You must have seen the latest viral video of a cell phone snatching attempt in Punjab’s Gujranwala, with a young girl’s quick thinking foiling the attempt.

The video shows the mobile snatcher pleading while lying on the road as another man holds his hoodie. On the left side, a pistol can be seen with a finger on the trigger. While we do not see the face of the person holding the gun, identified as student Bisma, we hear her voice as she narrates how the incident unfolded.

“This man tried to snatch my purse while I was waiting with my mother at the bus stations,” she can be heard saying in a charged voice. “He tried to shoot me with this,” she says while brandishing the pistol.

At this point of the video, the criminal pleads for leniency, saying he has small daughters. “Am I not someone’s daughter,” the woman snaps back before asking about his accomplice. In another video, both accomplices can be seen inside a police vehicle. During all this, she remains adamant of capturing their faces on video and uploading it on social media.

The video soon made it to social media platforms of news channels and even featured in bulletins. The university student’s interview flashed on news channel who hailed her as the lionness of Gujranwala.

In her interview, she said that she was waiting for the university bus with her mother when two men on a motorcycle accosted them. “One of them took out the gun from under the chador.”

The intrepid teenager turned the tables by somehow disarming the man and taking his gun. A crowd gathered quickly as the men ended up on the ground begging for mercy.

“To consider women as weak creatures is a crude simplifcation,” she said, while urging others to also be courageous.

The girl has been feted and celebrated, and is is very likely that the local police might announce a reward for her bravery.

Brave but risky, wrote one user who shared the video.

The plaudits came in from everywhere and ranged from “queen”, “slayer”, “girl boss”, “empowered woman” and more. Some even compared her to the frightening and beautiful Daro Natni from the Maula Jatt remake that is all the rage.

A lot of love was directed towards Gujranwala as well for its culture of wrestling.

In all this, there were those who voiced a note of caution. “Remove your finger from the trigger. It also shoots.”

Most people in Pakistan do not have training in handling of a firearm. It is also one of the biggest reasons of gun-related deaths, most commonly during cleaning of the weapon.

Such accidents are more plausible when a novice, high on adrenaline and righteous indignation, is waving a gun with a finger on the trigger.

This is aside from what could go wrong when resisting such an attempt.

One user pointed out that it was dangerous for people to resist and fight back - which I believe was lost in the din of congratulatory messages. I must also pointed out that this user also makes a rather asinine follow up remark in the same tweet which I have disregarded and suggest you do the same.

In an incident in Karachi in June, a mobile phone snatcher shot a youth in the face during the robbery.

Also in June, a young man was in Islamabad during a similar robbery. There are too many such cases, including from Karachi this October.

This is when the mobile snatchers, often amped up on drugs and already skittish, press the trigger.

This poses a threat to bystanders as well. A struggle for the gun can easily result in accidental discharge with fatal affects.

There have been numerous cases of people being shot dead by stray bullets, including those while police and criminals are exchanging fire.

The most harrowing case was that of 10-year-old Amal, who was hit by one such stray bullet in Karachi in 2018. A similar incident took place in Karachi last month, with an infant’s life snuffed out by a stray bullet.