Slaying of Convenience Store Clerk Points to Complicity of Not-So-Silent ‘Partners’

U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “‘Senseless’: Woman Working at 7-Eleven Fatally Shot in Waldorf,” NBC 4 Washington reported. “A woman working at a convenience store in Waldorf, Maryland, was fatally shot early Thursday by a man who announced a robbery, officials say.”

The predator was wearing a surgical mask, by the way, so he not only escaped, but the helpfulness of the cameras at providing certain identification is compromised. In other words, the first line of defense such companies claim provides security has been nullified by the new Covid reality – not that the effectiveness of cameras hasn’t been disputed in conflicting studies for some time.

Right from the start we are given two key pieces of information to let us know that the victim was mandated defenseless by two different “authorities,” one exerting control over her livelihood and the other over her freedom, such as it was.

7-Eleven does not allow its clerks to be armed. They even go so far, according to a poster documented on ConcealedNation.org, as to instruct employees on how to not resist robbers, and to also rat out any co-workers who may be hiding in a back room. Should that result in injury or death, the corporation had already established the precedent that they’re not liable for what happens to franchisee clerks.

And forget it if one fights for his life, even if only to grab the robber’s weapon. They’ll fire him and then they’ll win the wrongful termination lawsuit.

That’s despite plenty of documented evidence that the decision-makers know damn well what the risks are. It’s just that “risk management” weasels concern themselves with avoiding corporate losses, not human ones.

The other “authority” is the state of Maryland, which infringes on the right to bear arms with “may issue” concealed carry permits. — That means “forget it” if you’re just plain folks and can’t prove to the authoritarian Secretary of the Maryland State Police that you have “good and substantial reason to wear, carry, or transport a handgun, such as a finding that the permit is necessary as a reasonable precaution against apprehended danger.” You may as well save yourself the nonrefundable application fee. Besides, the permit is revokable when the conditions for its issuance are no longer deemed valid and can be limited to “geographic area, circumstances, or times” when issued.

So how did things work out for this “law-abiding” clerk who followed all the rules?

“’He apparently approached the clerk, produced a gun, announced a robbery and during that robbery he shot and killed the clerk,’ [a sheriff’s spokesperson] said. “After the robber got the money, he shot [the clerk] and then fled, Charles County authorities said in a release Thursday.”

So much for “just give them what they want,” the kind of suicidal “advice” gun-grabber groups have been parroting ever since total handgun ban proponent Nelson “Pete” Shields (the founder of the National Council to Control Handguns (which evolved into Handgun Control, Inc. and then into the Brady Center) demanded back in 1981:

“The best defense against injury is to put up no defense give them what they want, or run.”

If you’re trapped behind a counter, there is no place to run. Besides, what if what they want is…you?

Case in point – as if a random Google search won’t reveal plenty – recall the “Wendy’s massacre,” a robbery where seven employees were forced into the restaurant freezer, bound, gagged, with plastic bags over their heads and then each shot in the head – all in New York City, the home of the Sullivan citizen disarmament laws.

Then consider that “More retail workers than law-enforcement officers were killed in homicides on the job for 6 years in a row.” Not much has changed since The New York Times reported almost 30 years ago that “When it comes to violent crime [being a convenience store clerk] is the second most dangerous there is, after driving a cab.”

There’s one other gun-grabber lie exposed by reality, where we learn the slain woman “also had a blackbelt in taekwondo.” Real-life rarely works out the way it does for them on the silver screen, even if the gals look way cool kicking the crap out of multiple muscular armed assailants, the whole thing perfectly choreographed and without mussing their hair.

Don’t look for things to change, at least for the better. But they still can get worse.

The State of Maryland, “Republican” governor notwithstanding, is solidly in the gun-grab camp, and it has no incentive to do anything other than up the infringements. And it’s not like 7-Eleven’s Japanese ownership has any reason not to prefer Americans to be disarmed (and tell me that doesn’t bring to mind a debated quote attributed to Admiral Yamamoto).

That’s still not enough for those who demand more, which is pretty much all disarmament demanders.

Those like the “Business Must Act Coalition” an Astroturf collaboration between leftist grabber groups like Brady, Guns Down America, the Women’s March, March for Our Lives, People for the American Way, and others, out there practicing corporate shaming in order to extort compliance with its citizen disarmament demands. As such, it has given 7-Eleven (and other companies) an “F” unless it forbids customers from being armed in states where it is lawful, on the insane cover theory that such customers are the problem.

Speaking of the ones who are the problem, consider the  entitled “family members” loudly complaining about a clerk who exchanged gunfire with and killed their idiot armed robber brother:

“He’s got some responsibility, but not all. [Right is] right and wrong is wrong. That was wrong for that clerk to shoot my brother in the chest. Yes, he’s robbing them. OH, WELL (emphasis by the speaker)! Call the police, that’s what you’re supposed to do. You’re not supposed to take matters into your own hands.”

So just give the predator, the politically correct company, the infringing state, the professional gun-grabbers, and loud-mouthed “relatives” what they want, and if you die in the process they can all chalk it up to the need for more “commonsense gun safety laws”?

How about we demand they give us what we want — and take it if they won’t?

Also see: “Let Anti-Gun Convenience Store Chain President Put His Money Where His Mouth Is”

About David Codrea:

David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.