The irony of gun store robberies

L.K. Hanson cartoon

Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan’s op-ed on the insanity of thinking that more guns is the answer to gun violence has been on the Stool’s recommended reading list since it was published a few days ago. Here’s just one little nugget from the piece:

Epidemiologists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine found that those without guns are four times safer than those with guns when confronted by an armed assailant.

Well, here’s one more:

Gun death rates are highest in the states with the highest ratios of gun ownership.

This second item is not exactly a bolt out of the blue.

I read a news report somewhere recently about a gun store that got robbed. I tried to find it, and I discovered that gun store robberies are fairly, um, common:

Not all of the Google hits are gun store robberies, but a lot of them are. (There are multiple videos of some robberies, too.)

Here’s a typical offering from the search. In this case, our man from North Carolina was affirmatively less safe by having guns around. But the principle we can abstract from these robberies is, that if somebody with a gun get the drop on you, having one around isn’t going to help.