Auto Repair Shop Owner Fights Back Against Would-Be Robber

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA — A Philadelphia auto repair shop owner was able to successfully defend his life and his business from an armed robber. The robber entered his shop and tried to stick him up. He pulled his own gun and shot the man three times.

According to FOX News 29, the robber was taken to the hospital in critical but stable condition. He is expected to be charged with the attempted robbery after he gets out of the hospital.

Sometimes I’m just amazed how it seems some people can take three bullets and survive and others get winged once in the leg and die at the scene. I did an interesting article awhile back explaining the logic of always shooting for center of mass.

The goal, obviously, isn’t to kill the person attacking you but to neutralize him. Using deadly force in of itself opens up death as a possibility but in a legal sense, it’s not the goal. But what’s amazing is that in so many of these cases, we see bad guys take multiple rounds and still run several blocks, hop into a getaway vehicle, and gain some serious distance before realizing that their wounds are too serious for a simple band-aid and some aspirin.

The weird part is that, even though this particular story doesn’t illustrate this, the human body must be capable of some amazing things to be able to take so many wound channels and still keep operating.

As I touched upon in that previously mentioned article, there’s a lot of space in the body for bullets to pass through without seriously affecting function. It’s possible to get hit multiple times in the torso and still maintain essential systems such as respiration and circulation.

Here’s where that falls apart: time.

After a round penetrates the body, it creates a wound channel. The body then attempts to close off that wound channel through inflammation. The inflamed area stays at a higher temperature than the body in an attempt to burn out any foreign bacteria or objects. This can turn into a real mess if left unattended.

The second someone goes into a hospital with a gunshot wound, so long as no major organ systems were hit or obstructed, he stands a good shot at survival. At a hospital, physicians can control the level of inflammation to ensure it does not end up causing more damage to the rest of the body. They can also remove any foreign bodies (pieces of lead, dirt, debris) from the wound channel. Oh, and the regular course of antibiotics to ensure infection doesn’t end up claiming the wounded person.

Modern medicine is directly the reason why fatalities related to gunshot-related injuries are minimal in comparison to the obvious grievous extent of injury. It’s no accident. And bad guys really don’t take that into account when they start committing a crime but it’s likely the only factor saving them from a long, anguish-filled decline to death.

The bright side of this is good guys also get the same treatment. And bad guys get to live long enough to see the judge and get to spend some quality time inside a correctional facility.