Carjackings are one of those crimes that are designed to catch people unaware. You can’t necessarily avoid rough parts of town and the traffic laws mean you may have to stop in those parts of town. Even if you lock your doors, a gun in the window will dissuade most people from doing anything but complying.

In our larger cities, carjacking is even more common than in smaller communities, obviously. One place where it’s bad is Philadelphia.

But sometimes, the bad guys pick the wrong targets, even in Philly.

An attempted carjacking targeting an off-duty Philadelphia police officer is under investigation as officials say the crime has increased in the city over the past two years. This happened in the Ogontz neighborhood around 11:30 Wednesday night.

The department said the officer’s Chevy Malibu was rear-ended by a white Honda near Ogontz and Olney Avenues. The off-duty officer followed the car until it entered Lower Merion.

Police later found the Honda and two suspects in Overbrook.

This makes me giggle.

Yes, it’s a police officer as opposed to your standard armed citizen, but a good guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. The fact that they tried to carjack a cop just makes it funnier.

Carjacking is one of those crimes that many people carry a firearm to prevent. Yes, it’s just a car, but people get killed during carjackings. Other times, children get kidnapped during carjackings. If someone puts a gun in your face, you don’t really spend a lot of time trying to determine if he’s just after your car or not.

So, they carry a firearm to prevent it.

But some states don’t make it easy for folks to carry. They act like law-abiding citizens are the criminals while the criminals are doing things like jacking folks’ cars. It’s insane.

And let’s be clear, Philadelphia isn’t exactly a gun-friendly community. They don’t do more to restrict guns only because they can’t. Not as the legislature currently stands, but if they get half a chance, they’ll address this rise in carjackings by making it so you can’t resist a carjacking.

Makes perfect damn sense. </eye roll>

Luckily for everyone in Philadelphia, this numbnuts decided to carjack a police officer. Now they appear to be in custody and will hopefully have a good while in prison to contemplate their life choices. I doubt they’ll take advantage of it, of course, which is a shame, but they’ll have the opportunity nonetheless.

In the meantime, this is a good reminder for everyone else that anyone can find themselves as the victim or potential victim of a violent crime. This is a police officer we’re talking about here. If we’re to believe that police officers are a special breed when it comes to carrying a gun and dealing with crime, yet he was still nearly the victim of such a thing, then why would any of us assume we won’t be?

Carry your guns. Get training as to how to deal with such a situation. Prepare yourself in case you’re the next unlucky soul.