by Sometimes the tweets from Shannon Watts of Everytown Moms for Illegal Mayors cause me to just shake my head. We know she is trying to shake down the Kroger chain of stores because they won’t kow-tow to her regarding lawful carry of firearms in their stores. This Kroger policy extends to their subsidiaries such as the Harris Teeter grocery chain here in North Carolina.
As part of Watts’ shake down efforts, she sends out tweets like the one below in the hopes that her unthinking minions will uncritically re-tweet it.
Another armed robbery at @Kroger owned @HarrisTeeter #NorthCarolina http://t.co/AsLUxiYs4i @MomsDemand #gunsense #GroceriesNotGuns
— Shannon (@shannonrwatts) November 17, 2014
Reading the linked story at NBC Charlotte, one finds that a man armed with a firearm and a crowbar robbed a Charlotte Harris Teeter in the pre-dawn hours of Monday. The armed robber forced some employees back into the store at gunpoint. He then forced one employee and a witness to smash a jewelry display and put the jewelry into a bag with the threat of shooting another employee. The robber then escaped with the jewelry.
Under North Carolina criminal law, this is a violation of § 14-87 (Robbery with firearms or other dangerous weapons) which is a Class D felony. The robber’s actions of forcing the people back into the store meets the state’s definition of kidnapping which, since no one was reported injured, is a Class E felony. We don’t know if the armed robber was a felon. If he was, he would be in violation of both Federal and NC law concerning being a felon in possession of a firearm. And this is just a start. Looking at sentencing guidelines, the robber is looking at a minimum of five years for the armed robbery and two years for the kidnapping offense if this was his first brush with the law.
Armed robbery is a crime. It has nothing to do with the lawful carry of a firearm in a grocery store to protect oneself and one’s family against harm. Posting this Harris Teeter grocery store against legal carry would only add one more charge to the armed robber’s long list of crimes and would leave a whole lot of other people defenseless.
Perhaps since the criminal used a crowbar in the commission of his crimes, we now need #Crowbar Sense. It is as logical as #gunsense.