A clerk at a Georgia convenience store is the latest example of a clerk successfully using a firearm in self-defense while at work. The Douglasville store is located in a bit of a bad neighborhood, apparently, so the clerk on duty was ready when a man entered the store with a gun.

A store clerk shot an armed robber at a Douglasville, Ga., Chevron gas station.

Located at 6590 E. Broad St./Bankhead Highway, the store clerk called 911 and told the dispatcher that the suspect pointed a handgun at him. The store clerk retrieved his own gun and shot the suspect inside the convenience store.

When officers arrived on the scene, they found the armed robbery suspect on the ground in front of the store, suffering from a single gunshot wound.

Regular customer, Darrell Haley, said he worried about the clerk he sees every day, with a smile, from behind the counter.

“The guy just come [sic] in like five minutes after I walked out; walked in with a gun–brandished a gun, said he was going to rob the place. [The clerk] pulled his and shot first. You know, self-defense,” Haley said, who lives just down the road from the gas station.

“Next thing I know the whole parking lot is lit up with cop cars, detective’s cars, everything–guy laying on the ground shot and it just worried me that it was my buddy.”

The clerk was uninjured. The suspect, 19-year-old Jailateef Williams, died at the hospital a couple of days later.

It doesn’t appear the clerk has been terminated, which is a nice change of pace. If he has, it hasn’t broken on the news yet, and it seems likely that it would have. After all, he appears to have been well-liked by the customers, with more than one referring to him as a buddy. Someone would have said something.

But this is yet another case where a clerk has been forced to defend themselves from an armed attacker. In fact, the idea of an armed attacker is so common that more than a few refer to convenience stores as “Stop-n-Robs,” a play on the name of many such places that use the “-n-” thing in their name and the activities such places are known for.

However, for whatever reason, many such places will not allow their clerks to carry their lawfully owned weapons for personal defense, a policy that may well have resulted in numerous deaths. How many were killed at work because they didn’t dare violate store policy?

The truth is that guns save lives. Armed citizens lawfully using their firearms to defend themselves or others keep people safe and they always have. Further, they always will.

It’s time store policies and anything driving them to change. Failing to do so will result in countless more deaths as innocent clerks will be murdered in cold blood because they’re too afraid of losing their job to carry a firearm in defiance of store policy.

Maybe it’s time for families to sue these stores when disarmed loved ones are shot while at work. Maybe that will change the underlying problems.