I just read the Strib's article on that Apple Valley convenience store shooting. Turns out the clerk shot himself.
What got me about the article was toward the end, where of course they recommend NOT to have a gun, because after all, it's only money.

I guess they forgot about the part where in most of the robberies I've heard about, they shoot the clerk. If I worked in such a place, and if I had a 100% gurarantee that I'd be unharmed in a robbery, I'd have no issue with handing over the stores money. But since there's no chance that I'd get such a guarantee, and since most robberies end with a dead clerk, I'd be armed to the hilt. And not with a .25 cal pistol, either.

I'm not trying to take away from the tragedy of this event. It's sad that these people who were only trying to protect themselves, were so inadequately trained to handle a handgun.

Here is a link.

http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincitie ... 647312.htm

Both sad and stupid.

Incredibly stupid.

Would it be insensitive for me to offer remedial firearms safety training?

Matt Payne:

If only you could offer retroactive training...

Very sad, indeed.

JB

Too bad you can't rig a nice half dozen shotgun shells into the floor in front of the register where the clerk could set 'em off when robbed, thereby eliminating a threat.

Bartleby

I can see it now: "gee...sorry... I guess that wasn't the intercom button."

[Too bad you can't rig a nice half dozen shotgun shells into the floor in front of the register]

Opens up some interesting thought processes. How about something less than lethal...........hmmmm. Could be an idea worth a million bucks, and I am not being totally facetious here. Course the drawback would be it would only work a couple dozen times and then the perps would......
naaaa, there will always be dumb crooks. [/quote]

I'm adding the association of convenience store owners to my sales call list. This crap should NEVER have to happen. Gun safety is important, sure, but, dammit, it ain't really hard.

I think a better idea -- or at least one less likely to be misued by the kind of clerk that would shoot himself accidentally -- would be a mantrap exit, a two-door entry way that could electronically be activated to trap undesirables inside the entry way.

I'm sure this design has been perfected differently, but I'd wager it would be safest if under normal circmstances the outside door would not open unless the inside door was closed, and if the lockup mechanism could be activated without preventing the inside door from being opened from the inside. This way the perp "knows" the inside door has to close before he can open the outside door.

Once activated, the lockup would prevent the inside door from being opened back into the store and prevent the outside door from opening from either side until deactivated.

Perp takes money, perp enters mantrap, closes inside door so he can open outside door, but once the inside door closes, he's trapped.

Dunno what the fire marshall would say, he'd probably require the whole thing to be overridable by a fire detection system. And it's not perfect, either -- somebody could hold both doors open, locks could fail, Murphy shows up at the worst time.

But I'd rather not be standing on a rigged box of double-ought buck buying cigarettes and pop from somebody whose last job was herding goats 6,000 miles away, thanks.