Dave Workman, editor in chief of GunMag.com, tells AFN more people are fighting back because they can’t ignore the crimes anymore.
“People have watched as the defund-the-police movement has had an effect on police agencies and police manpower across the country,” he observes. “They are paying more attention to rising crime rates.”
Thanks largely to camera phones and social media, the public is witnessing crimes with a mouse click. In footage from July in Las Vegas, Walmart employees successfully wrestled a shopping cart crammed with groceries from thieves who were brazenly attempting to escape with the merchandise. A familiar scene is smash-and-grab crimes in which thieves knock out a car window and take what’s inside, which happened August 2 to a CNN crew in Oakland, California.
"If you’re here keeping track, this is the 3rd time my CNN rented car has been broken into in the Bay Area in the last year,” Kyung Lah, a CNN national correspondent, wrote on Twitter.
Lah, who was in Oakland to record a news segment on crime there, said the rental car company told her 27 automobiles, about 10% of the total rentals for the day, had been broken into by thieves.
In one of the newest videos, filmed by a customer in Stockton, California, Sikh store owners at a 7-Eleven fought and beat a man who was stealing merchandise right in front of them. The man, in fact, was allegedly returning to steal yet again after walking out untouched in the past but it appeared their patience had finally worn thin.
"I believe [the store owners] were frustrated, emotions was high, but I believe they did was courageous and did the right thing,” Louis Benton, who filmed the incident, told Fox News.
Benton, a regular customer at the store, told Fox News thieves repeatedly meet at the front door of the store then enter and rob it. He has personally watched robberies take place in the store, he said, and his own family’s clothing business in Stockton was robbed a week after it opened.
Regarding the viral video of the 7-Eleven confrontation, Workman tells AFN he believes the public is cheering for the store owners.
“That video, I think, is serving as kind of an inspiration to people that, hey, somebody is willing to fight back,” he says.
