Today’s story is about Jodie*, a 30-year-old restaurant manager. She lives with her 15-year-old daughter, Éimi[sup]†[/sup] in a small house in a somewhat sketchy neighborhood. Between that and the fact that her job regularly requires her to take large amounts of cash to the bank for deposit, Jodie carries a handgun–a Lady Smith 36 revolver, if you care–for which she has the appropriate permits and practices as often as she can.[sup]‡[/sup]
On a rainy winter night, Jodie gets home sometime around the hour of the wolf. Entering her darkened house, she notices that the kitchen light is on, so she goes there rather than straight to bed, thinking that she’ll make a sandwich and take it to bed, and that in the morning she’ll have to have a talk with Éimi about running up the electric bill. All such thoughts cease when she walks into the room, because there is a man she doesn’t know standing in front of her refrigerator; he’s soaking wet and drinking milk from the carton. Rain is streaming in through the kitchen window, which faces the back yard. The man looks at her and smiles. Jodie isn’t sure how big he is; she only knows that he’s a lot bigger than her. She instantly thinks of her beautiful baby girl, asleep in her room, and of the terrible night when Éimi was conceived. In an eyeblink she goes from exhausted to hyper-alert, and before she knows it she has reached into her purse and grabbed, not her cell phone, but her revolver. She pulls it out and assumes a two-handed stance. Trembling slightly, she says:
“Put down the milk, put your hands on your head, and get your ass into the corner facing the wall.”
The man flicks his eyes at the kitchen table, on which is sitting a butcher knife that does not belong to Jodie. The knife is about three steps away from him. The man is no more than ten feet away from Jodie.
“Calm down, lady,” the man says. “This ain’t what it looks like. Put down the gun and we can talk.”
“Fuck you,” Jodie replies, shaking badly now. “Carton down. Hands on head. Get into the corner.”
Shrugging, the man places the carton on the table. Doing so brings him within a foot of the knife.
“Calm down,” he says again. “Put down the gun. I can explain.”
“Explain to police. Do what I say. Last warning.”
“Look, lady, just calm down. Put down that gun before you hurt somebody–”
The man takes a step forward while saying this; Jodie starts firing before he can take another. The first shot misses but not the next four, and the man falls. When his face hits the floor, Jodie calls 911 for an ambulance and the cops.
Ladies and gentlemen: based only in the information Jodie had when she pulled the trigger, was this shooting morally justified?
- She looks like Eva Marie Saint in On the Waterfont.
[sup]†[/sup] Jodie is a big fan of the International Phonetic Alphabet. And kind of a nerd.
[sup]‡[/sup] A girl needs a gun these days, on account of all these rattlesnakes.
