This is a hypothetical with a longish storytelling OP. As usual, “spouse” in this context includes any sort of committed, cohabiting partners. There will be two situations to consider. I’m putting them inside spoiler boxes because they involve disquieting violence. The squeamish should bow out now.
Still with me? Okay, but bear in mind that a woman gets murdered in both scenarios, and a child in the second.
You’ve been warned. The actual scenarios are in the next spoiler box.
One day, when your spouse is at the grocery store without you, he or see sees a sick fuck with a six-shooter walk through the door. Firing a shot into the air, the SF yells out the name of his estranged wife & their six-year-old son. When he sees them, he immediately shoots his wife several times, then starts dragging the child away. The son screams, kicks, and bites while being carried off. A few feet away from your spouse, the SF gets tired of the fight and says, “Fine. I was gonna let you live for a little while, but if you’re gonna be like that, I’ll just do you here.” Hearing that, your spouse leaps onto the SF, tries to wrestle the gun away, and takes a bullet in the belly. Luckily, that’s the last bullet in the gun, and the onlookers capture and beat the crap out of the SF. Paramedics arrive quickly, and your spouse survives the injury. Happily, the son survives with only psychic trauma; sadly, the sick fuck lives too.
Are you proud of your spouse’s bravery? Angry at your spouse’s recklessness? Somewhere in between? Something else entirely?
The second scenario is similar but not identical to the first. This time, when the sick fuck enters the store, your spouse happens to be looking not toward the door but toward the mother and son, and so sees the latter go into the bathroom. Again the SF ventilates his wife, then calls for the kid. Getting no response, the SF demands that anyone who saw the child tell him where the kid is. When no one replies, the SF shoots the nearest person, then repeats his demand. Still getting no response, the SF points the gun at your spouse, who, trembling, points toward the bathroom. The SF goes in and – well, there’s no need for a blow by blow. But the sick fuck does NOT kill your spouse.
Are you angry at your spouse for giving up the kid? Happy that your spouse saved his or her own life by being rational? Somewhere in between? Something else entirely?
Poll in a moment, but don’t let that slow you down.
Proud in the first circumstance. Less clear in the second. I’d assume fear would have disabled my wife in that case, and would be worried about her future afterward in dealing with that. If she told me she just made a rational choice to give up the child to save her own life I’d be very conflicted.
Can’t play. My spouse is a retired teacher. She’d willingly take a bullet for a strange kid, so the answer for scenario one is “It’s only what I’d expect” and for #2 is “inconceivable.”
Re: Story 1 - kinda proud, kinda mad. I often think that people should jump a gunman, so it’s better because it seems logical, somehow, to me.
Re; Story 2 - Yeah, I’d be okay with him giving up the kid. My hubby has his own kids, and he’s the love of my life, so by default, his life is worth to me than some strange kid. It would be sad and awful, but I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.
Use my concealed weapon to put him down after his first shot in the air.
As to the two other possibilities, I described, if my SO did not do what we have rehearsed, I would not think one way ot the other because when it is real for the first time for most anyone, without much training, the actual response will be unknown.
Viewing what happened with what I know of my SO’s personality and all that, my feels would be guided, if I felt anything like what you are suggesting at all, would be taken into account.
I would feel worse about my actions or lack of actions long before thinking about the SO’s.
Do you have children together?
What do you both do for a living?
What is your life been like & where was it done beofre this day?
To all: I thought about including "I can/cannot imagine my spouse behaving in such a heroic/dastardly fashion, but I didn’t want to make the poll even longer. That might have been an error. Ah well.
How does she get there without being shot? I suppose she might be Wonder Woman, but the princess of the Amazons would not perceive a dilemma in the first place; nor, for that matter, do things ever get so far, as she would have taken the SF down before he shot the mother.
Impossible. The OP makes it clear that you’re not present when the murderous shithead appears.
:: shrugs ::
I dunno. I THINK my reaction to the SF would be to overcome my innate cowardice and try to save the kid, and frankly, in the cold light of day, the idea of pointing out the kid’s location seems worse than death to me. But that’s a judgment made outside the situation. Unless one has been in such a situation, it seems impossible to me to KNOW how one would react.
Absent super-powers on the jumper’s part, I think jumping the gunman rarely an option.
With #2, the “brave” choice does nothing to save the kid. Most likely, the SF is going to keep asking people at gunpoint until someone gives him up or he’s going to just start looking himself and find the kid. I think the choice of giving up the kid and saving your own skin is entirely rational. What might be even more rational is to give a wrong answer and then get the hell out of there, though. Or use the opportunity when he checks the wrong place to hit the guy over the head with something.
Since I would hope my spouse would grab a nearby child and use it as a bullet-proof vest, I have no problem with the idea of sacrificing a child to save herself. Yes, I would be angry at her for risking her own life for a kid. She should be throwing kids at the shooter until the gun is empty.
I’m proud in the first, but can not sit in judgment in the second. It’s not heroic, but I can’t judge somebody for not being heroic. If she didn’t think of any of the clever strategies clever people above posted, I couldn’t condemn. I would not be dismayed, just sick about the whole thing.
Proud and iffy. In the first scenario, she threw herself at a shooter to save a kid, which is what I hope I would do under the circumstances. In the second instance, I’m less proud because she didn’t realize that the shooter is out of ammo and couldn’t kill her if she didn’t point out where the kid went. But she doesn’t know weapons and wouldn’t thin of things like that. So just happy she is still alive.
I don’t subscribe to the notion that all children are magically more important than other humans, and that coloured my answers. In scenario A, I’d have mixed feelings, and in scenario B, I’d just be grateful my wife is OK.
In your second scenario, I took the “other” vote because I’d be grateful not just that she saved herself, but also saved some other unknown number of people from being shot while this guy waited for the answer he wanted. There is certainly no guarantee in the scenario that the kid’s life can be saved, and watching a number of other people die before that just makes the horror that much greater. I would not want my spouse to bear that guilt (or perhaps I am just projecting in thinking about how horribly guilty I would feel if I had let that happen).
Mixed emotions in the first scenario–proud for being brave, but angry for taking such a chance. If my spouse had died, I would be a lot more angry and a lot less proud.
Second scenario: Grateful. I’m sorry that it had to happen to the kid, but I value my spouse far more than I value some random kid. I don’t have that many people close to me–I would not want to lose one (and the closest one) over a situation like this.