Citation

Wheeler T. Med. Sentin. 2000; 5(6): 202.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2000, Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Publisher Hacienda Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

By now it is an all too familiar nightmare. Violent armed robbers take over a restaurant, terrorizing employees and customers. The predators herd the hapless victims into a refrigerator with the intention of killing them. Shots are fired, and the gruesome disaster ends.

Wait. This isn't the story of a Wendy's restaurant in New York City last week. It is the eerily similar drama played out in a Shoney's restaurant in Anniston, Alabama in 1991. But this story had a just, if not exactly happy ending. That time, it was the criminals, not the good guys, who were shot.

In nearly identical scenarios --- the violent takeover of a restaurant by armed criminals --- one outcome was a hideous tragedy, and the other a triumph of courage. The difference in results was no accident. It was the logical conclusion of deliberate and widely divergent public policy in the two states where the crimes occurred.