> At the same time, they are unwilling or unable to create an environment that is safe for the folks in the communities working or shopping there. One thing I

> At the same time, they are unwilling or unable to create an environment that is safe for the folks in the communities working or shopping there. One thing I'm curious about is the liability for having armed security guards. I'm operating under the assumption that unarmed security guards are unlikely to have a real impact on the armed robbery rate, so I'm assuming that armed guards are what we're discussing here. Quick Googling says Dollar General generates $2.3 billion in profit per year, across "over 16000 stores" from their site. So the average yearly profit per store is roughly $143k (which is surprisingly low to me). A security guard per store is going to eat a lot of that, but it's probably feasible to do. I think the bigger question is whether Dollar General could potentially bear any liability in the event one of their security guards shot someone, and I would be stunned if they didn't bear any liability. Even the legal costs associated with winning a wrongful death suit could eat an entire year's profits. I strongly suspect that is the reason why they fire any employee who is carrying a handgun. As an agent of Dollar General, Dollar General probably assumes some liability for shootings that happen while on the job. I also suspect the violent crime is part of the reason other groceries moved away. Being undercut certainly doesn't help, but other groceries were faced with the same economic decision regarding customer safety, as well as damage to their brand from being associated with violent crime. One solution would be to place police officers at or very near these stores. I lived in a college neighborhood at one point, and there was a convenience store that was well known for being robbed almost weekly. The police set up a substation there, and it basically vanished. On the other hand, that was one store, not an entire chain, and it was the campuses PD that set it up. And campus PD had precious little else to do at night other than rounding up underage drinkers.