Target isn’t the biggest retail store chain in the nation, but it’s not exactly a mom & pop operation either. Target operates stores all over the country, which means they’ve got funding to hire people.

One thing they have in many if not all stores is armed security.

Usually, these guys don’t have to do all that much. They catch a shoplifter or two, but the life of a security guard usually doesn’t involve armed attackers randomly stabbing people.

For one guard, though, it did.

A security guard in a Los Angeles Target store fatally shot a man suspected of stabbing a 9-year-old boy and a 25-year-old woman Tuesday evening, according to The Los Angeles Times.

The attack happened around 6:20 p.m. at the Target in the FIGat7th shopping mall, police said.

The man, described by law enforcement officials as 40 years old and homeless, came into the store, grabbed a large butcher-style knife from a shelf, confronted the 9-year-old and told the boy he was going to kill him, The Associated Press reported.

The boy tried to get away, only for the man to stab him in the back.

The homeless man then approached a group of women who were shopping and stabbed one of them in the chest.

A security guard confronted the man, trying to use a baton to try and stop him, but when that didn’t work, he drew his weapon and shot the guy.

The boy is stable while the woman is described by the LA Times as being in “critical but guarded” condition.

That said, it’s a good thing that there was someone with a gun there. In Los Angeles, that’s never a guarantee by any stretch of the imagination.

Which makes me wonder what would have happened if this had been a smaller store that didn’t have the deep pockets to hire armed security. How many people would have been injured or killed by this rampaging lunatic?

Let’s also note that California is having a huge problem with homelessness, something the progressive leadership of those cities seems unable or unwilling to address. Yet many of the homeless are mentally ill people who may well have a propensity for violence, which is how they ended up on the street in the first place.

Despite that and the increased danger to the cities’ residents, lawmakers there are unwilling to recognize that restricting gun laws only makes people like these less able to defend themselves.

While no one thinks a nine-year-old boy would be carrying a firearm, one has to wonder just how many people in that store might have done something if they’d had the means to.

Of course, we’ll likely never know.

What we do know is that there was a good guy with a gun, and while he wasn’t needed to stop a bad guy with a gun this time, he was able to protect people from a homicidal maniac just the same. That’s a big win in my book, and it’s proof that you don’t need a gun to create all kinds of carnage that would warrant being put down like a rabid dog.