Don't do the crime, or how not to be a crook in one easy lesson

As recent events in Florida clearly show, the education and training of young thugs in this our Great Republic is woefully adequate and, as so many things do these days, reflects poorly on the American system of education as a whole. To bring those of you who may not have heard about the Florida misadventure up to date, two young men entered an Internet café in Ocala, Florida a few days ago with the intention of robbing said establishment. They entered the café brandishing an unloaded pistol and demanded that the patrons empty their pockets and that the management open the cash register. At this point, an elderly gentleman sitting in the rear of the café produced a pistol of his own and began shooting. Our two young stalwarts, nonplussed at this turn of events, promptly turned tail and ran out of the café, tripping over themselves as they tried to escape the old geezer’s fusillade. This, it seems, was an unexpected and altogether surprising turn of events for both of these lads; after his arrest, one of these Jesse James’ manqués opined that maybe he should find some other line of endeavor, complained that the old man kept shooting at him even when he was down on the floor (he was still holding the pistol he came in with, apparently), and that he and his partner did not expect that anyone in the café would be armed. Knowing this beforehand, he believed, would have spared him the indignity of having the old man shoot him in the backside.

It is this sort of ignominious disaster that makes John Q. Public wonder what kind of vocational guidance the criminal classes are getting in our schools these days. Clearly, these two young men did not read the vocational literature on armed robbery, which is quite extensive in both print and Internet form, and is very clear that one of the occupational hazards that armed robbers face as they attempt to practice their trade is getting shot by the people they are robbing, and if not by them, then by the police. That the schools allowed these young unfortunates to commence a life of crime without even telling them that buying a good pair of bulletproof jockey shorts would be a wise investment in their futures is nothing less than educational malpractice of the worst sort.

Furthermore, it beggars the imagination that no one in a position of authority informed these two ignorant souls that Florida is a concealed carry state; that is, a state where a citizen in possession of a concealed carry permit may arm himself with a pistol and conceal the fact that he is packing heat from the public. These two young doofuses simply ran into the café and expected everyone to be unarmed, an assumption that may be true in, for instance, Great Britain, but is almost dangerously delusional in any state of the Old Confederacy. They would not have made such a ridiculous assumption if the schools had done their jobs and taught them how to commit an armed robbery properly in the first place. It was only their great good fortune that the gentleman with the concealed carry permit was a senior citizen whose aim was not very good; one shudders to think what would have happened if instead of an old man, the two young men faced an off-duty police officer or a Marine on leave trying to e-mail his friends in Afghanistan. Their attempts to break into the armed robbery field would have ended before they had a chance to go for a payroll or a bank.

Frankly, I blame all of this on the American system of education. A system that the public cannot trust to teach students to read and write correctly can hardly be trusted with the training of young criminals. There are a few success stories, of course; the large population of drug dealers in this country shows that the schools can teach if they are motivated to do so, but except for narcotics trafficking and investment banking, there seems to be little interest in giving young people the training and skills necessary to advance a criminal career. I believe that our wounded young tyro is correct when he said that he would have to rethink his life. Given that the schools have left him unprepared for a life of crime, I think it advisable that he look into other, perhaps more remunerative lines of endeavor, such as plastic surgery, pineapple farming, or selling term life insurance to mimes. None of these fields involves gunplay of any sort, with the occasional exception of plastic surgery, and are all certainly easier on the practitioner’s buttocks than armed robbery is.