But the thing is, she is giving up control to him anyway. She let him live; that is giving up control because she knows she can't monitor him 24/7 and she knows he could out her if he awakens while she isn't there. In reality, shooting him confers her no additional control, it only changes the circumstances and makes them less ideal for her purpose of convincing Sherlock.
Okay, look, we've been going around in circles, and the problem is that you seem to think in absolutes. If she didn't have a plan that she was positively sure was going to work out unambiguously in her favor, then you fail to see why she should try to do anything at all.
Of
course, shooting him confers more control of the situation. Delaying the conversation itself is a form of control. Otherwise, it would have been up to sherlock to continue the conversation later or expose her there. Then the situation would have been in Sherlock's control. Shooting him, whether to kill him or not, is control. Changing the circumstances itself is control, just not total control.
Second, the thing she did wasn't that she was 100% sure it would work out the way she wanted to. It was a gamble, she knew that. Again, staying there for a minute longer, john would be finding out, that was a certainty in her mind. And her convincing sherlock to do things her way wasn't a certainty. The only certainty she had is that shooting would at the very least delay the conversation.
And when that happened, if Sherlock survived, she might be able to catch him in bed. It didn't work out that way, but there was a chance, and a reasonable one. Certainly better than waiting for John to walk up or begging Sherlock to have mercy on her. In the end, he managed to get out, but that doesn't mean that she had to be monitoring him like the NSA. He could have just been awake when she went to visit him like she did when it was discovered he escaped. At that point, she would have gotten a chance to talk to him.
And you are again arguing that sherlock would be upset at having been shot. Again, sociopaths, which she indicated familiarity with and seems to be one herself, they just
don't care about things like that. Far greater was that Sherlock would listen to her story. And she was right. Sherlock thanked her for shooting him, in fact. Shooting him in the chest was not something that Sherlock would resent. Not just from her, but from anyone.
Lastly, what Sherlock did was TAKE control away from Mary in the end by tricking her. That is a stark difference between her giving it up willingly.
Honestly, this could all be summed up like this: She liked her chances in a later conversation better than she liked them in that moment. And given the circumstances and how much she was fucked, she's pretty much right, those were better odds, even if they didn't work out for her all the same.
