> Are you saying that the woman should have had a gun ...?
Of course not.
But unless you clicked-through and read the rest of the elided article, you would have missed this:
Authorities credited Deputy Clay Grant Jr., who was off duty,
with preventing additional casualties. Grant was at the Target
shopping for paper towels on his day off when he heard screams.
Customers began racing past him toward the exit. "Somebody has
a knife," he heard someone in the crowd say.
Out of the cosmetics aisle he saw a young woman wearing a halter
top and flowery pants, with a steak knife in one hand and a
butcher knife in the other.
Grant, 26, drew his Beretta service weapon and identified himself
to the woman as a sheriff's deputy. He demanded she drop the knives.
The woman, he said, ran down the aisle, turned and dashed past
four other aisles.
"Drop your knife" he ordered again.
She turned, her expression blank and confused, clutching the knives.
He said he recalled his training, decided that from her distance
of about 20 feet she was no danger to him, and chose not to pull
the trigger.
The woman saw his gun and dropped both knives on the floor.
Grant and Target security officials restrained the woman, then
handcuffed her.
Some situations end differently depending on whether victims can defend themselves. Is there a big difference between a masked robber with a shotgun, who is a clear threat to everyone in the room, and a crazed woman with knives? You bet there is. And yet in both cases, someone with a weapon, some training, and a little common sense stopped the action from going further. The other big difference between the Omaha story and the West Hollywood story is that an off-duty police officer was the only one in the LA story who *could* have helped: they are, naturally, exempt from concealed weapon restrictions in California.
California prefers their violent crime victims to be unable to defend themselves. Cops think that's a joke, so they were able to exempt themselves.
McNamara said she watched helplessly as the woman plunged a
knife into the upper back and shoulder of a male shopper. He
had crouched down and covered up to fend off the blows, she said.
It's a West Coast thing, doncha know.
/jordan