And now that we’ve ruined your lunches, we feel that we owe you one of those heart-warming, encouraging stories for which this site has become justly infamous. Thanks to our very own vigilant LC Mope, we have just such a story for you.
Yes, we’re a giver. Thank you for noticing.
Martha Lewis of Dora, Ala. told WVTM-TV it was about 3 a.m. Tuesday morning when she heard a loud noise, which turned out to be someone kicking in her door.
Always a disturbing realization in the middle of the night. However, Mrs. Lewis was not to be deterred by such nocturnal shenanigans, so she promptly went and hid behind the couch while frantically dialing Domino’s Pizza 911. Except she didn’t. Except for the bit about calling the police, which is always a good idea, as long as you don’t stop with that:
Lewis said she called the police and grabbed her gun, then went to her daughters’ room and told them each to get something to defend themselves with. She said one grabbed an ax and one got a butcher knife.
They were at the top of the stairs when they saw a man standing there at the bottom.
“I knew when he stepped on the landing that I would have to shoot him,” Lewis told the station. “He starts like coming up the stairs and he said, ‘would you shoot me?‘ And I said ’I don’t want to have to but I will.’”
Which ought to have been warning enough. But it wasn’t:
Ignoring her warnings, the man kept coming — and that’s when Lewis said she fired.
And hit him too, after which he stumbled outside where he was later apprehended and sent to the hospital where he’s in stable condition. Unfortunately, by “stable” we don’t mean “ever so busy assuming room temperature.” Which leads us to the next part of this post, but not until we’ve let out a loud “YOU GO GIRL!” and done our Imperial Happy Dance.
There… All done.
Now, ma’am, before we say anything else, allow His Imperial Majesty to congratulate you on a job well done. You not only acted quickly and decisively, you also kept in mind that you might not emerge victorious from the initial confrontation and so made sure that you had a backup plan by making sure your daughters could defend themselves as well, should the unspeakable happen. That’s presence of mind for you. And in this particular situation, the sudden impact from your bullet obviously discouraged the goblin sufficiently that he decided to beat a hasty retreat. Justified shoot, good outcome.
However, and please know that this is only intended as constructive criticism aimed at assisting you in future encounters should such, heaven forbid, ever happen, there are a few things you need to learn from this.
First, while your non-lethal shot certainly accomplished its objective in this case, that’s no guarantee that it will always suffice. No, we’re not telling you to “shoot to kill”, we’re telling you to “shoot to stop the threat”, and the approach most likely to achieve this goal is to aim for vital parts that you can confidently hit, i.e. center mass. It may be that you did just that, the report doesn’t indicate, but then you need a bigger caliber gun. Again, we’re not saying this to be bloodthirsty (although His Sithness certainly is that), we’re saying it because a non-lethal wound might not always do the trick. Imagine if your intruder had been high on drugs, such as the “bath salts” now making the rounds. Reports indicate that such individuals can easily go on in spite of being severely wounded and, moreover, in the drug-addled state of mind, most likely will.
Second, and this is not a minor point:
Lewis said she’s had the gun for about three years but only for protection purposes.
Good. But you can’t stop there. You need to train with it too. Obviously in order to hit the target better and thus accomplish everything mentioned in the first part of what we wrote, but also, and this correlates nicely with that, in order to not hit that which you do not intend to hit. Good groupings accomplish two things: 1) Maximizing the odds of a favorable outcome (stopping the threat) and 2) minimizing the odds of hitting something or, worse still, somebody you did not intend to hit.
Again: We’re not second-guessing you and we’re most certainly not criticizing your response, you Did The Right Thing™ and there can be no debating that. But we spotted a few details that, if addressed properly, can help you Do The Right Thing™ even better in the future, should you ever have to. And we hope that you don’t. Once in a lifetime is once too many.
G-d bless you and, once again: Good job!
Thatisall.