Even in this story, those bogus statistics live...
I really hate those people from HCI an CPHV.
Have gun, will not fear it
anymore
By Paul Pinkham
Times-Union staff writer
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.
"I live every day knowing I had to shoot that boy," she said.
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.
"Every incident is different," she said. "In this particular case,
she certainly was justified using whatever means necessary to
defend herself."
But the compelling story obscures the fact that "incidences like
Ms. Gonzalez's are very rare," Hwa said, citing statistics that
show firearms are far less likely to be used in self-defense than
in suicides, accidental shootings or homicides involving
members of the same household. And, she said, the center
believes having a handgun escalates the potential for violence.
"People have to weigh the risk of losing a TV, jewelry or
whatever vs. losing their life," Hwa said.
The statistics don't matter to Susan 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."
Living in fear
In April, Mike and Susan Gonzalez traveled to New York to be
interviewed for a TV talk show pilot with 20/20's John Stossel.
It was the first time since the robbery she had been without her
gun for any significant length of time, and, as she and her
husband dined at a steakhouse, she got scared about walking
back to their hotel.
"I told my husband, 'Take one of their steak knives,'" she said.
At home, they live behind burglar bars. The doors and windows
are always locked. And there's the ever-present pistol.
"That's sad to have to live that way, but it's the only way I can
feel comfortable," Susan Gonzalez said.
Her fears were only heightened when she and her husband were
crime victims again in March. Burglars used an ax from their
shed to break down the burglar bars on the back door while
they weren't home. Among the items stolen -- the Ruger .22
she used to shoot Waters.
Police are still recovering weapons taken in the burglary -- a
9mm turned up in Virginia last week -- but the Ruger remains
missing.
As a mother of five, all now grown, Susan Gonzalez said she
understands the gun control lobby's concerns about children
getting access to guns. She questions some positions taken by
the National Rifle Association. Neither she nor her husband
are members.
"I think they're a little over-the-top, but I think . . . they're
doing it [because] they're afraid once it starts, then it's not
going to stop," she said, referring to legislation limiting gun
owners' rights. "They're trying to preserve Second
Amendment rights."
She said she believes in gun locks or unloading weapons that
aren't being used. But she also believes people should have the
right to keep an unlocked gun close by to protect themselves --
like she did.
"I feel I have the right to self-defense," she said, "and I feel
that other people do, too."
------------------
~USP
"[Even if there would be] few tears shed if and when the Second Amendment is held to guarantee nothing more than the state National Guard, this would simply show that the Founders were right when they feared that some future generation might wish to abandon liberties that they considered essential, and so sought to protect those liberties in a Bill of Rights. We may tolerate the abridgement of property rights and the elimination of a right to bear arms; but we should not pretend that these are not reductions of rights." -- Justice Scalia 1998
