[edited for space]
Bleeding and weakened from the bullet wound in her chest, Susan Gonzalez aimed her husband's .22-caliber pistol, the one she hated, and emptied it into one of the robbers who had burst through the front door of her rural Jacksonville home.
Those shots ended the life of one robber, led to a life prison term for another and became an epiphany for Gonzalez, a 41-year-old mother of five who runs a photography studio.
Gonzalez had always feared guns, never wanted a gun and argued with her husband, Mike, to please not keep guns in their home.
"I hated guns, all of them," she said. "I was that scared of them that I didn't want them around."
That all changed that terror-filled night nearly three years ago when Susan Gonzalez fought for her life inside her family's home near Jacksonville International Airport.
She and her husband, 43, no longer argue about guns, and she goes almost nowhere without her holstered Taurus .38 Special. She sits with it while watching television and takes it outside to do yardwork.
She joined advocacy groups such as Women Against Gun Control and the Second Amendment Sisters.
And she became a vocal opponent of gun control, traveling to Washington in May to meet with President Clinton and counter-organizers of the Million Mom March, which organized a huge Mother's Day rally to support gun control legislation. She recently taped a segment scheduled to air on ABC-TV's 20/20 in the fall. And this month, she was filmed by a British TV crew for a documentary on Americans and guns.
Gonzalez's story is naturally compelling because she was anti-gun and because she successfully defended herself against an armed intruder after being shot herself, said Janalee Tobias, founder and president of Women Against Gun Control.
"She actually fired a gun," Tobias said. In most cases where potential victims protect themselves, Tobias said, a person is able to scare off an intruder simply by displaying a weapon.
Gonzalez never imagined herself advocating gun owners' rights. She still weeps at the memory of taking a man's life.
But she said she thinks it's important that stories like hers get told.
"Two and a half years ago I felt just like all them other women [at the Million Mom March]," she said. "You hear about criminals with guns, and you hear about kids committing suicide with guns, but you never hear about the self-defense aspect."
'I knew I was dead'
The 42 bullet holes police counted in the Gonzalez home the morning of Aug. 2, 1997, are stark evidence of the sheer terror the couple endured on the night that changed their lives.
The night seemed to be winding down as any other. While Mike Gonzalez slept, his wife sat on the couch watching television and waiting for their 18-year-old son to arrive home from a friend's house, where he had been playing video games.
Susan Gonzalez remembers hearing the doorknob jiggle about 12:40 a.m. She thought to herself as she walked toward the door, "Wow, he's early."
Suddenly the door flew open and two masked men burst into the doublewide wearing gloves and camouflage jackets and waving guns. One of them ordered Susan Gonzalez to lie down, but she ran. He chased her back to the master bedroom, where she woke her husband and tried to hold the door shut. She was shot in the chest.
"It burned like a fire going through me," she said.
As her husband, 43, wrestled with the two robbers in the living room, Susan Gonzalez dialed 911, told the operator they were being shot, gave her address and hung up. She then grabbed her husband's Ruger .22 from a drawer in the headboard and, fearing she would hit her husband by mistake, fired several shots over the robbers' heads to scare them off.
It didn't work.
"One came towards me firing, and I ran," she said. "After running to my bedroom, the intruder didn't follow me all the way . . . because he now knew I had a gun also."
She peered out from her bedroom doorway and saw one of the gunmen, Raymond Waters Jr., crouched near her refrigerator. She crept along the wall, sneaked up behind him and emptied the Ruger, hitting him twice with her seven or eight remaining bullets. The other gunman, Robert Walls, then shot Susan Gonzalez, now out of ammunition, as she retreated to the bedroom again.
"I was standing in my closet asking for forgiveness of my sins, because I knew I was dead," she recalled.
Reality sets in
Walls fled from the house but returned when he found the robbers' getaway driver had left. He put a gun to Susan Gonzalez's head and demanded the keys to the couple's truck. As he sped off, the truck ran over Waters, who had staggered outside.
Walls, 24, is serving five life prison terms for second-degree felony murder, armed robbery, armed burglary and two counts of attempted first-degree murder. Louie T. Wright, 27, the getaway driver, pleaded guilty to robbery and was sentenced to five years.
Susan and Mike Gonzalez, each shot twice during the gunbattle, were treated at area hospitals. She required lung surgery. His injuries were less serious, and he went home in three days.
Nancy Hwa, a spokeswoman for the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, was reluctant to criticize Gonzalez.
"Reality set in when I was shot," she said, "to the point where I realized why my husband and others had guns for self-defense."
It's better to have a gun and not need it, than ...
You should read the account of the Luby's massacre that Dr. Susan Gratia has given. She was there. Her parents died. Her legally owned handgun was in her vehicle because it was against the law for her to carry it into the restaurant.
The following is transcribed from oral testimony before the Missouri legislature:
"Somewhere along the line I made one of my stupidest decisions... I was afraid that ...if ...somebody caught me with the gun in my purse, I could lose my license to practice, lose my ability to make a living. So I took the gun out of my purse and I left it in my car ...which the laws in my state are kinda wishy- washy on ...and I thought, 'Heck, if I needed it, it's probably going to be when I'm out on the road ...in the middle of nowhere and, you know, my car's broke down or something ..."
"Everybody in here knows, I think, what happened in Luby's .. but, in a nutshell ...uh ...ya know, we all think ...and I know you do ...(indicating a committee member), we all think that crime happens when you're walking down a dark alley... I've never been involved in any crimes ...that's never happened in my life ... I was with my parents...AT NOON, on a bright sunny day, in Luby's, with a hundred and forty other people, OK. In a town that's not a high crime town."
"This guy .... drives through the window .... and starts shooting ...This guy has got no history ...nothing." "Well, my father and I immediately put the table up in front of us and we all got down behind it, and I ...ya know your first opinion is ...is this guy robbing this place ...what's the deal ...what's ...what's going on, and then you're realizing that all he's doing is simply shooting people."
"As he was working his way toward us, I reached for my purse, thinking ...Hah! ...I've got this son of a gun ...OK? Now, understand, I know what a lot of people think, ...they think, ... 'Oh, my God, then you would have had a gunfight and then more people would have been killed.' Unhunh, no, ...I was down on the floor ...this guy is standing up ...everybody else is down on the floor ...I had a perfect shot at him ...it would have been clear, I had a place to prop my hand ...the guy was not even aware of what we were doing ...I'm not saying that I could have saved anybody in there, but I would have had a chance ...that's all I'm saying is that I would have had a chance ..." "My gun wasn't even in my purse ...it was a hundred feet away in my car!"
"My father was saying, 'I gotta do something!, I gotta do something! This guy's going to kill everyone in here!' So I wasn't able to hold him down and when my father thought he had a chance ...he went at the guy! The guy turned, shot him in the chest and my dad went down."
"Shortly ...it made the guy change directions and he went off to my left. Shortly after that somebody broke out a window in back and I saw a chance to get out ...I grabbed my mother and tried to get her up ...hoped she was following me ...and I grew wings on my feet. As it turned out, my mother crawled over to my father and stayed with him ...and this ...I'm trying to think of a civil word to use ...this person ...uh ...eventually came around and shot her also ...OK"
"Let me make a point here, in case this isn't becoming extremely clear. My state has gun control laws. It did not keep Hennard from coming in and killing everybody! What it did do, was keep me from protecting my family! That's the only thing that cotton pickin' law did! OK! Understand that! That's ...that's so important!"
Punishment for surviving?
{Not a first hand account, but quite illustrative of the attitudes of the "civilized"}
This just in; dateline Washington, DC:
Two masked men armed with knives, duct tape, and a can of gasoline attacked three women in their home
yesterday; a mother and her two adult daughters, one of whom is scheduled to testify in a trial. After a violent hand-to-hand fight in which all three women were injured, the mother got her handgun, and shot and wounded one of the assailants. He ran, but was later captured by the police. The other attacker escaped. The DA's office is now considering charges against the mother for possessing a gun, which is illegal in DC.
Welcome to Wonderland.
Just The threat of armed resistance often stops crime
At a 1988 local fair I was escorting two of my three younger brothers and my sister to our parked car (ages 12, 10, 3). Parking was limited and the parked car was 3/4 mile from the fairgrounds through a playground.
On the way to the car my brothers fell behind playing on the playground equipment. I went ahead, confident that I could keep track of them from around the corner of the school.
On the other side of the school across a basketball court a man stepped from his car, apparently recognizing me. He gave his name, it was one I remembered from several years before, a bully that delighted in beating me up when I was much smaller.
He inferred that he was going to do the same to me as he had those many years ago, using his Army experience to do a thorough job. To which I stated that times had changed, and if he were to consider such an action he might find himself facing a knife or a gun. It was a bluff. I had no gun, no matter how hard I wished for one, I couldn't run, I had my sister with me and my brothers were not far behind. After a short period of discussion across the basketball court he decided to leave. I have never seen him again, thankfully. However, I am quite positive that the only reason I was able to avoid a physical confrontation was the possibility that I might be armed.
A typical occurance - No shots are fired
While I was in college, I awoke to the crashing sound of some ice trays falling to the floor in my downstairs kitchen. I instantly realized I had left them on a table in front of a window. I retrieved my Mossberg 500 (a pump-action shotgun) and stood at the top of my stairs listening. I heard breathing and racked the slide, making that distinctive noise any fool would recognize. The intruder left through the front door in quite a rush, and had some difficulty unlocking the bolt and chain. About a month later a female resident was slashed and killed in her apartment, the assailant was captured and was known to have a long history of mental instability. While this perp was at large the local police recommended that the residents of the building arm themselves and even conducted training.
Woman avoids rape, possibly murder, without firing a shot.
From: Nadja
Back in the early 1980s I was a housewife and student in Corvallis, Oregon. My husband worked swing shift and I was generally alone at home. On the night this happened it was raining; because the house was tightly sealed, I had cracked the bedroom window in order to reduce the condensation and chance of mold growing.
I was lying on our bed, reading for a Biochem course when I heard the window screen fall. I looked up in time to see a man with a ski mask, no other visible clothing, and a knife getting up on the window ledge. I started to back along the bed, along the wall to the bedroom door. The telephone was on the desk immediately beneath the window, and where he was starting to step down. I realized that when I reached the end of the bed that in order to open the door and leave the room I would step within his reach.
The man was talking to me, saying stuff that the general gist of was that if I did what he said he might let me live. I couldn't really hear him, I felt like I was underwater, my vision seemed really narrow and sounds seemed far away. He watched me and he seemed very happy; it was too weird. I can't even describe how happy he sounded while he was saying this stuff. It was terrifying. He seemed to be watching, waiting.
As I backed off the bed I stepped on something - my then husband's semi-automatic rifle - we had been gone rabbit hunting that day with a friend and had loaded the small rifle with .22 magnums. We hadn't fired a shot since the friend had brought spaniels and his goshawk and we had used the dogs to flush the bunnies, and the hawk to catch them. I grabbed the rifle and put it against the inside of my leg, the barrel pointing straight at the man's chest. I let off the safety and pulled the slide as I brought the rifle into a brace position against the inside of my left leg. Since he was on my right, and almost within grabbing distance I didn't dare try to bring it to my shoulder because there wouldn't be time before he could grab me.
The man then began to tell me how I didn't want to hurt him, how I should put the gun down. My finger went into the trigger guard, and he rolled off the window and went off into the night. I never actually fired the rifle; he fled when he realized I knew how to shoot and would if he stayed.
I was too afraid to go to the window and close it. I sat there for a while, and then finally my husband came home ane we shut the window. I called the police, told them about the intruder, no one came out.
The next day the paper told about how a woman a few blocks away had been raped and beaten and pricked with a knife by a man who matched what my attacker had looked like.
Years later I was talking with a retired police lieutenant and told him my story. The retired policeman told me I had done the absolute right thing, that this person had done this before, and was waiting for me to reach a "decision point" when I would be distracted and he could attack more safely for himself. He figured that the guy would have jumped while I tried to open the door. It was comforting to hear that, because over the years when I have told the story to other women, I have been criticized and asked why I didn't try to run away or talk the man out of it. I have been made to feel like a more violent criminal than the happy man on the window who was damn near giggling while he told me what he was going to do to me.
I am now an NRA instructor and an NRA member. I cannot imagine not having a firearm in my house. I consider the right to exist my most fundamental right, and I consider gun control to be a form of murder. Even though I successfully defended myself that night, it cost me. I no longer feel safe in my own home; and I have been made to suffer guilt by people who don't believe in the existence of evil, and who believe that somehow, if I were a better or more noble person that that man would have gone away if I could just have said the right things to him.
A tale from Germany - Do you really want European style laws here?
From: Astrid Jekat
I'd like to tell a story of something that happened to me last week, because I no longer know what to think of the entire affair. I didn't invent any of the following (I know I can't prove it here, but I have an eyewitness).
I live in a German city, and for the past year carried a 9mm five shot pistol that fires CS gas, as real guns are forbidden in this country, and never needed it. I have been assaulted before and have to go to work through a bad part of town on the bike.
A girl and I had visited friends late Friday night (it was 1.30 in the morning) and were talking in front their door while she unlocked her motorcycle. A drunk couple came out a nearby pub; the man immediately started to make derogatory remarks about the motorbike while the woman grinned. I stayed quiet and began to feel uneasy. I wish I had run.
Three or four more people came up. A man accosted me (the usual stuff, "pretty lady, how about the two
of us?") und took hold of my knees. I immediately yelled at him to let go (did not call him names), but couldn't move away because I was holding my bicycle with stuff loaded on it. He was offended, and grabbed me again. I let the bike go and ran; he followed, telling me he'd show me, and I realized we were surrounded by drunks. I pulled the pistol and twice loudly warned him to stop, and fired a warning shot to the side. He stopped immediately. The first guy yelled, and jumped at me. No kidding, he jumped karate style with both both feet ahead, and I fired gas at him. Karate Man fell on his behind, and I was very impressed. The horror was, the man was so drunk and angry he got up again and promised to kill me. I ran, yelling my head off. He followed, and I emptied the gas pistol at him to no effect.
I ran into the pub. Nobody helped me, and the guy dragged me across the floor by my hair, beating me until the man we'd visited came (the other girl rang his doorbell like mad) and got me out of there, as he is very big.
The result: the police tells me I cannot charge the guy who handled me with sexual assault "because he didn't do enough" (it's not the police's fault, it's the laws here. I reacted *too early*, that is, before he raped me), and *I* am facing charges of causing physical harm with a dangerous weapon.
The laws here in Germany concerning weapons, even gas ones, are restrictive and totally perverted: The "karate man" is unharmed because I know the law, and therefore did not shoot him in the face, which would have really injured, but also effectively stopped him. Legal gas ammunition is so weak in this country it is a joke.
I did not dare shoot him on the ground, because that is injuring a helpless person, so he could get up and chase me.
He may attack me simply for defending myself from a sexual assault.
And of course the weapon has been confiscated because I am "not able to use it properly". That is true, but not the way the law means it. If I had used the gun properly, that is had been more ruthless, I would have shot him full in the face, and some more while he was down. And I would have been unharmed.
But now I am a "gunslinging crazy female". I also am very worried, and when I quiet down after writing (or telling) my angry story, I am very afraid.
But I wasn't raped.
Sailor's wife wards off attack while husband is at sea
From: John
I was out at sea while serving in the U.S. Navy, defending the rights of lawless pukes to terrorize my wife. One day, three high-school age, misguided youths came calling at my house while my wife was home alone, but for our puppy (hardly a fearsome animal). The three commenced banging and kicking on our door in an attempt to gain entry. A frantic call to 911 brought the deputy sheriff running! Of course, when the Kitsap county deputies run they don't travel very fast. The dispatcher heard the commotion over the phone (it was only 6 feet from the door that was being kicked in) and it still took the police over 20 minutes to show up.
Not wanting to be another statistic, and knowing the police help wasn't available in a timely fashion even though she'd had time to call, my wife retrieved our shotgun. We had a window by the door, and one look at the 12-gauge helped those poor unfortunates to decide that there were plenty of other fun things they could be doing.
I might point out that the shotgun was neither loaded, yet, or pointed at the three. Just being able to legally have it was enough to prevent a tragic situation for my wife as well as for the families of the three would-have-been assailants turned victims.
By the way, when the deputy finally showed up, he went and had a talk with the three boys. Whoopee!
Did he prevent a racial hate crime?
From: Richard
Several years ago, one balmy summer evening, a man, driving through an area inhabited largely by an unspecified racial minority, was stopped for a red traffic signal when a brick sailed through his windshield. when he stepped out of his car and asked who did this, approximately 40 (according to witnesses) locals materialized to beat him, causing severe bruises, lacerations and a broken arm.
About two weeks after this incident, i was driving my 1973 TR-6 when I was halted by a traffic light at the opposite perimeter of the same neighborhood. As I sat, a golf ball sized stone landed on the console beside me. Looking about, I saw three teen locals approaching me from eight o'clock. I took the stone and tossed it in a high arching path, not at them, but giving them a dirty look while I did so. As they crossed the street behind my car, I kept them in the periphery of my vision. Two of the young men continued across the street, but the third one tried to sneak up the passenger side of the car. I reached over to the passenger seat and grabbed my blue, S&W, model 15 combat masterpiece, and when he grabbed my passenger door handle, I pulled it from concealment under my tonneau cover ( i have a permit) and pointed it up from a close in retention hold. when he saw the gun he said "shi..it!" and hence looked like a neon sign headed down the street.
Crime thwarted in apartment house laundry room
I live in one of those multi-building apartments that have a room in the basement of one of the buildings which is used as a laundry area (washers, dryers, folding tables, chairs and magazines to read, etc.). It became a habit to do my laundry after 10 PM since there was seldom any competition for the facilities that late.
During the cold winter months, it was not atypical to find a homeless person or two in the laundry room (which wasn't locked) trying to keep warm. Most of the time they didn't cause any trouble. Every once in a while they'd ask for pocket change or a sandwich, and I'd often oblige them. A couple of times, however, I'd come in to do the laundry and one of these folks would be in there who was just a bit too drunk and extremely belligerent. In those cases, I'd call the cops to remove them. One particularly memorable person wanted to pick a fight with me. After that, I became a bit more wary of these folks and started carrying a concealed pistol in with me - just in case.
During one of my late night trips to the laundry I had just finished loading my stuff into the washing machines when a tall muscular man (caucasian, in his late twenties or early thirties) came in the door. He looked a bit startled to see me there. I happened to notice that he had a crowbar in one hand and a large screwdriver in his back pocket. It didn't take long for me to figure out that he was there to rip off the coin boxes on the washer and dryer machines. When he saw that I had an inkling of what he was up to, he raised his fist (with the crowbar) at me and demanded that I hand over any money I had on me.
I happened to be carrying my pistol with me that night in my belt - concealed by a large sweatshirt. There was a folding table between me and him and he was between me and the door, so I couldn't run. He grabbed the table and started to pull it away so he could get to me. At that point I pulled up my sweatshirt so he could see the gun. He mumbled something that sounded like "mother____er" and ran out the door before I could get the gun out and point it. I stood there shaking for about a minute, until I got up the courage to look out the door and see if he was there waiting for me, or if he'd gone. He appeared to have gone, so I beat feet out of there back to my apartment.
Now I had a choice to make. Should I call the cops or not? The state I live in allows you to keep a loaded gun in your home, your car or in your place of business. With a permit, you can carry a gun concealed on the streets with some limitations. I had no permit. I was sufficiently concerned about whether laundry room equals "home" that I didn't want to find out the hard way, so I did NOT report the incident. No one got hurt, and no shots were fired. No need to risk being charged with a possible misdemeanor.
I don't know if the guy's intent was to kill me or just scare me enough to give up my wallet (which I didn't even have on me - I left it back in my apartment). I couldn't take a chance finding out. By merely showing the gun, the situation was defused and no one was hurt.
Trigger lock endangers family.
From: Joel
On July 15th, 1990 -- five days after my daughter's first birthday -- at just about four in the morning, the burglar in our bedroom reached a hand under the covers, on my wife's side.
Felicia came awake instantly, and shouted -- "There's somebody in the room!" and I snapped awake and shot out of bed, shouting -- bellowing, Felicia says -- something to the effect of how I was going to get my gun and kill the bastard.
I think the burglar was already fleeing when I yanked open the drawer. I remember thinking, as I pulled out my then newly-acquired 9mm Ruger P-85 -- yes, the same model that Colin Ferguson recently used to kill a bunch of unarmed commuters -- that I had to get a good view of him before I shot him, because our one-year-old daughter was across the hall in her room, and for all I knew, he was holding her. And I remember thinking that if he was holding her, I'd have to shoot low and hit him in the legs, or high, and shoot him in the head.
But we had a trigger lock on the Ruger, and in the dark I couldn't find my keys, so I ran to the bureau and ripped open the locked bag with the.22 target pistol in it, fumbled in the dark until I found its magazine (a politically incorrect 13-round magazine, by the way) and slammed it into the pistol, racking the slide as I ran to check on Judy -- who, thankfully, slept through the whole thing.
I remember thinking that the slide had worked too easily, so I wasted a round by racking it again, dumping a cartridge on the carpet, and then I carefully pushed the safety switch off, toward that little F for Fire.
-- and took a deep breath.
My wife and daughter were safe, and they were behind me, and there was no sense in gambling, chasing a burglar or burglars off into the night.
So I just crouched at the top of the stairs, no doubt very unromantic looking in my jockey shorts with the potbelly hanging over the waistband in front, thinking that if one of them came up the stairs I'd put three rounds in his chest, and one in his head. (Actually, I distinctly remember thinking, "I'll put three warning shots in his chest, and one warning shot in his head." It didn't seem funny then.)
And I also remember reminding myself not to put my finger on the trigger until I had a target to shoot at, and I never did end up putting my finger on the trigger that evening, because they had all run away, and and when the police arrived -- I'm told it was less than five minutes; it felt like a couple of years -- we were dressed, and went downstairs to look at the damage.
At least three of them, probably four -- it would take at least two people lift our large-sized TV set, and it looked like one of them was working on the VCR and another was emptying out Felicia's purse while the third came upstairs. There's some reason to believe it was the gang known as the Nokomis Bandits, who we read about a few days later, a gang of four who had steadily ratcheted up their level of violence; if so, we got off a lot easier than most of their victims.
As such things go, it wasn't all that bad.
They got: Felicia's Banana Republic bag; her credit cards and wallet, containing about $30 cash; about $20 in a container of quarters we keep -- kept -- for change; our huge Sharp TV set; my answering machine; her keys, credit cards and ID; a TV cable; my business card case; a few other odds and ends.
And they took our sense of security. Our home didn't seem to be the safe place it was before.
Oh -- and they got another thing, something I only noticed a couple of days later, when I went to carve a roast: they took a butcher knife from the kitchen.
I sat down and shook for a few minutes. And I didn't mention it to Felicia for a number of months. A butcher knife.
Neither Felicia nor I slept through the night for many months, and even now I wake quickly at the slightest sound.
I'm not a violent guy, honest. In fifteen years together, certainly including the occasional loud argument like most couples have, I've never so much as raised my hand to my wife, and I save spanking my daughter for important issues like, say, running into the street or playing with the burners on the stove (and even then, I don't hit her hard; I hate hitting kids). That's no big deal; that's all pretty ordinary.
Every time I hear the latest cry to take handguns away from ordinary citizens (and, of course, those few criminals who are willing to obey such laws), I think about the night we lucked out, and how glad I am that such laws weren't in force that night.
And I wonder -- I'll never know -- what he and his friends would have done if instead of bellowing, "I'm getting my gun and killing the bastard?" I'd said, "Please don't hurt us, please?"
Fled anyway? (And where was that butcher knife?)
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