One place you don’t see a lot of robbery attempts is at gun stores. I’m going to guess there’s a pretty good reason for that.

That’s not to say theft never happens. Not everything is behind the counter, after all, and shoplifting is likely to be something of an issue for any retail store.

But the theft of bigger-ticket items, much less the cash in the register, isn’t usually an issue.

Why? Because the guy behind the counter is armed.

A Livermore gun store owner shot a Redwood City man to death when he allegedly attempted to steal a firearm from the store, according to police. So far, it appears that the shooting was “a case of self-defense,” and the store owner will not be arrested for any crimes, the Livermore Police Department wrote Monday.

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LPD said the man had entered the store just before 2:30 p.m. Sunday and acted “suspicious.” He was wearing a mask, gloves, and a hood pulled over his head. “According to witness statements, he then attempted to rob the gun store by taking a firearm while armed with a hammer,” police wrote.

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“The gun store owner fired two rounds fatally wounding the man. The gun store owner is cooperating with the investigation and is not a suspect in a crime at this time. At this stage in the investigation, it appears that this was a case of self-defense,” the Livermore Police Department wrote.

Honestly, this level of stupidity was likely to be fatal sooner or later. I mean, he tried to rob a gun store with a hammer.

There were apparently five people in the store at the time of the incident, and under the circumstances, I can see why police are treating this as self-defense. After all, anyone crazy enough to try this kind of thing is just as likely to use that gun on the people in the store at the time.

When police arrived, though, they found the suspect lying there bleeding. By the time EMS got there, he was gone.

This was ballsy, to say the least, but the fatal nature of what he tried to do should at least serve as something of a warning to others who might try something similar.

Most of the time, when someone tries to rob a gun store, they have the sense to try and rob it at night when there’s no armed store owner standing there. They try to smash into the building, snatch what they can, then take off.

This guy, though, was brazen and, ultimately, stupid.

And the fact that this is being ruled as self-defense in California is particularly telling. It’s not like that’s a state known for respecting citizens’ rights on a lot of things, so if authorities there are calling it self-defense, then that’s significant.

Either way, this particular turdnugget will not be bothering anyone else. He won’t be taking this gun and using it on innocent people, hurting or killing others. Moreover, he won’t be committing crimes that will boost crime numbers and then be used to justify still more gun control–gun control he attempted to bypass when he tried to steal a gun from a gun store owner.