MILESFORTIS

Lesson to be learned:
Situational Awareness™ is as important as what you’re carrying.

St. Paul, MN Concealed Carrier Killed While Trying to Intervene In a Liquor Store Shoplifting

When it comes to carrying for self-defense, good training, tactics, practice and the use of common sense go a long way to make a person harder to victimize and/or kill. Then there’s the case of the St. Paul, Minnesota good Samaritan with a carry permit who was shot and killed with his own gun after intervening in a liquor store shoplifting attempt.

It happened on December 27th when Kenneth Davis Jr. interceded to try to help the store stop a man trying to shoplift a bottle of vodka.

Davis brandished his gun after the shoplifter claimed to have a gun in his backpack. The shoplifter, Trinis Edwards, then left the store.

Davis lost control of his handgun and it fell to the ground. Edwards came up with it and shot Davis to death.

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Just me, but if in that situation, I wouldn’t waste precious time to see if the bear spray worked. The bear would start getting shot. When our church mission group went up to Fort Yukon, Alaska back on 2004, I carried a .45 Colt Ruger Redhawk loaded with 300gr Freedom Arms jsp made for the .454 Casull, to a little over 1100 fps.

BLUF:
These incidents reveal bear spray to be far from the cure-all initially claimed in numerous early articles. Those articles were based on inappropriate comparisons of studies involving firearm effectiveness and bear spray effectiveness in wildly different conditions.

Fatal Bear Attack, Full Can of Bear Spray was Deployed by Carl Mock

On April 15, 2021, Carl Mock was attacked by a grizzly bear, just outside of Yellowstone park. Mock was an accomplished woodsman and guide. He did not have a firearm with him. He had bear spray.  He used the bear spray, but was fatally injured.

This correspondent, with questions directed to Montana Fish and Wildlife Morgan Jacobsen, was able to determine bear spray had been used in the incident. Initially, the use of bear spray was reported as unknown by ktla.com:

Mock when attacked had bear spray — a Mace-like deterrent meant to protect against attacks — but officials said they did not know if he managed to use it. Bear spray canisters have safety tabs to prevent them from going off accidentally and the safety tab on Mock’s bear spray was off, Jacobsen said.

Eight months later, the investigation of the incident is over.

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When Rich People Are Under Threat, What Do They Reach For?

We’ll grant the point that voting in Beverly Hills was a red spot in the middle of blue, but 44% of the folks would still forcibly take guns away from ordinary people.

So what does it look like when rich people come under threat?

In Beverly Hills, even the purchase of a firearm comes with certain…expectations. The city’s only gun store, Beverly Hills Guns, is a “concierge service” by appointment only, for a largely affluent clientele. And business is booming.

Since opening in July 2020, the store has seen upscale residents from Santa Monica to the Hollywood Hills increasingly in a panic following several high-profile smash-and-grab and violent home invasion robberies. The apparent siege has brought in a daily stream of anxious business owners and prominent actors, real estate moguls and film execs, says owner Russell Stuart. Most are arming themselves for the first time.

“This morning I sold six shotguns in about an hour to people that say, ‘I want a home defense shotgun,’” says Stuart, whose store is discreetly located in a Beverly Hills office building, with no sign on the doors, down the hall from a diamond dealer. “Everyone has a general sense of constant fear,  which is very sad. We’re used to this being like Mayberry.”

That fear has the wealthiest of local gentry contemplating every more elaborate security measures: armored luxury cars, safe rooms and bullet-proof glass in their homes. One client asked about creating the “Tony Stark-level” security of a half-dozen automated drones to hover over his house, says Stuart, whose gun store is part of his larger security company, Force Protective Agency. “If you want the Gucci package, it’s going to cost money.”

The security business is experiencing a rebound after a couple of diminished years because of the pandemic. Some firms had their on-site security guards sent home for health and social distancing reasons. Not anymore. 

In Beverly Hills, the craving for additional security dates to the riot that followed an otherwise peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in May 2020, with unprecedented looting along Rodeo Drive that left broken boutique windows  beneath beloved luxury brands: Chanel, Dior, Gucci, Michael Kors, MCM, Ermenegildo Zegna. Last March, a $500,000 Richard Mille watch was stolen at gunpoint from a diner at the Il Pastaio restaurant.  The Dec. 1 home-invasion robbery and shooting death of philanthropist Jacqueline Avant, 81, in her Trousdale Estates home, only accelerated the arms race among the affluent.

I’m shocked.  You mean they want BLM to destroy your city but not their own?  In other news, they are demanding the police do something about it.

Los Angeles Police Chief Michael Moore announced in November he would be setting up a task force to combat home-invasion robberies, which have targeted celebrities and upscale restaurants, according to the Los Angeles Times. Moore indicated the department had not seen violent holdups “like this in decades,” The Times reported.

I wonder where this task force will concentrate their efforts?  Anyway, the rich folks know the police can’t be there all of the time.  They want shotguns.  They want Gucci protection.  They want up-armored cars.  They want drones.

If you demand the same thing, 44% of them will tell you to pound sand.