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‘Gang fight’ at Black Friday sale… Man Punched in Face Pulls Gun On Line-Cutting Shopper…Shots fired outside WALMART…Shoppers smash through door at URBAN OUTFITTERS…Customers run over in parking lot… [Scroll down -TSR]Woman busted after throwing merchandise…Thousands storm VICTORIA’S SECRET…VIDEO: Insane battle over phones… [Theme from "Superjail" started to run through my head as I watched this -TSR]Mayhem at Nebraska mall where 9 murdered in 2007…Shoplifter tries to mace security guards… [Scroll down -TSR]Men Steal Boy’s Shopping Bag Outside BED, BATH & BEYOND…

Call volume shuts down FBI’s firearm background checks, stops Maine sales on Black Friday By Nok-Noi Ricker, BDN Staff Posted Nov. 23, 2012, at 4:30 p.m. BREWER, Maine — Sometime early on Black Friday, the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, went down and stopped all gun sales, Bangor-area gun dealers said. High call volumes caused “intermittent outages” in the system, an FBI spokesman confirmed Friday afternoon. “It means we can’t sell no damn guns,” Rick Lozier, a manager at Van Raymond Outfitters in Brewer, said at about 1:15 p.m. “NICS is down, which means nobody is...

Black Friday retail sales online this year topped $1 billion for the first time ever as more consumers used the Internet do their early holiday shopping, comScore Inc said on Sunday. Online sales jumped 26 percent on Black Friday to $1.04 billion from sales of $816 million on the corresponding day last year, according to comScore data. … E-commerce accounts for less than 10 percent of consumer spending in the United States. However, it is growing much faster than bricks-and-mortar retail as shoppers are lured by low prices, convenience, faster shipping and wide selection. …

A police investigation is under way, after a man suspected of shoplifting from a local Walmart died during his confrontation with store employees. According to a police report obtained by Channel 2 Action News, the incident happened at the Walmart on Fairington Road in Lithonia. The police report said that about 1:30 a.m. Sunday, a middle aged man was caught shoplifting two DVD players. He exited the front door of the store and three employees caught him in the parking lot, where a physical altercation took place while they detained him. When police arrived, they found the employees on top...

GREELEY, Colo. – A woman was arrested and charged with felony robbery after a scuffle during a late-night Thanksgiving sale at a Greeley Walmart. The Greeley Tribune reported that 22-year-old Amino Idris faces felony robbery charges after she allegedly knocked down another shopper and took a laptop out of her hands during a door-buster sale at the Walmart Supercenter located at 3103 S. 23rd Ave., in Greeley.

<p>With all bad news on the tape now having a suitable "explanation", be it a prior president, a tropical storm, the weather being too hot, the weather being too cold, the weather being just right, but never, ever someone actually taking blame for the fact that life is what happens when corporate CEOs (and sovereign presidents) are busy making "priced to perfection" plans. So it is with what is now a confirmed flop of a Black Friday, which according to ShopperTrak saw sales drop by nearly 2% to $11.2 from 2011, which in turn was a 6.6% gain over 2010 (and would be revised to far lower once all the refunds and exchanges to cash took place in the two weeks later). This occurred despite a 3.5% increase in retail foot traffic to 307.7 million store visits. The nominal drop in retail sales also occurred despite a nearly 1% increase in the total US population over last Thanksgiving, and a 2% Y/Y inflation. But fear not: the ad hoc excuse for this "surprising" loss in purchasing power is already handy: it is all Black Thursday's fault, or the latest idiotic attempt by retailers to cannibalize their own future sales by diluting the exclusivity of Black Friday, and which will force all retailers to follow the sovereigns in a race to the bottom, as soon every day will be the equivalent of Black Friday. But at least retailers have another 364 years worth of excuses for the conceivable future to excuse any and all store weakness. Next year: it's all Black Wednesday's fault.</p>

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. - Police say a Massachusetts man left his girlfriend's 2-year-old son in a car while he went shopping for Black Friday bargains, then went home with his new 51-inch flat screen television and left the toddler behind. Police, alerted by store security, found the boy asleep in the vehicle in a Kmart parking lot at about 1:30 a.m. Friday. They forced their way into the car and took the boy to the hospital as a precaution. Meanwhile, they tracked the man to his Springfield home.

This Black Friday marked a personal first for me. I actually stood in line, in the cold, just to be one of the first shoppers allowed into a store when it opened at Midnight. --IMAGE HERE-- So what was I after? Was it the latest electronics? Could it have been a video game system? Perhaps even a sale on tennis shoes? No, no, and no. The only thing that could have convinced me to engage in what I had always characterized as silly behavior was of course … cheap guns! And I was certainly not the only one. My brother-in-law...

It's enough to make an MSMer nostalgic for the good old days of the Soviet Union, when the masses didn't stampede into stores because there was little of interest to buy and little money to buy it with, and the good stuff was reserved for the ruling elites at special shops. Here's how ABC's Dan Harris opened today's Good Morning America: "This morning, Black and Blue Friday. America's annual orgy of capitalism gets dicey." Capitalism? Really? Is that the problem? View the video here.

If Americans will trample one another just to save a few dollars on a television, what will they do when society breaks down and the survival of their families is at stake? Once in a while an event comes along that gives us a peek into what life could be like when the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is stripped away. For example, when Hurricane Sandy hit New York and New Jersey there was rampant looting and within days people were digging around in supermarket dumpsters looking for food. Sadly, "Black Friday" also gives...

While there will be the typical reports of “Black Friday” shopping surges on Seattle, Spokane and Portland news broadcasts, it’s not likely anyone will trump the tale out of San Antonio Friday morning, where an armed shopper discouraged a line-jumping thug who pushed and punched his way into a store. According to the NBC affiliate in Dallas, the unidentified shopper in San Antonio will not be charged after drawing his legally-carried handgun. He had just been punched in the face, and other shoppers at a Sears store were pushed and otherwise harassed by the line-jumper. When the gun came out,...

Black Friday got off to a rowdy start at a San Antonio mall where police say one shopper pulled a gun on another who punched him in the face while they were waiting in line at a Sears store. Police Sgt. Rob Carey tells the San Antonio Express-News a man rushed into the store when it opened Thursday night to get to the front of a line, started arguing with people and tried cutting in front of them.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Wal-Mart workers and supporters marched in protest at a number of stores nationwide Thursday and Friday, blasting the wages, benefits and treatment of employees of the world's largest retailer. The efforts seemed to do little to keep shoppers away though — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it was its best Black Friday ever. In Paramount, Calif., authorities arrested a small group of protesters Friday outside a Walmart. Elizabeth Brennan of Warehouse Workers United said nine people, including three employees, were arrested shortly after 12 noon for blocking the street outside the store in Paramount. At one point,...

Is Black Friday out of control? MOULTRIE, Ga. - Shoppers mobbing stores to find the best Black Friday deals started on Thursday evening this year. Video posted online showed the scene at one store as shoppers rushed a display and grabbed at merchandise.

Must have been some deal...

A group of five men robbed a 14-year-old boy of his shopping bag outside Arundel Mills mall after he walked out of a Bed Bath & Beyond store about 2 a.m. Friday, Anne Arundel County Police said. The victim told police the men accosted him on the sidewalk just outside the store, one of them punched him and another stole a bag containing merchandise he had just purchased. The suspects, who the boy described as black men aged 17 to 21 wearing black North Face jackets and jeans, ran away toward the mall's Bass Pro Shops entrance. Police searched the...

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. - It looked like a Justin Bieber concert -- and it all started over some yoga pants. What seemed like thousands of teen girls and young women crowded the entrance at Victoria’s Secret Pink at Oak Park Mall as it prepared to open the gate to Black Friday shoppers at midnight. Around the world | More shopping holidays http://bit.ly/QzOUQV Mall security guards attempted to control the crowd outside the store, which was really more like a hundred or so, as the gate went up. But the crowd was pushing its way in, so a store manager had...

Shoppers surged into an Urban Outfitters store on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica after midnight Friday and smashed a tall glass door, injuring about five people, authorities said. Paramedics treated a few shoppers for minor cuts but no one was transported to the hospital by ambulance, said Sgt. Marty Fine of the Santa Monica Police Department. "It was just too many people, too fast," Fine said. PHOTOS: The Black Friday rush Around midnight, at least 100 people had lined up for Urban Outfitters' Black Friday deals, which offered up to 50% off on some items. When the 12-foot...

A heckler openly mocked shoppers at an Oceanside, California Best Buy as they waited for Black Friday deals. The man can be heard shouting 'you zombies are the reason Thanksgiving and the holidays are being destroyed' and other anti-Black Friday comments as shoppers filed in the store.

Denver, Colo., Nov 22, 2012 / 06:10 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The expansion of Thanksgiving weekend shopping to the holiday itself has raised concerns among both workers and clergy who worry that the change puts family time at risk. Father Sinclair Oubre, Spiritual Moderator of the Texas-based Catholic Labor Network, said the store openings are a “disturbing trend” that is “an assault on the family.” “We have almost completed the evolutionary process of having two classes of workers: those who get holidays off, and can stay with their families, and those who are forced to work, so that those who...