Gun Free Zone in Restaurant Backfires: Illiterate Criminal Shows up With Gun

By Rodney Lee Conover

Yesterday a restaurant in North Carolina was robbed at gunpoint despite having a sign up prohibiting guns on the premises.

The armed robber paid no attention to the sign, or maybe he couldn’t read it. Surely, if he had he would have promptly put his gun in his pants and just ordered a BBQ sandwich, averting disaster. That’s what criminals do, right? Avert disaster? They oblige warnings, respect authority and comply with official policy. Yeah, uh huh. Dream on.

Sadly,  gun-free zones are high on the list for mass killers when looking for a location.

Yes, they crave media attention and a high body count. But knowing their victims will be defenseless trumps the other factors, according to John Lott of Crime Prevention Research Center.

Okay, the guy robbing the restaurant differs somewhat from the killer that opened fire in an Aurora, CO theater and the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooter. Each of them calculated well in advance their strategy. Their strategy included the gun-free zone policy.

The April 29, 2014 killings at FedEx occurred in a gun-free zone marked with conspicuous signage.  Signs, in fact, advertise the fact that people will be easy targets, making an ideal setting for a robbery or massacre.

It’s simple, killers don’t follow the rules. They are cowards who count on unarmed citizens and children to fall without resistance, but with widespread drama and media coverage. They thrive on the attention. Faced with armed victims and no press coverage, the outcome would be very different.

Breitbart reported the following:

Gunsnfreedom.com published a photograph of the sign on May 21, making “The Pit” restaurant a self-declared gun free zone–the same kind of zone Michael Bloomberg and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America pressure other restaurants into becoming.

According to Durham’s ABC 11, around 9 PM “three men wearing hoodies entered the restaurant through the back doors with pistols, and forced several staff members to lie on the floor.” The armed men “also assaulted two employees during the crime.”

The suspects are still on the loose.

On May 19, Moms Demand pressured Chipotle [restaurants] because a group of customers openly–and legally–carried their rifles into a Dallas Chipotle restaurant over the weekend.

Twitchy published Chipotle’s response to Moms Demand:

Recent participants from an “open carry” demonstration in Texas brought guns (including military-style assault rifles) into one of our restaurants, causing many of our customers anxiety and discomfort. Because of this we are respectfully asking that customers not bring guns into our restaurants, unless they are authorized law enforcement personnel.

This makes Chipotle the newest gun free zone in a long list of zones like Ft. Hood, the Aurora movie theater, Sandy Hook Elementary, the DC Navy Yard, Arapahoe High School, and on and on…

When Chipotle announced their intended gun ban by saying the sight of law-abiding citizens carrying guns caused customers “anxiety and discomfort,” Breitbart News responded with a simple question:

If law-abiding citizens caused customers “anxiety and discomfort,” what will those customers feel like when a criminal enters Chipotle, now confident that no victim in the restaurant is allowed to have a gun with which to fight back?

Perhaps the armed attack on “The Pit” can be of some help in answering this question.

Tomorrow I’m going to wear a sign of my own. It’ll read “Back off, I carry the 2nd amendment in my holster.”