I sent an earlier version of this story to my great and good friend Weer’d Beard for his “Gun” Death files, but something in today’s NYT coverage moves me to post.
But there was no way Ms. Gillespie, 73, could have been prepared for what happened.
No, actually, there was a way that Ms. Gillespie could have been prepared for what happened, but the city of New York denied her the tools she would have needed for effective self-defense against Jerome Isaac.
(Fair question: would the muzzle flash from, say, a KelTec .380 have ignited the fumes? Not sure, and I suspect it depends a lot on what type of fuel he was using. The NYT describes him as “reeking of gasoline”, but I’m not sure if that’s an accurate description or a colloquialism. In any case, I like Ms. Gillespie’s chances with a gun much better than the no chance she had without one.)