I always find it interesting that there is such fear about the store owners aspiring to be, as call you them, Rambos. I have met many of them, and they are nothing like Rambo. They are extremely hard-working people who work crazy hours to provide daily necessities to us. If one wants to be afraid, one should be more afraid of people lining up to get the latest Apple iPod. They are more prone to get violent than these store owners.
The other way to look at it is that this idea of store owners getting violent really comes out of the government's paternalistic approach to governing. The outcome, as we can see in David Chen's case, is a topsy-turvy result where the justice system simply does not bolster people's sense of confidence in our rule of law.
This idea of store owners being Rambo is really a bogeyman born out of an unease about a more activist citizenry that is a partner in public safety rather than dependent on the government for it. I would submit that it is actually healthy if we are going to have a culture shift in Canada where Canadians see themselves to be more active participants and in fact owners of their own community and responsible for its safety. Police can't do it alone. We've all seen that. How can the police show up in time to catch a shoplifter? It's not possible to do unless you put police in every store, and that's not possible either.
At the risk of stereotyping, I really want to point out that if you look at these store owners, most of them are new immigrants. They work so hard. They allow us to go and get milk at midnight, our kids to pick up candy after school, and our parents to pick up a newspaper on the weekends. If anything, they need our unwavering full support.