Good Guy with a Gun #36: Pleasant Hill, CA

Original incident: December 11, 2023. You want proof that firearms are the great equalizer? Seven men ran away when one 73-year-old man defended his store with a revolver. Great surveillance video.

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Monday afternoon in Pleasant Hill, California, 73-year-old Albert Marcu was working the floor at the Estates Consignments shop that he owns.

A woman walked in, talking on her phone — and looking at the cameras.

Surveillance video shows what happened next. It’s really worth watching.

The woman started to leave, but as the security guard was starting to close the door behind her, she pulled at it as if to keep it open. (Store staff think she was in on it.) You can see her holding it open here as two of the men, whom I’ve circled in red, are racing for the door. The still photo doesn’t do it justice: Watch the video to see the struggle.

This gave an opening for seven hooded and masked men to roar in. (I only see five going in on the surveillance video the news organizations chose, but if you watch them leave, you’ll see seven come out.)

Several of them had sledgehammers, and they raced straight toward to the jewelry cases at the back of the store.

That’s where Albert was. He didn’t flinch: He drew his .38 revolver, pointed it at them, and advanced as far as the counter would let him. The lead criminal fell down like a cartoon character as he tried to stop, and all five immediately turned tail and fled.

I’d give pictures, but you just have to watch the video here. The image is too grainy for stills, but very clear when you see everyone moving.

“I showed them my gun,” he said later. “They panicked, and they run out.”

They piled into two waiting Infiniti Q50s. Almost immediately, a police cruiser arrived — they responded in less than 30 seconds, we’re told — but the criminals still got away.

Note that no shots were fired. That’s true in most defensive gun uses (DGUs). When people tell you that guns are designed to kill people, remind them that when good guys carry them, bad guys can choose not to get shot by not doing bad things.

Marcu, who escaped communist Romania at 19 and built a life here on handshakes and hard work, had some choice words about the state of California under their DA and Governor Newsom. In what follows, I’m taking his comments out of order, but they’re all his words.

Referring to organized retail theft, he said, “We have firearms and my staff carry their own firearms for at least two or three years when all this nonsense started.”

He wasn’t surprised to see criminals enter his store. “Looking at what happened in the Bay Area here, I was kind of prepared and just waiting that one day they would be here too.”

And he doesn’t have much confidence that the criminals will be deterred by government intervention. “The police catch them and the DA let them loose. It’s terrifying living in California,” he said. “We have to take a stand. You know, we pay our politicians to do something about it, but nothing is being done.”

When asked about Governor Newsom and his assertions that San Francisco (Pleasant Hill is in the Bay area) has “outperformed” other areas of the state, Marcu wasn’t buying.

“The crime increased almost 30%. And daily, things happen. Customers are afraid to go out, are afraid to shop, and they are coming and they talk with me, and they are all complaining about this awful situation,” he said.

Hopefully, with the publicity he got, criminals are afraid to come in.

Sources

There was a lot of coverage of this event, including local, national, and conservative/2A news. Many of them had the surveillance video.

KTVU, Fox 10 in Phoenix, KRON 4, Fox 26, the now-defunct Pioneer, NBC Bay Area, Washington Examiner (paywalled), Fox and Friends (national), and the Daily Presser.

Interestingly, even Entrepreneur Magazine got in on the act, talking about how other business owners saw the shooting: Viewers Have ‘Nothing But Respect’ for Consignment Shop Employee, 73, Who Scares Off Would-Be Robbers: Video

2A/conservative coverage came from Brandon Curtis at Concealed Nation and The Blaze.

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