“Bear spray wielding thieves stormed into a Vancouver Apple Store just before closing on Monday, and hit approximately 40 people with the caustic spray before making off with an unknown quantity of iPods, iPads and laptops,” Tristin Hopper reports for The National Post.
“The attack occurred just before 7 p.m., as approximately 40 customers were in the store, according to a statement from Vancouver Police,” Hopper reports. “Five would need to be treated by paramedics for exposure to the chemical, whose active ingredient is derived from cayenne peppers.”
Hopper reports, “Nearby Vancouver Police K9 units were on scene moments after the attack. Although they were unable to find the three males suspects, they discovered a quantity of product discarded by the men as they made their escape. The trio reportedly fled by car. For more than one hour after the attack, the corridors of Oakridge Mall – which is Vancouver’s oldest – were still thick with the odour of the spray.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Maybe somebody should spray some of that stuff around Wall St.
Maybe dispense it with one of those aircraft they use to fight forest fires.
Not to be outdone, Microsoft immediately released a presser blaming their lackluster sales on Ballmer’s ‘bare’ spray…
They saw the WJ headline: Apple in bear territory
Ironically, the bear spray thieves did not steal anything from the Microsoft Surface kiosk adjacent to the Oakridge Apple Store
Sorry MDN, it only repels bears, NOT scat
Meanwhile Microsoft wishes to be able to report thieves rob a a Microsoft store in Laguna Beach, of an unquantifiable number of Slates, brandishing sharpened pencils. When sales staff were interviewed they stated, “We just didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”
Most likely they meant the thieves, as who would want to chase robbers from a Microsoft Store.
too bad Vancouver doesn’t allow conceal-carry, a .38 negates “bear spray” every time.
I’d rather be heavily seasoned with pepper spray, than shot dead at the Apple Store (‘tho friends would say “at least he died doing what he loved best”).
I don’t think you have grasped my post, so I will explain it for you: if the Good Guys ( shoppers) were armed with conceal-carry weapons, then the Bad Guys (the thieves with “bear spray”) would not have robbed or hurt anyone.
Get this: The Good Guys in Canada are all alive and the Bad Guys don’t usually have guns unless they smuggle them in from the US.
In the US, the huge number of gun toting ‘freedom lovers’ ensure that the Bad Guys shoot if they are remotely worried and there are many deaths or injuries.
Obaaaaaa-ma!
Are you C L U E L E S S ?
no Sheepboy, you are.
Get this: if you are a thug and thief and you enter an store or ANY store or home where the patrons/residents are “allowed” Second Amendment protection of their lives by being armed…would you actually consider robbing them by dousing them with “bear spray?” …Laverne and surely you are not that stupid.
It is odd that the US tops the world in deaths by gun and Canada has far fewer guns and guess what? Canada has far fewer deaths by gun than the US per capita.
Go almost anywhere in the world and you will find that with fewer guns, there are fewer deaths by gun. It makes you wonder. Do we Canadians need to pack more guns or less?
313c7ro : The United States does not top the world in deaths by guns. Fact. You certainly have your opinion as does botvinnik but don’t throw out statistics that most people believe might be accurate. That’s called scare tactics.
Also this just proves that violence exists no matter the apparatus used to administer it. Your analogy that countries with out guns have fewer gun deaths is a valid one if not purely academic. It also stands to reason that a country without cars has fewer automobile deaths.
What you fail to admit is that people kill people. Guns don’t kill people. Cars don’t kill people. A choice is made by someone to use an otherwise benign tool for evil purposes.
A doctor that only treats the symptoms may be successful some of the time, but a doctor that treats the cause will be successful all of the time. Which would you rather have working on you?
I’m replying to you here rather than below because reply isn’t an option once the comments get that nested. And I’m replying partly because I watched a YouTube video recently where a fact was mentioned that seemed incredible to me, so combined with your comment and that video I decided to do the research. The FBI maintains a Uniform Crime Reporting system in the US. Their report for 2011, detailing weapons involved in murders is kind of eye-opening, especially given the recent push to further strengthen the US laws around “assault weapons.” But to the data, in which I’m only interested in the totals, not the per-state numbers:
Total murders: 12,664
By Firearm: 8,583
By Handgun: 6,220
Rifles: 323
Shotgun: 356
Knives, etc.: 1,694
Other: 1,659
Hands, fists, feet, etc: 728
So in the US you are twice as likely to die at the hands or feet or getting pushed of/by someone than you are to die from either rifle shot or shotgun blast.
Full disclosure: The report also has a column called “Firearms (type unknown)” that carries a total of 1,684 murders. Granted my background in such matters is about 7 seasons of NCIS, but it would seem to me like 13% of the murders warrant more investigation!!
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-20
I understand botvinnik’s sentiment, though under the circumstances had I been carrying a concealed firearm I would not have used it. The situation as described did not warrant deadly force. People were not being seriously harmed, and apparently were not in danger of seriously being harmed. Some “stuff” was being stolen and nothing worth either my life, the lives of innocent bystanders or even the lowly criminals. In addition I would have been outnumbered. No desire to shoot lots of people over iPads. On top of that while they were using bear spray, there is no guarantee that none of them was carrying anything more lethal and my response might have escalated things. I would hope that a police officer under the same situation would use the same judgement. Nothing in that Apple Store is worth dying over, not even a 3.4GHz 27″ 3TB 32Gig of RAM iMac. ( Just got one.. hee her).
By the same token though, in a society where people are permitted to carry weapons, morons don’t march into an store with bear spray and steal things because they are not confident that everyone is unarmed.
When criminals have to face the possibility that we aren’t all just unarmed sheep for the picking, they find ways to make money that don’t involve armed confrontation.
Thank you for thoughtful response…my point was an armed private citizenry would have PREVENTED the robbery, simply because the criminals wouldn’t know who was carrying or not. Also, how can you know they were not armed with more than “bear spray?”…you cannot.
…congratulations on the iMac.
PS..I am coming over to your house tonight to steal your new iMac, I’ll be armed with “bear spray,” hope you don’t have a gun. Thanks in advance.
You guys are funny. Really. We don’t need your firearms here in Canada, though they somehow manage to get here.
Thelonious, much as I admire your input most of the time, even with your new iMac, (very nice btw), you are not paying attention.
Morons DO march into stores with weapons and rob stores like this in the USA all the time. Every. SIngle. Day.
Don’t make me cite incidents, do a google search based on the last 24 hours perhaps like I did.
While armed robberies are down slightly, they still are one of the most common means of taking something you want.
We know it’s super-difficult to understand that many people have no interest in owning a weapon, but guess what? Here at least, it’s true!
Your ‘arm everyone and let’s all be afraid’ doesn’t work. Period.
Take a look around you and at recent events for a hint.
We’re safer here. Out.
“I don’t think you have grasped my post, so I will explain it for you: if the Good Guys ( shoppers) were armed with conceal-carry weapons, then the Bad Guys (the thieves with “bear spray”) would not have robbed or hurt anyone.”
That was what I was getting at. If the Good Guys were armed with conceal-carry weapons, the “bad guys” would not have robbed the store with bear spray, they would have used guns, because they would know that many of the customers would be carrying guns themselves.
As makemineamac pointed out, armed robbery is not an anomaly. It happens every day. I’d just prefer my robbers to be armed with pepper spray.
In the UK police don’t even carry guns, therefore the “bad guys” don’t carry guns. It doesn’t mean the end of crime, but it does mean a de-escalation of firepower.
“In the UK police don’t even carry guns, therefore the “bad guys” don’t carry guns.”
boy, you sure have some mighty nice bad guys in Limeyland.
“peace in our time.”
http://www.humanevents.com/2012/12/15/gun-crime-soars-in-england-by-35-where-guns-are-banned/
New data out from the UK, where guns are banned, shows gun crime has soared by 35 percent.
The Government’s latest crime figures were condemned as “truly terrible” by the Tories today as it emerged that gun crime in England and Wales soared by 35% last year.
Criminals used handguns in 46% more offences, Home Office statistics revealed.
Firearms were used in 9,974 recorded crimes in the 12 months to last April, up from 7,362.
It was the fourth consecutive year to see a rise and there were more than 2,200 more gun crimes last year than the previous peak in 1993.
Canadian armed robbery, eh?
Because the only thing that will stop a bad guy with bear spray is a good guy with a gun. Or a bear.
Just wait until the most dangerous job would be to work in Apple Store
Well, I’m not a crazed, guns rights advocate like some other Americans, and I believe in reasonable gun control laws, even in a society that refuses to incarcerate all murders for life, crooks for keeps, or the mentally unstable, but I also understand the American love affair with guns. After all, we revolted against unfair British rule and used guns to assert our rights. Complacent Canadians did not. We relied on guns to protect ourselves as we settled the Wild West, and many of us even used personally-owned guns to help launch the Civil War — and the settle it by banning the inequities and feeble-minded slavery practices that led to it. More importantly, I saw the original, Red Dawn movie and know what has to be done if we’re ever invaded by Cuba, Nicaragua and Russia (Go Wolverines)! So, I wouldn’t really expect Canadians to fully understand an American’s special relationship with guns. That said, if you want us to put aside our guns, fair enough. However (and this is the conflicted part of my thinking), don’t expect us to come running the next time Mother England is attacked and under siege by a madman. Call the French. In other words, you can’t have it both ways. The culture that values guns is the same culture that produces citizens willing to fight and lay down their lives to protect their values — and their allies. We’re Americans. For better or worse, that means something very special.
Wow. Rewrite history much?
And is that what you did, ‘settle’ the wild west? Really? And you did it with guns, right? And it was ‘unsettled’ before was it? According to who exactly? Right? Do you get it?
We’re hardly complacent my friend, we burned your White House down once, did you know that?
Most of my American friends do not share this ‘love affair’ you speak of with guns.
And Americans are special, they don’t need guns to make that so.