Many women don’t realize that purse snatching can be a violent crime. When we think of losing a purse to a criminal, we tend to picture a sneak thief snagging it from the back of a restaurant chair. Or we think of a light-fingered runner who lifts the purse off an inattentive person’s shoulder and flees with it. These crimes do happen, but type “purse snatching” into the search bar on YouTube and you’ll find dozens of videos from news reports and surveillance cameras depicting a much more violent type of crime. I’ve linked five videos below that I found particularly disturbing. Warning: some of these videos are graphic.
Some things to think about from these videos and others like them:
- It is natural human instinct to defend private property even when the value of that property is far less than the pain and suffering received by defending it. If you carry a firearm in your purse, ask yourself: are you willing to risk your life to protect the firearm you carry to save your life?
- Many purse snatchers are women. In surveillance videos, you can see that even women are willing to apply violence to steal a purse.
- Some purse snatchings have become drive-by crimes, where the criminal reaches out of a moving vehicle to grab the purse, then hits the gas and drives away. While you might successfully wrestle with the criminal himself, fighting a moving vehicle is a losing proposition. To prevent this type of crime happening to you, try to carry your purse on the non-traffic side as you walk through parking lots.
