Although violent crime in America is low and mostly confined to gang-dominated urban areas, many Americans have had a “come to Jesus” moment that led them to choose armed self-defense. They survived a criminal assault that left them thinking that it could have gone very, very differently. A scare that led them to the same sort of “never again will I be defenseless” resolution . . .

that motivates historically-minded Jews (like your author) to tool up. The Baltimore pizza restaurant owner above’s gun-related change of heart is but one example. It’s a shame it has to happen this way. What’s worse: his chances of getting a concealed carry permit to protect his life and livelihood in The Free State are practically nil. The struggle for firearms freedom continues. [h/t TV]

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

96 COMMENTS

    • Well, to follow the metaphor, those horses are gone, but what about the replacements? He’s trying to make damn sure the door is locked next time.

      • He hasn’t noticed the controversy raging for the past 10 years? It was not important for him to consider the arguments and take action? He is the problem, and he’s coming to the party extremely late. My sympathy is difficult to locate.

        • It appears you are in TX. The dynamic in MD, where I used to live, compared to TX, where I am now is night and day. I’ve always leaned to the right and been a 2A supporter, but owning a handgun was never a priority. For those with a Baltimore mindset, the thought is even more removed. I never experienced antagonism, but whenever I mentioned that I wanted to eventually buy one, the reaction was more of confusion as to why I would bother.

          Regardless of what causes a change in mentality (for me it was suddenly having easy access to ranges and people to go with), we should be glad of more people who understand why ownership is good and are more respectful and appreciative of the constitutional right to do so.

          Besides, better late than never.

        • He is the problem? I guess I’m the problem, too. I only bought my first real gun in 2009. When was the cutoff? Please.

        • Dang, I missed the cutoff too.

          The controversy has been raging for a lot longer than 10 years — I may be late, but I got here as soon as I could. Now that I’m here, I’m all in. And I say welcome to anyone who has finally seen the light, no matter how late they’re joining the fold. I’m only sorry that this guy won’t be able to get his gun (seeing as he lives in Baltimore). But maybe, if there are enough people like him who have seen the truth, they’ll eventually vote out the cretins who have crippled their rights.

          You go, pizza man.

  3. A little late. Remember the gas station that did not burn in Ferguson, Missouri was protected by the white owner’s sons black friends armed with “assault” rifles. “Black men with black rifles,” I like the way that sounds!

    • They stood guard because the white owner gave some of them jobs and they respected each other.

      Loyalty is not completely dead.

      Circling the drain, but not dead.

  4. This first paragraphs deserves expounding:

    “Although violent crime in America is low and mostly confined to gang-dominated urban areas, many Americans have had a “come to Jesus” moment that led them to choose armed self-defense. They survived a criminal assault that left them thinking that it could have gone very, very differently. A scare that led them to the same sort of “never again will I be defenseless” resolution . . .”

    The most important part being: “They survived a criminal assault…”

    But what about the many., many examples about which we read where someone didn’t survive the criminal assault? Why does no one learn from THIS?

    A classroom full of dead children! And they want to cause MORE of it by disarming even MORE adults?

    Children are, by nature, helpless. They depend on adults to do for them what they cannot do for themselves. So, the teaches and parents decide to, uh, make themselves just as helpless as the children? Is it even possible to betray a child in a worse way than this? Their own parents and teachers choosing to… I just can’t find the words, it’s so disgusting. And to put icing on that cake, they blame and attack millions of gun owners who DO choose to be responsible for themselves and their’s? Is it out of embarrassment? Do they hate those who set a better example so much that they want our kids dead too? How screwed up do you have to be? Should people this sick be allowed to roam around freely in our society; yet they want US to deal with background checks? Can there be a better example of the lunatics running the asylum?

    A population so morbidly stupid deserves to suffer…

    • Another example of simple truth with only one ad-hominem attack. “Morbidly stupid”. I would have said morbidly delusional, irrational, controlling, etc.

      Truth can hurt.

      • Otherwise, all absolute, brutally honest assessment of the mental dysfunction of the anti-freedom statists and most liberal/regressives.

    • “But what about the many., many examples about which we read where someone didn’t survive the criminal assault? Why does no one learn from THIS?”

      It’s actually really simple… It didn’t happen to them.

      People die every day from heart attacks caused by smoking, alcoholism, anger, stress, overeating or some combination of all of those things yet obease people, chronic smokers, alcoholics, etc never get help until they or someone sufficiently close to them is in the hospital clinging to there lives.

      A short time spent on Google can yield some pretty graphic examples of what happens to people who don’t wear seat belts yet even in the face of expensive fines ($350 here in Texas) some people can’t be bothered until they take a trip through the windshield.

      Some people don’t survive their come to Jesus moment, that alone should be reason enough to be prepared.

      • I started wearing a seat belt when driving before the law required it, for one simple reason: I read statistics that showed that in wrecks where the driver had a seat belt, injuries and fatalities among the passengers were significantly lower. It just made sense, for the protection of people riding with me, to take that step for their safety.

        I cannot grasp how some people want armed cops so those in uniform can confront criminals, but though they know that cops aren’t everywhere and can’t be, they follow a course of action that is equivalent to forbidding every driver to wear a seat belt.

    • Dustin,

      I really, really, really like the way you wrote down your thinking process. I am going to use your description — a lot.

    • Dustin, thanks for putting that into words. It’s exactly what I’ve felt (and thought) ever since Sandy Hook. I keep thinking words can’t convey my disgust for the people who would just let something like that happen over and over again, but you did it. Again, thanks.

  5. That’s what happened for me. Human predator tried to mug me. Bought a Ruger SP101 .357 magnum revolver three days later.

    I’ve been carrying 24/7 for eighteen years now.

    • It’s a good thing you got another chance. Many people will waste fates hint and not live long.

      • My guardian angels were with me. Just enough to learn the lesson without severe injury or death.

        Because I have no doubt, my higher self and G-d wanted me to learn this lesson. Nothing else would have made the point like facing the possibility of one’s death to re-examine ones paradigm.

        • Well I think that’s a success story. I didn’t have any one event to solidly justify my need to carry. I just had a bunch of little what if moments. When it comes down to it everybody has their own life experience or fear that helps push them towards carrying. The difference is that each person needs to make that decision to confront reality or to hide under the blanky. Shooting is just so much fun anyway so why not? A big plus is it pisses off so many people that need to mind their own business. That’s a lot of wins!

    • I grew up around some sociopaths and got to see from “the other side” what they did to people. Sometimes I was the victim but mostly it was others. It wasn’t pretty and most people act like sheep. Somethings I still have short nightmares about. I’ve been armed since I became an adult (a little earlier but we won’t go there). I’ve seen what lurks in the dark… I’ve stood right next to it while it stalked and when it struck. Be always armed.

  6. The bile wells from my stomach watching Baltimore’s mayor talk about rebuilding when reality presents in this video. Failure not of leadership but of imagination of what a city can be. Whole entity troughing tax payers, while systematically shoving poor into pockets to contain while 35,000 derelict former homes rot away. The idea that some corporation is going to parachute into West Baltimore providing jobs is an epic failure of logic one can barely comprehend.

    The owner needs a gun not for lawful self protection but a failure of a local zombie government maintaining a narrative instead of solving problems they created.

    • The talk of rebuilding has nothing to do with *them* rebuilding, and everything to do with the U.S. taxpayer rebuilding profitable businesses and building them into going concerns, and then handing them over to the *unfortunate* to be taxed to death by the city government AGAIN, should they survive uninterested management and owners who got them for free. Not a single hint that government (city, state, and federal) should get out of the way and let our people soar to the heights of their ability. Baltimore is disgusting. Trying to make something racial out of their failure, when the prez, AG following AG, mayor and police chief are all of the majority race in the city, and all have promised big correction to all this racism, is just criminal. I saw real racism, 50 years ago, and I can vouch for the fact that it is not the current problem. The current problem is that some people, generally of a similar tint, insist on electing crooks because they promise free stuff. The free stuff is never delivered, yet come next election those same people vote for the same crooks, promising the same free stuff.

  7. Police get more second guessing and civilians get more guns. Seems our legal system has turned protection inside out. And those are the healthy people. Muscular dystrophy has made “disparity of force” a constant preoccupation for me.

    • In an optimum society, police are rarely needed.

      Crime is less as criminals begin to grok criminal acts may be met with citizen lethal response.

      Less crime occurs, less police required.

      The way it ought to be…

  8. I bet he’s not the only one in Baltimore thinking the same thing.

  9. If I were him I would move out of that Hell Hole and that State to somewhere that respects the 2A and set up a new shop there. Perfect time to move. Let the rats eat each other along with their Socialist politicians.

    • Let the rats eat each other along with their Socialist politicians. I keep saying that the Soviet Socialist States will collapse on their own under their own non-productive government largess and welfare dependent populations. The Scientific Socialist Soviet States will drive off or put out of business all the productive businesses and workers and will just leave the drones to consume and eat. Ayn Rand is more right than wrong.

  10. How free are any of us if we have to depend on others to guarantee our freedom ?

  11. See, it is easy. We don’t need no damn PR to win the heart and minds. All we need is some rioting 🙂 .

    • “These Cities.” May confuse you but the residents are responsible for their choices. Local government is responsible for the placement of polluting plants in their neighborhoods. You are responsible too. How? You vote for people who don’t consider your needs and theirs. If you are white you haven’t rescued “your” people from the ravages of the powerful. Example: West Virginia. You want to close the EPA while it has rescued poor white children from the mental retardation that comes from lead paint
      exposure. You might say, “why you talking to me? I didn’t have slaves!”
      You and every American benefits today from a U.S. Economy built on the backs of free labor by slaves. Without that labor we’d be a second rate country with modest armed forces.
      Now don’t believe me do some research and find out yourself.

      • And the backs of indentured servant English, Irish, and Scotts plus all them Dutch, Germans, more Irish, Italians, Russians, Hispanics, Asians, Indians, Vietnamese, Africans, Poles,….

        So, if you can identify yourself with some group, then the USA should owe you something? “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” JFK. Your life is what you make of it. I want you to succeed. I pity you making excuses. The world still wants to come here for the amazing opportunities. Please work and be part of it.

  13. Pokin the bear here…how many west Baltimore businesses rely on EBT cards to keep doors open?

    • Probably a lot more than those which rely on EBT cards to make sure their employees can eat enough to be able to work.

  14. This man has voted for people who have made it impossible to get a gun. The jews of New York state and new york city voted for people who have made it impossible to get a gun.

    The “slave states” of California Washington state and soon to be Oregon voted for people who made it very difficult if not impossible to get a gun.

    The “free states” of the south, Tennessee Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Texas etc, etc is where freedom is protected. I’m glad this new black gun owner left the slave state of California and moved to the free state of Kentucky. The “red necks” have been very helpful to this new black gun owner.

    The only way things will get better in slave states is when you can swallow your racist intolerant bigotry, and vote for white Christians.

    Show me an NRA A rated publicly elected open homosexual politician. Not Tom Ammiano who wrote a California law making citizens wait longer to get a gun. I wonder how many women straight or gay have been raped or killed because of the law this white homosexual man wrote. He has never supported freedom, never supported civil rights for gun owners. He and others like him step on the necks of people holding them down. Regulations are making it harder and harder in California to make a living or get a gun. And Tom Ammiano was also for a time a police officer.

    Show me a Jewish Democrat who is A rated by the NRA. Dianne Feinstein Chuck Shumer? Black and white voters in Baltimore created the world they are living in now. I think they are a lost cause. So are California and New York. But Washington State and Colorado voters are fighting
    back. Only the people inside these states and cities like Baltimore can change things.

    A lot of people need to take a strong dose of conservative personal responsibility for the people they have voted for. This is about firearms civil rights.

    • The trouble is that neither major party believes in all our rights any more. Democrats support one set of rights while despising others; Republicans support another set while despising others. And together they despise our privacy and security a la the Fourth, and ignore the principle behind the Third, that government should not have any standing armies for persecuting the people — for what else are all the militarized cops (especially the BATFE) but a standing army among us, aimed not at enemies foreign or domestic, but at we the people?

      • We don’t have any standing armies. A standing army lives in the homes of the people being controlled by them. Try definitions, here.

    • Because only white Christians could properly rule everyone else. Where have we heard talk like that before…..?

      Your post is so full of fail and bigotry I don’t know where to start.

      I am a white Christian conservative gun toting NRA member and I am embarrassed for you.

    • The only way things will get better in slave states is when you can swallow your racist intolerant bigotry, and vote for white Christians.
      Not to rain on your parade, but I can think of more than a few white Christians who were perfect little Fascists and Communists. The ultra conservative and ultra liberal Christian churches can get really statist as well.

      • I agree with you. The communist Rev Jim Wallace visitor to the Obama white house on many occasions is very much against firearms civil rights. So is the Rev Jessie Jackson and the Rev AL Sharpton.

  15. My “come to Jesus moment ” was realizing I was old and not the mean muscle-bound guy I once was. That and a rising crime rate/murders in my neighborhood. At least this guy gets it. Some never do…

    • Those on our side of this discussion have been touting people defending their own businesses since it happened successfully the first time, which I seem to recall was in the Watts riots back around 40 years ago. To my knowledge, not one time was a shot fired. I am wondering what the legal response is going to be if one of these owners has to actually kill someone. If he goes to prison, that defense will never work again. Never. OTOH, it seems to prove a lot of things vs claims of deterrence from OC in particular, the mobs regularly loot and burn buildings where there MIGHT BE armed defenders, but leave alone those where guys with ARs are visible on the roof.

  19. I know it’s obvious to folks who visit this site, but the time to get a gun and train with it is long before you need it!

    • My sentiments exactly. Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it!

  20. I’m sorry that it took a riot to learn something so fundamental as ‘you are responsible for your own wellbeing.’ That is a lesson he should have learned a long time ago.

    However, so long as urban dwellers like this store owner believe in the false security of The State they will be unpleasantly surprised when things like these riots happen.

    • “I’m sorry that it took a riot to learn something so fundamental as ‘you are responsible for your own wellbeing.”

      The data point making everyone aware of local governments unkept promise, un-delivered. To make a business owner purchase licenses, pay taxes for police & fire, then ordered by that government, for those entries stand down allowing the city to burn is a complete betrayal to the foundation of the community.

      • Well, yeah, but if I am a politician, I can definitely see the overall societal benefit of letting your business burn to the ground, if it loses me your vote and wins me hundreds. I expect it would offend my honor, if I had any.

  21. I’m sorry you lost your business, buddy. I am happy you and your niece made it out of there. Best of luck with your journey from here. I hope you can obtain that gun. Remember, just because you have a gun doesn’t automate make you safer. I suggest proper training and lots of practice. Good luck and stay safe!

    #HopingToBeTheCommenterOneMillion

    • Hey! I’m a (former) jet jock who has definitely grown chunky, are we related?

  22. Given his apparent ethnicity, I’m pretty sure that the irony of his experience’s close relationship to “Kristallnacht” would be completely lost on him. I’m also pretty certain Baltimore’s august mayor is equally clueless about how close her initial justifications for calling off the police were to that earlier time. Those who are ignorant of history . . .

  23. He won’t need a CCW to buy a gun he keeps at his shop. I’d suggest a shotgun.

  25. A gun? What does he think a gun is going to do for his skyrocketing insurance rates? Or his plummeting property value? He would be better served by leaving the city to the animals and relocating to a new city. Then buy a gun.

  27. I hope that the subjects in Maryland not only find ways to arms themselves, but also become very politically vocal to stop the state from restricting their freedoms.

  29. Gee, didn’t the black rioters burn down the Italian American pizza parlor in Do The Right Thing?

  31. Interesting video for 2 reasons, 1 is the cops not helping and saying to stay inside. The other is his attacker, a 14 year old girl inspired him to want a gun. The left would call him a pu$$y but I call it a man gaining common sense.

  32. If I lived in a socialist city state and could legally buy one firearm, it would be a shotgun, 12 gauge loaded with 2 3/4 00 buck. Even here, far enough out from the socialist ant hills, (Houston/Austin/Dallas-Fort Worth, yes, Texas has it’s socialist centers too, perhaps not as bad as some, yet.) I have a pistol and a shotgun. I buy more ammo for the shotgun than I do my pistol. I don’t shoot for fun, I do shoot to check sights, fit, form, and function of both firearms ever now and then. The pistol is convenient, portable, can be invisible if need be, for general purpose use. The shotgun is for serious business, like repelling boarders. The van has sliding side doors, shotgun on floor on the driver’s side. If I had to come out of the van shooting the pistol, it would be buying time to open that sliding door, and then doo-doo would be flung. (Actually, I would use whatever gear, forward or reverse, that would get me the hell out of there first.) Buying a “gun” does not make you safe, knowing how to use it can.

    • Yes. One gun to rule them all. Close up 00buck-slugs for up to 100yards(or 300 if you’re Jerry Michulek) LOL. And bird shot for bird hunting!

  34. Heard on NPR* (Yeah I know) that “over 200 local businesses were destroyed, many of them minority owned and several without insurance.” That just makes me sad.

    *Also heard on NPR today, was a defensive gun use! A CHL carrier stepped in to thwart an attempted carjacking of a woman. There was almost no editorializing, a real milestone for NPR.

  35. Thanks to that POS mayor productive people lose what they created and kids that are brought up without disipline just want to destroy. Buy a gun to protect yourself, rebuild, be prepared for this to happen again. Things are only going to get worse.

    • Band together and advise the city that you will NOT rebuild until you are allowed to arm yourselves and defend your property with deadly force, in writing, a law. Otherwise take your insurance money and start your business elsewhere.

  36. I know a few “born again” former Antis, who after watching the news, decided it might be time to buy a gun.

  37. what a shocking response. im going to take care of myself and figure out the best way to do that.

  38. Better late than never. I didn’t get my first firearm until I was 28 but nothing bad had to happen to me first.

  39. Since we are discussing a business owner in Baltimore :

    He already can carry in his place of business.

    Business owners ARE one of the privledged classes that CAN commonly get a Carry Permit. However it will be restricted to between home and business , and taking deposits to the bank. ( Some types of business also while making business related transactions , but probably not so much for a pizza restraunt. Not going to help him for protecting himself/ family in everyday activities.

    If he doesn’t already own a handgun , he will first need a Handgun Qualification License nefore purchasing one.

    Yes , Md does have an active and vocal 2A community , but with one Party rule ( Md is the most one sided electorate of any state in the country ) and severely gerrmandered Districts the lock of the far left even for Democrats is essentially impossable to break.

    • Can that business owner then use that firearm (deadly force) to defend his property? Or would he be going to prison for the rest of his life, since he had obviously planned that defense, thus murder was 1st degree?

  40. Thankfully the man was not hurt, and is now a lot smarter having survived this nightmare. He knows he is soley responsible for his own safety and that of his family. That is the same reason I chose a few years ago to get a firearm. I am not going to put my trust in the police who may be getting orders from the Mayor to stand down. No sir, not going to happen!

  41. Funny how the left minded never see the light until it hits them upside the head. But, as we already know, by then it’s already too late.

  42. Glad someone has some common sense, but it’s probably too late. It’s a shame that it takes events like this to make people understand why they need guns for self defense.

  45. I’m glad he made the choice, but I wish for his livelihoods sake, he would have done so sooner.

Comments are closed.