I wonder how the pizza man carried his gun. The original link says he has a 'valid handgun permit', but what kind?

Apparently, 'Iowa is a "may issue" state for a carry and conceal weapon (CCW) permit. The issuing authority is the local county sheriff, but it is difficult to get a CCW permit in Iowa.' You have to 'Demonstrate a need for a CCW permit. You may be a state employee who is required to be armed or a non-resident with a threat to themselves or a family member. A local law enforcement agency must verify that the threat is viable.'

I guess this means that either Des Moines cops think that pizza delivery people should carry concealed weapons, or the delivery guy carried his gun openly (maybe on top of the pizza box).

If it was concealed, then how? Surely not just stuffed into a pocket. Did the guy have some kind of quick-draw holster? Was he delivering pizza dressed like Dirty Harry, instead of the (tucked in) Pizza Hut shirt?


How to Get a Permit to Carry a Concealed Weapon in Iowa
Concealment holsters 101

Quotes from LR's links (with my comments after)

1. "All I can say is that, in the late night hours, these suspects entered the business and immediately shot the victims and robbed the place of $1500," said Lieutenant Richard Peavey of the Terrell Police Department (Nothing to do with robbing drivers)

2. The robbery suspect then entered through the front door and killed Estrada. (Nothing to do with robbing drivers)

3. Before she could respond, a man wearing a ski mask and crouched close to the ground sprayed her with a fire extinguisher. (Driver robbed by man armed with deadly fire extinguisher. Arm drivers with bigger fire extinguishers?)

4. Pizza Hut Refuses to deliver to my neighborhood based on race and class! (No robbery discussed, but the implication is that Pizza Hut will not deliver because of the chance of a robbery in the neighborhood.)

5. Ardmore Police need your help in finding a man who robbed a pizza delivery man at gunpoint on Monday night just before eleven o'clock on the 400 block of H-Street Northwest. (This is the first link that actually deals with a driver robbed at gunpoint. 1/5)

6. A pizza delivery driver (Ronald B. Honeycutt,) who fatally shot a man he said brandished a gun and tried to rob him was fired from his job and could face criminal charges. (Second link dealing with armeed robbery of driver. 2/6)

7. Ronald B. Honeycutt, 38, who has a permit to carry a concealed weapon, says he's been delivering pizzas for 20 years and has always packed heat on the job. (Same incident as #6. 2/7)

8. Police arrested the third of four suspects who allegedly tortured a pizza delivery driver they mistakenly believed was a Muslim.

According to the Associated Press, delivery driver Saurabh Bhalerao, 24, was attacked on June 21 while delivering a pizza. (See related story One arrested, others sought, in kidnapping, torture of pizza delivery driver.)

The suspects originally intended to rob Bhalerao but began beating and burning him with cigarettes when they assumed he was a Muslim. Despite Bhalerao's explanation that he is a Hindu, the men continued beating the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth graduate student. (No mention of a weapon used at the time of the attempted robbery. A knife was used later. 2/8)

9. "...found his father shot to death late Friday night after he failed to return from a pizza delivery." (No mention in article of robbery. 3/9?)

10. Pizza delivery driver murdered in botched robbery (4/10)

11. A man suspected of robbing pizza delivery drivers was shot and killed on the night of June 12 by a Richmond police officer posing as a pizzeria worker.(Driver not involved. Decoy police shot and killed suspect. No indication a driver would have been shot.4/11)

12. A Papa John's delivery driver was attacked and robbed on June 11 after delivering a pizza to an unoccupied apartment.

According to the Greenville News, the driver was knocked unconscious at about 11 p.m. When he woke up, his cash and cell phone were gone. (No weapon mentioned. 4/12)

13. RISTOL, Ct. -- Pizza delivery driver Carl Ristow had a bad feeling about a car that followed him during a run on the night of June 9.

According to the Hartford Courant, the vehicle tailed Ristow for several blocks before pulling behind him as he parked in the driveway of his delivery destination. When Ristow stepped out of his car, two men got out of the car behind him and asked what Ristow called "stupid questions" about where he worked.

As one man circled him, he turned to look at him and was punched by the other and knocked to the ground. The man then began kicking him in the face. (No mention of either a weapon or an attempted robbery. 4/13)

14. As he turned to scale some stairs, someone came up behind him and told him not to move. The driver turned to see a man pointing a black handgun at him, handed over his cash and cell phone. He then rushed back to the pizza store and called 911. (5/14)

So just over one-third of LR's links had any real bearing on what we are discussing. Smoke and mirrors don't work, LR. The Galtian approach of inundating with links fails when the links are checked.

By the way, #4 seems to indicate that your comment about Pizza Hut caring "more of public perception than they do the life of their employees" is, uh, just plain wrong.

I guess the great thing is that the customer has a choice. If you want to, you can use a macho pizza company which will send a ninja deliverer zig-zagging from bush to bush - gun on a hair trigger - up to your door to flip the pizza through your window when you least expect it, or you can choose just the regular service from Pizza Hut, if you like.

DG, Once again you try to strike out by accusing me of "smoke & mirrors". Nothing could be further from the truth.

I maintain if a delivery person wants the option of carrying a weapon, gun, knife, fire extinguisher, they should have the choice to do so.

It's a damn shame that a profession such as a pizza delivery person has to end up being so much potential for danger. When a company stipulates policy forbidding a person the right of the means to protect themselves, something is seriously wrong, if not down right immoral.

I will say this. Should a delivery person choose carrying a gun, they should be trained & properly licensed by their local laws to do so. But they should not be restricted by employer policy to carry their weapon of choice.

quote:

Originally posted by newnickname:
I guess the great thing is that the customer has a choice. If you want to, you can use a macho pizza company which will send a ninja deliverer zig-zagging from bush to bush - gun on a hair trigger - up to your door to flip the pizza through your window when you least expect it, or you can choose just the regular service from Pizza Hut, if you like.

Picturing that is just too funny, NNN. The pizza delvery person in the sleepy town where I live, is in her mid 60s with a blue rinse and a Newfoundland accent. I can't imagine she carries a concealed weapon.

Lighteningrodd, if you were in business, wouldn't you expect employees to follow company policy? Wouldn't your employees have a choice to make a living elsewhere, if they didn't like the terms of employment you offered?

quote:

Originally posted by dance girl:

quote:

Originally posted by newnickname:
I guess the great thing is that the customer has a choice. If you want to, you can use a macho pizza company which will send a ninja deliverer zig-zagging from bush to bush - gun on a hair trigger - up to your door to flip the pizza through your window when you least expect it, or you can choose just the regular service from Pizza Hut, if you like.

Picturing that is just too funny, NNN. The pizza delvery person in the sleepy town where I live, is in her mid 60s with a blue rinse and a Newfoundland accent. I can't imagine she carries a concealed weapon.

Lighteningrodd, if you were in business, wouldn't you expect employees to follow company policy? Wouldn't your employees have a choice to make a living elsewhere, if they didn't like the terms of employment you offered?

You might be surprised what that 60-something year old lady might be packing around. I can remember years ago when my 80-something year old, Grandmother lived alone. She made the comment..."I've got a shot gun in the house and I know how to use it!!!"

If I had a business, you better believe I would expect my employees to abide by the rules. But an employer also has to be considerate of their employees as well. If an employee considers himself to be in a life threatening position where being armed would be an advantage, then so be it. I certainly will not deny a person the right to defend themselves.

Pizza Hut has had delivery personnel attacked & killed on their deliveries. Obviously they are considered easy targets. If more pizza delivery personnel were armed with a gun, there would be less attacks by robbers. Because the robbers certainly don't want to get killed either.

"When a company stipulates policy forbidding a person the right of the means to protect themselves, something is seriously wrong, if not down right immoral."

Daycare centers, elementary, schools, middle schools, high schools - Give all the employees guns! Do like Archie says. Let the bad guys take their chances like everybody else. Why stop at employees? Let the honor roll students bring weapons, too. After all, the law says they must attend school. the least we can do is arm them.

Have you chosen not to answer my questions about proof? You make claims, but you don't seem to produce any evidence. Where is your proof that things will be safer if drivers have guns?

quote:

If more pizza delivery personnel were armed with a gun, there would be less attacks by robbers.

Really? First of all, carrying a gun would make it look like delivery people had something worth stealing, and secondly, it might mean would-be robbers simply shooting without warning, for example as the pizza guy walked up to the door. The man from the case in question has maybe made things more dangerous, not less, for others in his line of work.

There are no armed guards in UK banks, but that doesn't mean hugely more bank robberies than in the US. Just about anyone in the US might be carrying a gun, which should be a deterrent to assailants according to the 'armed pizza delivery' theory, but the US hardly enjoys the reputation of a country where muggings and personal assaults are rare.

The answer to violent crime lies somewhere other than in arming everyone.

LR, you are right. The delivery driver has the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

Pizza Hut also has the right to set a policy not to bear arms, and to fire the driver if the policy is violated.

------------------

As a side note, a local Pizza Hut competitor used to have a manager who set up a drug delivery operation at the store. Drivers would deliver the contraband in pizza boxes. I suspect that manager allowed those drivers to carry weapons, with or without a permit. This may be a reach, but my guess is that this violated company policy.

Yeah, Fuse, but I bet that guy's pizzas cost a bit more.

Hard to compare Canadian crime rate and the USA crime rate. The population has always been 10 times higher in the USA .
The rate of property crime in the US and Canada are roughly on par. However, historically, the violent crime rate in Canada has been lower than the US and this continues to be the case.
Only one third of Canadian murders involve firearms. The two biggest provinces, Ontario and Quebec have had a long history of strict gun controls. I personnaly think that the US Amendment about firearms is past due and should be updated.

We're in 2008 not in 1858. Moving forward please!

quote:

Originally posted by mozart56:
Only one third of Canadian murders involve firearms. ........

We're in 2008 not in 1858. Moving forward please!

Britain doesn't compare either. We really ought to allow everyone to have a gun to protect themselves from being shot.As it is the pizza man here would be serving a minimum of 5 years' jail for having the firearm at all, even at home. The minimum is not imposed in exceptional cases but those are cases where e.g. the firearm was legal and licensed but the licence had expired and was due for renewal. A handgun is not legal.

In England and Wales (about 53 million population) we have the lowest number of homicides involving guns in ten years but that's still 49 fatal shootings last year. A really high number was in 04/05 when there were 78 but the trend, if any can be established on such numbers, is downwards.That's about 8 per cent of homicides e.g there were 50 gun killings out of 765 homicides in 05/06.

Just think how low the figures would be if we followed LR and armed our citizens lest they were shot ! We might have to arm more than the c 6,000 police here who are authorized to carry a firearm if required.

quote:

Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
"When a company stipulates policy forbidding a person the right of the means to protect themselves, something is seriously wrong, if not down right immoral."

Daycare centers, elementary, schools, middle schools, high schools - Give all the employees guns! Do like Archie says. Let the bad guys take their chances like everybody else. Why stop at employees? Let the honor roll students bring weapons, too. After all, the law says they must attend school. the least we can do is arm them.

Have you chosen not to answer my questions about proof? You make claims, but you don't seem to produce any evidence. Where is your proof that things will be safer if drivers have guns?

And you are demanding "proof" from me??? Now tell me something DG...what proof do you have to back up YOUR claims??? What proof do you have that an unarmed delivery person will still be alive after the robbery. How do you know the delivery driver will leave the scene alive & unharmed???

What's to say the robber doesn't get PO'd because all the delivery person can come up with is $20 & some change. What's to say the robber is not to blow his ass away or beat the living daylights out of them with a baseball bat. So before you demand proof from me, you need to back up your own position. And you cannot do it. Because all of this is up for grabs. If the deliverer is armed at least (s)he has a chance.

As for the schools...I had a friend who lived in California several years ago. For a while she was a teacher in an inner city school. She talked about how bad it was. So bad they kept armed guards in the classroom in which she taught.

quote:

Because all of this is up for grabs. If the deliverer is armed at least (s)he has a chance.

a chance of losing $20, one or more pizzas, and his firearms!IMHO. Of course I can't offer proof.

Domino's alone delivers more than 200 million pizzas a year. (New York Times) Using an average (admittedly a high one), of 3 pies per delivery, that means that Domino's makes about 70 million deliveries a year. Guessing that all the other national chains, small chains, and single units deliver about half that amount, and we get 100,000,000 pizza deliveries a year. You linked to a rather small amount of driver deaths compared to 100 million deliveries. Just how many pizza driver deaths per year do you think there are out of 100 million deliveries? I think it is very safe to say that most drivers come back from their deliveries. I think saying that the vast majority of drivers come back completely unharmed. Your claims are completely baseless.

By the way, armed guards in a classroom is not the same thing as armed students or teachers. You do realize that, don't you?

quote:

Originally posted by frankvan:

quote:

Because all of this is up for grabs. If the deliverer is armed at least (s)he has a chance.

a chance of losing $20, one or more pizzas, and his firearms!IMHO. Of course I can't offer proof.

So we are worried about one firearm??? What about the other firearms the criminal already possesses...

So we would rather disarm the law biding citizens of their protection rather than take a chance they might lose their gun...

The criminals will get fire arms reguardless.

Does anyone else notice that LR ignores posts which he can't refute, even ones refuting his claims?

By the way, LR, not all criminals posses firearms. I've even read of one using a fire extinguisher to rob a pizza delivery driver.

The biggest threat to pizza drivers (and everyone else )is the way these kids drive !

I dare say that if you jailed everyone who had a handgun you'd have more people in jail than out and nobody to deliver the pizzas to. Heaven knows why our criminals don't all carry guns.It's so obvious isn't it? Here we are all unarmed and defenceless, sitting ducks,and, if LR is right, our criminals would have a field day. It's very sporting of them, considering the premiss that 'criminals can always get guns' whereas the law abiding can't.

quote:

Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
Does anyone else notice that LR ignores posts which he can't refute, even ones refuting his claims?

By the way, LR, not all criminals posses firearms. I've even read of one using a fire extinguisher to rob a pizza delivery driver.

DG-I don't have all kinds of time like you do. I'm not in a position to stay on here 24 hours a day & answer every single comment that comes my way. But I have noticed you tend to ignore a few yourself.

Maybe Pizza Hut should supply their delivery people with fire extinguishers to protect themselves.