Lucky

or maybe just surprised.

In the film Dirty Harry Clint Eastwood delivers one of the most famous lines in American cinematic history.

After a shootout with thieves he walks across the street to an injured felon. Eastwood points his gun at the fallen criminal’s head and wonders out loud whether he has fired six shots or five.

If he has only fired five and pulls the trigger, the felon loses his life. And then he delivers the famous line:

“you’ve got to ask yourself one question: “do I feel lucky”? Well, do you, punk?

Dirty Harry

The criminal surrenders, and we learn from the hollow click of the gun that, in fact, he had fired six shots.

It doesn’t seem to me that he was either lucky (that Harry had fired his six shots) or unlucky (that he had guessed incorrectly and could otherwise have escaped). It seems to me he just didn’t know vital piece of information. He didn’t know that Dirty Harry had no bullets left. Had he been a better criminal, he would have counted the gunshots, known the type of handgun, and not neede…