editors' note

J Journal has been publishing under the justice banner for eighteen years, and yet we’re still surprised when guns appear. That may be because we don’t really look for work in the ‘heater’-driven genre, but still the cold hard metal makes a point, insists on attention, especially in the smaller-scale, mano-a-mano dramas that have to get quickly into the scene. Of the 18 pieces in this issue, five include at least one loaded gun; there’s a police shooting of a rebel with a cause, a miraculous transformation of a pointed finger into a lethal weapon, a stash of gun in a rough Chicago neighborhood, speculation about a PTSD victim’s gun ownership, guns pointed at a double-crossing thief and, eventually, his partner, a woman deemed guilty by association. In that story, the story that closes this issue, we’re reminded of the last scene in Flannery O’Connor’s classic A Good Man is Hard to Find, a supremely teachable story that each of us uses in class.

 

In the last lines of O’Connor’s story, she imparts a lesson to us all, one that comes at the end of a deadly road trip and suggests at least one benefit of being under the gun. The Misfit, after killing the self-centered, racist grandmother says, “She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.” When threats become real, when pressure pushes us to reveal our true selves, reckonings often happen most acutely and honestly. In this issue of J Journal, there are reckonings small and large as layers of justice emerge.

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Jeffrey Heiman, Adam Berlin

New York City

December 2025