15 People Wounded at Lone Star College near Houston

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A good fellow with a gun would have promptly placed bullets into the stabber and prevented some of the damage.

Has this ever actually happened?

Krazen's listed two incidents, but there are websites and books devoted to just lists of these. Yes it does happen, and quite frequently.

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A good fellow with a gun would have promptly placed bullets into the stabber and prevented some of the damage.

Has this ever actually happened?

Probably not many times. Mostly because attackers have the moment of surprise on their side and already caused enough damage and killed themselves before some hero clinging to guns comes along and shoots the attacker dead.

True.  If private citizens with guns were stopping massacres every day Rush, and Fox News would be talking about it non stop.  They're not.  So what does that tell you?

That because of good folks, there is no massacre, and no news. Thus, simpletons never hear of it.

Fox would be talking about that every chance they got.

When such incidents happen, they mention it. But why would you hear about it?


http://fox6now.com/2013/03/12/marine-with-concealed-carry-permit-stops-man-from-beating-woman/

Charlie Blackmore was driving home from work at 4:00 a.m. along Lincoln Avenue when he saw something on the sidewalk. Blackmore didn’t realize it was a woman on the ground being kicked in the head and stomach until he got closer.


That’s when he jumped out of his car and sprung into action.

“I said ‘stop’ and he starts coming towards me and that`s when I drew on him. He started getting closer and I said ‘get down on the ground,’” Blackmore said.
Blackmore held his gun on the suspect and called West Allis police. He says several times while waiting for police to arrive, the attacker moved toward him.

Trust me with as many right wing trolls as there are on the internet we hear about this stuff ad nauseum when it happens.  I don't hear about it EVERY time but neither do I hear about all the gun crimes that happen either.

Don't these two sentences contradict each other?

  Frankly since I don't watch local news in an effort to preserve brain cells I only hear about gun crimes when they are heinous enough to make the national news.

For once, a reasonable position

  To be honest with you I don't live in a world of wife beatings and home invaders with AK-47s.

But you do live in a world where, as krazen has pointed out, such has become easier to resist because of the availability of guns.

  I'm a cautious person but this threat of roving AK-47 gangs and swarms of government black helicopters you guys obsess about are not really a part of my life.

I don't know whose lives they're part of. Most gun-rights advocates feel that the government either doesn't have the right to restrict gun access or that it would be bad policy to do so (usually both, in fact). "Black helicopters" weren't mentioned in this thread until you brought them up as an example of something we bring up (this is called, colloquially, a strawman).

Sugary drinks are costing more lives than gun toting right wingers allegedly save.  Yet Bloomberg is routinely mocked by the far right.

Because Jon Stewart is such an evil far-right monster

  The majority of Americans are obese or overweight.  Only a tiny fraction of the population has ever been in a life threatening situation with a criminal... and unlike cutting out excess sugar adding an extra random gun to a volatile situation has not been proven to have anywhere near the same level of universal efficacy.

Are you implying that cutting out excess sugar is a better way to handle a volatile situation than someone trained in using a weapon? Because, you know, situations don't inherently have sugar in them.

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Are you implying that cutting out excess sugar is a better way to handle a volatile situation than someone trained in using a weapon? Because, you know, situations don't inherently have sugar in them.

One of the most imbecilic things I've ever read.

Removing excess sugar from the American diet will save more lives than having a mandatory gun in every house that has a wife beater.  Can't believe that is even something to argue about.  But it just illustrates the current state of mind of the far right.

Nobody's arguing for mandatory guns, Link, you're creating strawmen again.

The problem with removing excess sugar from the American diet is that diet is, inherently, a personal choice. While it may be a bad choice, once you allow the government to interfere in personal decisions (which don't affect anyone else), you open the door for a system that can easily be abused to interfere with your life. We've seen time and time again (in Prohibition, in the War on Drugs) how interference in personal choices has always been a costly and ultimately unsuccessful endeavor.

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Nobody's arguing for mandatory guns, Link, you're creating strawmen again.

The humor deficit in you curriculum is showing again.

Me curriculum has a humor deficit

Nobody's arguing for mandatory guns, Link, you're creating strawmen again.

The problem with removing excess sugar from the American diet is that diet is, inherently, a personal choice. While it may be a bad choice, once you allow the government to interfere in personal decisions (which don't affect anyone else), you open the door for a system that can easily be abused to interfere with your life. We've seen time and time again (in Prohibition, in the War on Drugs) how interference in personal choices has always been a costly and ultimately unsuccessful endeavor.

The government intervenes in personal choices all the time.  You just happened to cherry pick two examples and give your interpretation.  Wearing seatbelts is a personal choice and the government interventions have been a success.

I agree with you that this is not a policy which the government has a right to pursue, but in any case it's a comparison between two things which are not all that similar. Soda is mildly addictive (not nearly as much as alcohol, but still) and is quite significant in American culture in many places. There's no closer analogy than Prohibition in the 1920s, though obviously it's still imperfect.

I really doubt if you ban big gulps Colombian cartels, Chicago mobsters, and LA Street gangs are going to take over distribution and murder each other for turf...you are still permitted to buy multiple drinks if you really want that volume of sugar water.

If you ban soda entirely, you will see criminals take up the selling of sodas, like they did alcohol in the 1920s. If you just ban high sizes, like Mayor Bloomberg attempted, you hurt the free market and the consumer to no foreseeable gain on anyone's part except for the merchants and corporations lucky enough to sell smaller sizes of soda.

 I personally don't know what effect the ban would have if allowed to go forward.

Why would you support a policy if you don't know what it's result would be?

I think the point is the creep of empty calories is very insidious in the American diet.  If you travel you will realize that other countries are not full of crazy gym fanatics and dieters.  They just aren't trained to get huge drinks and servings at restaurants.  It never occurs to them to gorge themselves.

Coming from a family that is not from the US and is fairly well-off, I have traveled more extensively than the average American (I was in Vienna 2 weeks ago), and, yes, this is true. But it isn't the government's role to legislate culture, because then it becomes tyrannical.

 You speak of choice but the average person is not making a conscious choice.

...yes, they are.

 Through psychology, marketing, and ignorance they are being trained to engage in unhealthy and harmful behavior.

Psychology is the study of human behavior -- you're saying people are motivated by studying human behavior to engage in behavior which is unhealthy and harmful? I know it's a dreary subject but certainly that's an exaggeration. Marketing and ignorance (for instance, your ignorance admitted to above of the effect such a law would have) can affect personal decisions but ultimately they remain yours to make.

 I don't think if you inject someone with heroin for five year in year six if they crave heroin it can be argued to be a "personal choice."

If somebody begins to inject themselves with heroin, then certainly it is a personal choice. If you inject someone with heroin, then certainly once you're caught you'll go to jail.