I was watching a video recently. It was a Tim Pool Timcast video. He and his “crew” were discussing a report on the closing of five San Francisco Walgreens stores.
Tim read some of the SFGate.com piece entitled, “Walgreens closing 5 San Francisco stores due to ‘organized retail crime.'”
In October 2020, a San Francisco Walgreens closed citing the theft of nearly $1,000 of product stolen every single day.
You may be thinking, as was I, that this is a pretty consistent number – $1,000 – hardly random. Understand that this number is not the average over time – like one day it’s $400 and the next is $1,200. No, every day it’s between $900 and $1,000. Sounds “organized,” doesn’t it? But why?
Well, if you don’t already know, the leftist radicals who run the state of California instituted a new criminal guideline. “California law dictates that theft of less than $950 in goods is penalized as a nonviolent misdemeanor.” In other words, it’s barely a slap on the wrist, if anything at all. Obviously these organized criminals know this.
Here’s just one example. I invite you to watch this short 2 minute video.
In it you’ll see a San Francisco shoplifter rifling through shelves in a Walgreens. An unarmed (of course) security guard walks up to the criminal, tells him to stop and leave. “You need to go man – you need to leave this store.”
However, the guard never lifts a finger to stop him. He can’t. Both the thief and the guard know that he can’t be touched. The guard can only stand by and watch. That seems fair.
Back to the Timcast.
The question Tim poses to his peeps is the following. “What’s the answer? More cops to arrest people, or the government backs off and [we] allow for personal responsibility. How do you solve this?”
And this is where it gets interesting, as one of Tim’s minions (pardon me, but I don’t know their names) chimes in to say, “Stop disarming people. Stop taking away their ability to defend themselves.” I would have added, “and their property.”
Most reasonable Americans (I hope) would agree that this is the correct approach as crime of any sort, from robbery, burglary, assault, even mass-shootings happen predominately in places that are gun-free zones and to unarmed people.
Another minion, however, came back asking, “Should store owners be armed? Theft is a non-violent crime. … If someone was robbing your shelves, it’s not really ethical to fire a weapon at them.”
It sounds like the same lame argument the left uses when Israel is attacked by the Palestinians – that Israel should not use “disproportionate force,” to fight back.
Now, I’ve watched this gentleman on previous Timcast videos, and he is quite intelligent. But he’s dead wrong in this case.
First, no one is saying that you automatically fire your weapon at a thief in the store. I’m not in favor dropping an unarmed man. But it’s quite another thing to draw and present your weapon while instructing the thief to kiss the floor. Sure, you both know that nothing of consequence is going to happen to the thief, but at least you’ve stopped a robbery and by your actions have likely thwarted other offenses.
Second – how do you know who is and is not armed? Remember – this guy is a criminal. In California, it seems criminals are the only ones with guns. With few exceptions, the law-abiding can’t own guns, and even fewer can carry them – a clear violation of the Second Amendment, but who cares about that anymore.
This statement about disproportionate force began a slippery slope discussion that was quite informative. Yet another gent came back and posited this: “If a store owner or manager is quite a bit larger than the thief, would he have to seek out someone smaller to tackle the guy?”
Brilliant question. It goes right to the heart of the slippery slope argument. If you allow things to start down this road, where does it end, and have you then lost the ability at any time to draw a line that can’t be crossed?
This is what Rush Limbaugh meant when he said repeatedly that you can’t compromise with the lunatic left.
Crime will always rise in areas where crime is effectively allowed. And it always get worse – never better if left unchecked. The owners, employees and law-abiding patrons of Walgreens are living it.
Listen to an audio version of this column:
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