Burglaries: Give it up?

@MikeBKY. It used to be and not that long ago where robbers did not use guns in the commission of a crime because if they were caught there was an extra charge against them. It’s different now I think most robbers or people committing crimes Do have guns. I don’t know how that changed, maybe, possibly, to many liberal judges in the courts? Not sure but it definitely has changed and not for the better.

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People just do not think these days. Everything is like the X Box games they play. I believe a lot of these robberies have a lot to do with Drug addictions where people do not think straight and the addictions have the robbers in a state of mind where I need the money to buy drugs or I will die.

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I think you may be onto something there William, the desperation of people today mixed with the addictions is creating more dangerous situations. I would also add that people today are more narcissistic and have less concern for the lives of fellow humans and so taking a life today does not have as much weight as it did in past decades.

Welcome to the Community! :slight_smile:

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Like John so often says, “Wait your turn, and never draw on the drop.” For me the presence of a weapon in the bad guys hand makes all the difference. If he’s armed, I’m going to fight if the opportunity presents itself.

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Sorry about what happened to your friend. I understand that you will assume that they are willing to use force against you. But you have to concede that in the vast majority of cases they won’t hurt you if you comply. If that weren’t so, then we would have more videos of people complying getting hurt. They’re just not out there because thieves typically don’t want a felony murder charge… as we know the human torso can turn 90 degrees at about a quarter of a second. Plus reaction time. So even if you aren’t drawing from the drop, if your first shots don’t hit then you’re in a gunfight where you almost certainly would not have been if you just gave up the $50.

No I don’t, not without some actual statistics behind that. Btw, what’s your definition of “vast majority” because I really don’t think it’s greater than maybe 70% of the time (and I think I’m being very generous with that number).

As we debated last night, there are plenty of videos going both ways showing where sometimes compliance does work, other times it does not.

  1. That’s why you should train regularly so your first shots are on target…I’m probably 90% first shot on target while moving (getting off the “X”) at 7yds and I’m probably average compared to the rest of the community.
  2. We’ve already established that the first thing you should do is give the robber what they want if they have the drop on you…but what then? What do you do when they don’t leave you alone as they did in my case or the case of @Mike’s friend? I’d like to hear your alternative for that.
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No! 75% chance of not getting seriously hurt is HORRIBLE odds! There was not a 25% chance that you were gonna get seriously hurt if you had complied. Robbers want your stuff. Or consider that you’re at a gas station and they’re robbing the gas station. It’s just not worth it.

That’s you’re opinion. You’re willing to bet your life on 25% of the time in that encounter the robber will kill you? That’s fine, that’s your choice.

Again, my experience (funny you would mention gas stations, because that’s where it happened) where that the robber continued to press the issue after they already had all the money from the till. At that point I decided to stop being a victim and found my opportunity. The previous victims did not and both ended up in the hospital.

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I don’t think you read my reply properly and then you took me out of context by saying I think that it’s okay to take a 25% shot at giving up your life.

My reply was You think that 25% of the time if you comply you’re going to get hurt. That’s baloney. I didn’t understand were you saying that you were in an incident where you had to use deadly force?

You’re correct, I did take out of context, thank you for clarifying.

Show me the stats where I’m wrong and I will happily concede the point. Until then, I’ll go off my experience and what I’ve researched.

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Fair enough

I hear you. And Jason did exactly that. It didn’t work out well for him. All that kid had to do was jump back in the car and it would have been over. Instead, he pulled the trigger. Jason died leaving a widow and the four kids involved, three being prosecuted as adults, lives are ruined. One of those involved is being handled in juvenile court, one has plead guilty for an 18 year sentence and the other 2 are facing life. It would be a capital case if they were not juveniles, 15 at the time of the crime.
Unfortunately, I do not know the endgame or intent of someone who decides to commit armed robbery. I assume they know they are looking at 10-20 years in prison for Robbery 1st and that my life is worth much less to them than it is to me.
I’m not worried about the money or cards. I’m not worried about anything in my wallet. But I cannot predict what the person on the other side of the gun is going to do. And following the rules of firearm safety, I assume his gun is loaded and, if it is pointed at me, he intends on destroying me. And I’m pretty sure they don’t care about rules 3 and 4.

This is not to say that I want a shootout, but I will fight if the opportunity presents itself, I intend on going home.

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Alright I was able to find some numbers. They are old but I am going to venture to say that it doesn’t matter since violent crime was more than three times as high in the 70’s these numbers are the strongest possible in support of your position. I couldn’t find newer ones yet. During this year there were 1.2 million armed robberies. 77,000 resulted in serious injury to the victim. If you crunch the numbers that comes to around 6 or 7 percent. You can find it page two in the chart box thing for your viewing.

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the statistical likelihood of any given public school student being killed by a gun, in school, on any given day since 1999 was roughly 1 in 614,000,000.

The odds of a school shooting are astronomically lower than in an armed robbery, but here we are.

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Yes but you don’t raise the likelihood of your death by resisting. Since their goal is to shoot everyone. The goal of a robber is to take your stuff. In a school shooting you may be able to lay in wait and ambush as well.

You are making an assumption that the armed robber is there only to take your stuff. And you may be statistically correct. But you do not know.

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That’s true but no one’s saying you’re committed to not drawing your firearm when you determine that the chances of getting hurt in a gunfight are less than that of not resisting. I think the point that I’m trying to make is that we tend to underestimate the amount of times that the good guy resisting gets hurt, by a lot.

@CriticalThinky, you seem to be assuming that ALL robberies are recorded on video, thus making your statistical sample complete and valid. Sadly, I have trouble accepting your premise. I would suspect that only a relatively small percentage of robberies are recorded, even fewer from start to finish. Secondly, you seem to also be assuming that ALL existing videos of robberies have been posted in open databases for you to find. There could be any number of videos held in databases or formats unavailable to you or the general public. Then consider the number of incidents recorded only through the statements of victims, witnesses, and responding LEO’s.

Let’s also take a small but logical sidestep into physics where we learn about the observer effect, which posits that the act of observing a phenomenon results in a change in the process and/or outcome of said phenomenon. From this we may infer that the presence of a camera, or even the perpetrator’s assumption or fear of a camera, could trigger a form of the observer effect, thus altering the perpetrator’s actions and the eventual outcome.

I sense that your argument is motivated by a certain amount of good intentions, but your methodology is inadequate to reach a definitive conclusion.

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I think you’re misinterpreting the numbers some, in that only 6-7% were injured during the robbery but it does not identify that the other 94-93% of those who were not injured weren’t because they complied. E.g. of that 93-94% how many of them came away uninjured because they resisted?

Sorry sir, that data is therefore inconclusive that compliance is the way to go statistically (btw way I ran into the same issue attempting to glean stats from more recent data).

I’m afraid we’re just going to have to agree to disagree (and then only to a point it seems)

And what point is that in your opinion? (similar to my question in one of my previous posts) We could be debating over things we actually agree on, lol.