“I didn’t come to America to die.”

In the wake of a store owner killing two robbers in Harlem last week, the Times reports on the lives of other owners who have pulled the trigger:

For as long as there have been stickup men, there have been shopkeepers who fought back. Shooting the robbers was in some ways the simplest part, requiring only the reflexes of a survivor, and a gun — though more than a few store owners have been prosecuted for using unlicensed guns.

The real pain came in the weeks and years that followed. The proprietors replayed the violence that had marched into their cramped bodegas, restaurants or jewelry stores, cursing the career criminals or desperate men who had threatened their livelihoods — their lives, even — and their sanity.