignored the most pronounced limitations of the NCVS for estimating DGU frequency. The NCVS is a non anonymous national survey conducted by a branch of the federal government, the U.S. Bureau of the Census. Interviewers identify themselves to Rs as federal government employees, even displaying, in face-to-face contacts, an identification card with a badge. Rs are told that the interviews are being conducted on behalf of the U.S. Department of justice, the law enforcement branch of the federal government. As a preliminary to asking questions about crime victimization experiences, interviewers establish the address, telephone number, and full names of all occupants, age twelve and over, in each household they contact.[25] In short, it is made very clear to Rs that they are, in effect, speaking to a law enforcement arm of the federal government, whose employees know exactly who the Rs and their family members are, where they live, and how they can be re contacted.

Even under the best of circumstances, reporting the use of a gun for self-protection would be an extremely sensitive and legally controversial matter for either of two reasons. As with other forms of forceful resistance, the defensive act itself, regardless of the characteristics of any weapon used, might constitute an unlawful assault or at least the R might believe that others, including either legal authorities or the researchers, could regard it that way. Resistance with a gun also involves additional elements of sensitivity. Because guns are legally regulated, a victim's possession of the weapon, either in general or at the time of the DGU, might itself be unlawful, either in fact or in the mind of a crime victim who used one. More likely, lay persons with a limited knowledge of the extremely complicated law of either self-defense or firearms regulation are unlikely to know for sure whether their defensive actions or their gun possession was lawful.

It is not hard for gun-using victims interviewed in the NCVS to withhold information about their use of a gun, especially since they are never directly asked whether they used a gun for self-protection. They are asked only general questions about whether they did anything to protect themselves.[26] In short, Rs are merely given the opportunity to volunteer the information that they have used a gun defensively. All it takes for an R to conceal a DGU is to simply refrain from mentioning it, i.e., to leave it out of what may be an otherwise accurate and complete account of the crime incident.

Further, Rs in the NCVS are not even asked the general self-protection question unless they already independently indicated that they had been a victim of a crime. This means that any DGUs associated with crimes the Rs did not want to talk about would remain hidden. It has been estimated that the NCVS may catch less than one-twelfth of spousal assaults and one-thirty-third of rapes,[27] thereby missing nearly all DGUs associated with such crimes.

In the context of a non anonymous survey conducted by the federal government, an R who reports a DGU may believe that he is placing himself in serious legal jeopardy. For example, consider the issue of the location of crimes. For all but a handful of gun owners with a permit to carry a weapon in public places (under 4% of the adult population even in states like Florida, where carry permits are relatively easy to get)[28], the mere possession of a gun in a place other than their home, place of business, or in some states, their vehicle, is a crime, often a felony. In at least ten states, it is punishable by a punitively mandatory minimum prison sentence.[29] Yet, 88% of the violent crimes which Rs reported to NCVS interviewers in 1992 were committed away from the victim's home,[30] i.e., in a location where it would ordinarily be a crime for the victim to even possess a gun, never mind use it defensively. Because the question about location is asked before the self-protection questions,[31] the typical violent crime victim R has already committed himself to having been victimized in a public place before being asked what he or she did for self-protection. In short, Rs usually could not mention their defensive use of a gun without, in effect, confessing to a crime to a federal government employee.

Even for crimes that occurred in the victim's home, such as a burglary, possession of a gun would still often be unlawful or of unknown legal status; because the R had not complied with or could not be sure he had complied with all legal requirements concerning registration of the gun's acquisition or possession, permits for purchase, licensing of home possession, storage requirements, and so on. In light of all these considerations, it may be unrealistic to assume that more than a fraction of Rs who have used a gun defensively would be willing to report it to NCVS interviewers.

The NCVS was not designed to estimate how often people resist crime using a gun. It was designed primarily to estimate national victimization levels; it incidentally happens to include a few self-protection questions which include response categories covering resistance with a gun. Its survey instrument has been carefully refined and evaluated over the years to do as good a job as possible in getting people to report illegal things which other people have done to them. This is the exact opposite of the task which faces anyone trying to get good DGU estimates--to get people to admit controversial and possibly illegal things which the Rs themselves have done. Therefore, it is neither surprising, nor a reflection on the survey's designers, to note that the NCVS is singularly ill-suited for estimating the prevalence or incidence of DGU. It is not credible to regard this survey as an acceptable basis for establishing, in even the roughest way, how often Americans use guns for self-protection.

....
Finally, it is now clear that virtually none of the victims who use guns defensively tell interviewers about it in the NCVS. Our estimates imply that only about 3% of DGUs among NCVS Rs are reported to interviewers.

Long, but worth reading if you're trying to glean Defensive Gun Use knowledge from NVCS data.
http://www.guncite.com/gcdgklec.html
 
DNS, your own post showed a 13% rate of people harmed despite complying.

So, the question should be, are there studies that show the rate of harm to those who actively resist?
 
I didn't read through all of the thread so my apologies if this has already been posted.

It would seem to me that the thing to do would be to write emails or letters to Walgreen's complaining about the firing an the policy. The company is concerned about minimizing its losses and probably cares more about customer complaints than employee grievances.
 
If you look to Tables 72 and 73, however, you will see that such measure were perceived to have helped the situation by the vast majority of the time.

Looking at table 70, it looks like resisting with a weapon by threatening or attacking is less likely to result in injury than other methods. It would be more useful if they gave us the data by type of weapon used to resist.


I think Gary Kleck did a study that the National Academies mentioned in their book Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. See table 15.2

From that it seems like if you fight back with a gun, you are less likely to be injured than in any other scenario including compliance.

Edit to add from the National Academies:
While the literature on self-defense has been preoccupied with the basic measurement questions, a handful of studies assess the efficacy of defensive gun use.10 Using data from the NCVS, Kleck (2001b) compares the probability of injury and crime by different defensive actions. The results, summarized in Table 5-2, suggest that respondents who use firearms are less likely to be injured and lose property than those using other modes of protection. For example, while the overall rate of injury in robbery is 30.2, only 12.8 percent of those using a firearm for self-protection were injured. Ziegenhagen and Brosnan (1985) draw similar conclusions about the efficacy of armed (although not firearm) resistance when summarizing 13 city victim surveys. Using a multivariate regression analysis, Kleck and DeLone (1993) confirm these basic cross-tabular findings.11 Defense with a firearm is associated with fewer completed robberies and less injury. Two forms of self-defense, namely using force without a weapon and trying to get help or attract attention, are associated with higher injury rates than taking no self-protective action.
 
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DNS, your own post showed a 13% rate of people harmed despite complying.

So, the question should be, are there studies that show the rate of harm to those who actively resist?

I already posted the links before your query.
 
For those here who take or have access to Gun Week, the 15 June issue, Weekly Bullet Col. carries this story, or part thereof headlined "Wallgreens fires heroic worker". I suspect a law suit will follow.
 
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