Shoplifting in America Doubles in Five Years

Stores across the United States are being raided. According to the National Retail Federation, $122 billion worth of goods was stolen from retail shelves last year. That is twice as much theft as occurred five years ago, and as a result, many stores are closing.

• Kroger, Nike, Nordstrom, Old Navy, Target, Walmart and Whole Foods have all announced store closures in recent months due to the theft pandemic.

Rationalization: Despite the serious economic repercussions of shoplifting, some leftists say theft is justified because America is built on stolen land.

Black Lives Matter organizer Ariel Atkins famously called looting a form of “reparations” during the George Floyd riots, and this idea hasn’t gone away.

A Washington Post report published on March 1 admitted that shoplifting is so bad that there’s “almost nothing left to steal at the cvs in Columbia Heights.” The article then inferred that the “moral panic” about shoplifting is hypocritical because “America is a sticky-fingered nation built on stolen land.”

This twisted logic makes no sense. English settlers did not start farming Colombia Heights until 1668 when the Nacotchtank tribe living there voluntarily relocated to Acacostine Island. But apparently, certain leftists believe that the fact that the Nacotchtank people lived in Colombia Heights before the English people means that it is OK to steal soft drinks from a cvs pharmacy.

Such media coverage will lead to a worse shoplifting epidemic in the future.

Lawlessness: American founding father John Adams wrote in 1787, “The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet,’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ were not commandments of heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.”

The fact that shoplifting is twice as common today as just five years ago is a bad sign for civilization.

Learn more: Read our free booklet The Ten Commandments.