Perhaps I'm a bit out of the mainstream, but I can't help myself:
It's not "macho posturing". Would I pose for the pic? Probably not...but I'm probably a little better prepared for such an event than the 18 year old young woman who was just set upon by a couple of violent scumbags.
We live in a world populated by some truly violent scumsuckers who will take innocent life literally because they think it's good sport. When one of these violent scumbags catches a face full of buckshot and is sent to cold oblivion before he can rape or kill a vulnerable young woman, it's a net win for society.
The idea that good, decent, law-abiding people should be sitting in the fetal position blowing snot bubbles over the fate of some knife-wielding thug who got blown away after spending a bunch of time trying to bust through the door of that woman's home is infuriating and morally repugnant. That young lady is probably very calm because she did the right thing. Those guys insisted on threatening her and her child. They had abundant opportunities to knock off their obnoxious behavior and go be productive citizens, but instead they decided to press an attack on what they thought was easy prey. Turns out she wasn't easy prey and when they had backed her into a corner she fought back and one of the bad guys got to experience bleeding out on her carpet instead of her. Occupational hazard of being a ******* scumbag.
Screw him.
We're not talking about someone who was out looking for trouble and trying to fulfill some retarded Charles Bronson fantasy here, folks...we're talking about a young woman who was in her own house taking care of her child when a couple of dope heads showed up to rob her because they read an obituary and figured she'd have drugs. Think about the level of moral depravity it takes to look at the story of a man who died of cancer, notice that he's survived by only his young widow and small child, and then to figure it's a great score. That's genuine sociopath territory.
She has every right to be calm and confident because by every moral and legal tradition that's worth anything she did the right thing. She used lethal force only after those jackasses took every other alternative off the table with their actions. They insisted on somebody getting hurt that night.
It's possible for a good, decent, moral human being left with no choice in the matter to shoot somebody and afterwards have no more negative emotional impact about it than they would have for stepping on a cockroach. The last thing they need is for people to run around hand-wringing about why they aren't at least attempting to look like they're barely holding it together in the aftermath, especially if they've never been anywhere near that situation for themselves. She didn't pull that trigger for fun. She pulled the trigger because in that instant she was certain that she was out of options and it was either shoot or die screaming at the end of that knife.
Should she have posed for the picture? It's not what I would have advised her to do, but I'm not there. It sounds to me like she's largely on her own and is trying to deal with a media frenzy that she didn't ask for. It's absurd for gun rights advocates to try and put her on a pedestal she never asked to be on and then get all pissed off if she doesn't do every tiny thing exactly according to the script that is supposedly good for "gun rights" in their mind. If they weren't willing to fly out to her place and run interference with news producers who are looking for visuals to go with the story so they can get ratings, then they should hush.
There's nothing "disquieting" about the image of a woman who is willing to kill somebody if they insist on threatening her or her child. It's deeply disquieting to see people who claim to be 2nd amendment advocates getting weak in the knees when a law abiding gun owner does precisely what she was supposed to do and doesn't look to be worse for the wear because of it.