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Stopping Power — Why 70 Million Americans Own Guns
A Book by J. Neil Schulman
Guns Are Still “Equalizers”


California State Senator Teresa Hughes (D-Inglewood) is so frightened about becoming a violent-crime victim, when she must travel in the Los Angeles area, that the Senate has agreed to hire an off-duty Los Angeles Police Department sergeant at $30-an-hour for Hughes’ personal protection, paid for by the taxpayers.

One of those taxpayers, who could not afford a $30-an-hour bodyguard, was Sherri Foreman, who died, along with her unborn child, after being stabbed during a carjacking attempt at an automatic teller machine in Sherman Oaks on March 30th.

It’s easy to focus on the aristocratic unfairness of a state government providing a police bodyguard to the people’s elected representative while the California Government Code, Section 845, denies any responsibility for the government to protect the people whom she represents: “Neither a public entity nor a public employee is liable for failure to establish a police department or otherwise provide police protection service or, if police protection service is provided, for failure to provide sufficient police protection service.”

But given that the dangers to both the Teresa Hughes’s and Sherri Foreman’s are tragically obvious, must one be a gun nut to suggest that handguns are still “equalizers,” making it possible for individuals to rely on themselves for effective protection?

Sylvia Hauser wouldn’t think so. She’s not a member of the NRA and even favors some gun control. But in January, 1989, when she was working a midnight shift at a convenience store in West Virginia, a 16-year-old drug abuser, two weeks out of a detention center, kidnapped her with a .22 revolver and forced her to drive into the mountains, where he raped her.

When he told her he was going to kill her, she had nothing more to lose in going for the .45 pistol she had hidden in her pocketbook. After several exchanges of gunfire, Sylvia Hauser was unshot; her attacker lay mortally wounded.

Sylvia Hauser is not an Annie Oakley. Her only training in firearms was when her husband spent a day showing her how to use the gun, 18 months earlier. Her advice to Teresa Hughes is, “I think that anyone can learn to handle a gun, and if you handle it enough so that you’re not afraid of it, you’ll be able to take care of yourself.”

Paxton Quigley, who has taught 3,500 women how to use a gun for self-defense, as well as having been a bodyguard to celebrities such as Yoko Ono, believes not only that Senator Hughes’s ability to get police protection denied to her constituents places her “above the law,” but also that her reliance on a bodyguard for protection is misguided. “Even though she might feel comfortable,” Quigley says, “she should know in fact that if someone decides to attack her, they’ll attack the bodyguard first then she’ll be next. If Senator Hughes is an independent woman…I would urge her to learn how to fight for self-defense and use a handgun for self-defense.”

Hauser’s and Quigley’s advice is confirmed by a 1979-1985 National Crime Survey from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, which shows that a robbery victim who resists attack with a firearm is half as likely to be injured as a victim who either offers no resistance or resists using any other weapon (17.4% injured as opposed to 33.2% injured). Further, an assault victim who resists with a firearm stands only a 40% as great chance of injury as a victim who either doesn’t resist at all or resists using any other weapon (12.1% as opposed to 29.9% injured).

It’s illegal in California for a private citizen to carry a gun without a concealed-carry-weapon’s license, and licenses are all but impossible to get in the most-dangerous California cities – unless you have political pull. The Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners has issued no CCW licenses to any ordinary Los Angeles resident since 1974. But Commissioner Michael Yamaki quietly obtained a license in 1992 from Police Chief Ted Cooke of Culver City. Evidently, Mr. Yamaki feels that firearms are useful for self-defense, but is fearful of extending that protection to the citizenry at large.

Such fears are groundless. Florida, which allows its citizens to carry firearms for protection after a background check and proof of competency, shows no danger to the public from licensed firearms carriers.

Teresa Hughes has precisely the same right to protection as every other California citizen. Article I, Section 1 of the California Constitution states: “All people are by nature free and independent. They have certain inalienable rights, among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy.”

If Senator Hughes is as concerned about her constituents’ safety as she is about her own, then she should see that California adopts a concealed-carry weapons law modeled after Florida’s. Otherwise, Sherri Foreman is just the latest in a long string of victims yet to come.

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Next in Stopping Power — Why 70 Million Americans Own Guns is Los Angeles Revises Concealed-Weapons Policy

Stopping Power — Why 70 Million Americans Own Guns is
Copyright © 1994, 1999 J. Neil Schulman &
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