Gamblers Give Gun Wielding Goons Grief

It appears there’s a new approach to armed robbery spreading across Europe from the betting shops of Scotland to the chemists of Spain.

Being a victim of crime can be a traumatic experience, leaving one at a loss, and not just because of deprivation of property or money, it can feel as if the pillars of your world have been irrevocably shaken, the security you take for granted torn away. However these days, perhaps as one of a number of smart strategies that evolution bestows upon us as a species, it would seem we have begun to develop a new tactic for dealing with circumstances where we are brought face to face with the criminality of our age.

In two separate examples this week, one in Glasgow, Scotland, one in Seville, Spain, the reaction from those being set upon by armed criminals was not to cower in fear, soil their underwear and submit to instructions of the “gimmie the money” variety, but instead to pointblank refuse to cooperate. In both cases this refusal to be cowed by gun waving thugs left the criminals, in both, cases with no other recourse than to leave the scene of the crime empty handed.

In Glasgow it was a branch of the bookmakers Ladbrokes that had attracted the attention of a pair of armed robbers who marched in at 9pm on November fifth wearing white paper suits and black balaclavas (criminals apparently having no sense of colour coordination) only to find waving a firearm about making demands doesn’t impress the average Glaswegian gambler. Indeed whilst staff barely reacted to this interruption of the evening’s business it was the punters who challenged the criminals and forced them to re-evaluate their circumstance and beat a hasty retreat as failures.

In Seville a pharmacy was targeted by an armed robber who demanded money from staff having jumped a queue of customers to do so. Neither of the staff on duty at time seemed willing to comply with one even pushing the gun in his face aside and telling the criminal he wasn’t going to get any money from them. We at Blackjackchamp.com applaud both of these examples of not surrendering to circumstance and particular to the customers in the pharmacy who simply ignored the fool with the gun, which is just slightly more cool than challenging them a la Glasgow.