imported post
The story said that the victim had non-life threatening injuries. I would not translate that into "minimal" injuries. One might easily suffer permanent loss of the use of a hand or limb from severed ligaments or tendons which may not be life-threatening, but I doubt any of us would accept them as minimal.
Well what would a reasonable person believe? Probably not that the victim was being slashed consensually. A knife attack is deadly force, so I don't think there's much question that one would be justified in responding with deadly force if nothing less than lethal worked or was available. That's fairly simple, but the actual mechanics of the situation is the tough part. To me that is the interesting question:
How would the police likely react? Draw and order him to stop. If the attack continued, they might deploy a Taser or other less than lethal option, or shoot him. Can't say one way or another without seeing the situation first hand.
Non-LEOs, at least in Wisconsin, wouldn't have a Taser available, so our options are more limited and we might be forced to shoot if verbal commands did not suffice. An enraged person with a knife is potentially more lethal than any strip-mall dojo educated Kung-fu/Taekwondo/Aikido black-belted ninja type, so trying to stop them with some empty hand technique would put yourself at a greater risk. I might be willing to use a chair or improvised long-stick against them, if available. But let's assume for the sake of argument that our only available weapons are our body, wits, and gun--- wits being the primary weapon.
Quite likely it would not an be an easy shooting situation since someone cutting another would be very close to the innocent person and undoubtedly there would be a lot of movement. I'm not going to assume that even the best hollow point won't pass clean through the bad guy, in fact I'll make the opposite assumption. Shooting could very well jeopardize the innocent person and if you intentionally moved in closer to get a better shot you may be negating your firepower advantage. Up close and personal in knife versus gun, the gunman may well be at a disadvantage. Be prepared to have the attack redirected at you. All-in-all, it is not a fun spot to be in. But you have to work with what you got, and if you have a gun it's one more option than if you don't have a gun.
Plan B:
If you're the anti-gun mayor of a large SE Wisconsin city, you scream like a little girl at the perpetrator to STOP! Then dial 911 on your cell phone so someone will be on the way, by-and-by, to haul your badly-beaten and cowardly ass off to the hospital. Then you wait for the press to hail you as a hero because your only available option was to distract the lunatic away from their original victim and to make yourself the second victim. Oh, I'm sorry-- to be fair you also had the option of running away.
Finally, as you slowly heal from multiple surgeries and visits to an orthodontist, steadfastly maintain your stance that civilians should not be allowed to provide for their own personal defense--- because for all the beating your attacker administered, the one thing he didn't do was to beat some sense into you. But I digress....