Forward
When Chris Bird called me to ask if I would review his new book,
Thank God I Had a Gun, I silently thought, ‘Good grief, like
I don't have other important things to do: shuttle kids to basketball
camp, wash clothes, do the dishes, clean the stalls, doctor a horse's
eye, mop the floor, get the oil changed, pick up the kids...’
So,
I must admit that it wasn’t with much enthusiasm that, once
his book arrived, I planted myself in the recliner to do a polite
but cursory scan. Several hours later, my husband returned from work
to find me still firmly planted with my nose buried in the pages.
Wow! ‘Riveting’ may be an overused word in book and movie
reviews, but it is perfectly descriptive of the stories that Chris
has compiled in such a readable manner.
I firmly believe that it has
always been the personal stories with which folks can identify that
have the ability to change public policy. People need to be able
to imagine themselves in the situations facing the people in this
book, and being forced to make the same choices. The media loves
such stories for a reason, too: they sell.
I hope copies of Chris’s
book eventually end up in the hands of passive individuals who grew
up without guns and believe the cops will rescue them from any sticky
situation (i.e. most women and many new-age men). Perhaps, they will
find themselves empathizing with one or more of the book’s
real life characters enough to reevaluate their previously anti-gun
positions.
Who knows, maybe they will even vote!
- Suzanna Gratia Hupp, Texas State Representative,
District 54
Suzanna saw her parents murdered in the 1991 Luby’s cafeteria
massacre in Killeen. She subsequently became one of the most compelling
witnesses in favor of the right of civilians to carry concealed handguns
for protection, testifying before many state legislatures and Congress.
She was elected to her central Texas district in 1996.
Exerpt from Chapter One
REMEMBER NEW ORLEANS: VINNIE PERVEL
Vinnie got out of his van and
put his keys in his pocket. He noticed a lavender-colored Geo Prism,
driven by a young black woman, had pulled in right behind him. He
was paying attention to the Prism when he became aware of two young
black men at the front of his van. They were about nineteen years
old, both wearing long white T-shirts that reached to their knees,
black jeans, and white tennis shoes. They were about Vinnie’s
height – five feet eight inches – and
a little lighter than his hundred and sixty pounds. Both wore their
hair in long cornrows.
The Prism drove off as the men started asking questions. Vinnie recalled
the conversation.
“How
do we get out of here? We want to evacuate,” one of the men said.
“If
you go right down this road here you can catch the ferry by the ferry
landing; they’re evacuating free,” Vinnie said.
“You
don’t realize, we have children.”
“They
take children as well.”
At that
point, Vinnie noticed that one of the men was holding one hand behind
his back and he could see the end of what looked like a sledge-hammer
handle. He was afraid the men meant to harm him so he turned away
from them intending to yell to a group of about a dozen friends and
neighbors who were at the end of the block. The group consisted of
men, mostly armed with shotguns, and their wives. Vinnie knew them
because they were all members of the neighborhood association.
Before
he could open his mouth, one of the young men hit him in the back
of the head with his fist, and Vinnie went down. As he fell, he hit
the front of his head on the edge of a brick planter that was on
the sidewalk. The other guy stood over him with a three-foot maul
in his hand.
“Just stay down. We want your truck, the keys to
your van,” the man
demanded.
Vinnie told him the keys were in his pocket. One of them took them,
got into the van and cranked it up. As soon as it was running, the
other guy ran to the passenger side and got in, and the van took
off south on Belleville. As they drove away, Vinnie’s fear gave way to anger.
“At the time I had a pair of pliers in my hand ‘cause that’s
what I was cutting the gas off with. I just stood up and I flung the pliers and
knocked out the back window of the van,” Vinnie said.
“I hit right in the middle of the back window and busted it out. The
guys both turned around and looked at me because they thought I was shooting
at them. They almost hit a tree but they just managed to turn left, go down
another block, and turn right.”
Vinnie yelled to the group of friends
and neighbors for help. They piled into a truck and drove towards
him but Vinnie was chasing after his van and had made it another
block when he saw a black police officer in uniform sitting in an
unmarked white Crown Victoria. He told the officer the two men had
stolen his van and hit him in the head. The officer said he would
go after them.
“He turned around and went the other way.”
He was the last police
officer Vinnie and his friends would see for ten days.
“I went home, told Gregg what happened, and he freaked out. My Mom freaked
out, and I guess I freaked out ‘cause I went upstairs, and
I got the gun, and went on my front porch upstairs off my bedroom.
I sat on my second-floor balcony with the gun.”
The assault
and the hijacking of his van was the defining moment for Vinnie Pervel.
In those few minutes, he went from being a supporter of gun control
to an ardent supporter of the Second Amendment. He realized why ordinary
law-abiding citizens needed guns to defend themselves. He had just
seen that residents could not rely on the police for protection or
even to stop crime when it was happening. He was hearing random shots
being fired, mostly across the river. He knew that with the break
down of law and order, ordinary citizens would have to provide their
own security. And that didn’t mean burglar alarms and deadbolts:
it meant guns...
Exerpt from Chapter Four
DEATH OF A POLICE OFFICER: RORY VERTIGAN
Rory Vertigan rolled to a
stop about fifty feet behind the white Lincoln Town Car. He watched
horrified as Petrona fired at the police car. His window was down
but he didn’t hear the sound of the
shots or the wail of the police siren. He did see the revolver bucking
in Petrona’s hands. He saw the officer
slump down in the squad car. The police car slowed, veered off the
street to the left, and smashed into a utility pole, snapping it
in two.
Petrona, still holding the Smith & Wesson revolver in
both hands, turned towards Rory. The big Irishman thinks the young
man fired a shot at him.
“I’m not sure if he actually fired a round at me or
not but I know the gun was pointed at me after he fired on the officer,” Vertigan
said.
Rory passed his Glock from his right hand to his left so he
could shoot out of his window.
“I just saw the gun coming at me and I thought I had to lay
some rounds down or he was just going to stand there and pluck me
off.”
Rory pointed his semi-automatic out of the window in the
direction of the Mexican youth. He was unable to see the sights on
his Glock because his head was inside the car, his gun was outside,
and his target was directly in front of his car.
“I just pointed the gun in his direction and started firing.”
Even
while he was shooting, Rory’s training kicked in. He was very
conscious of a UPS truck parked facing him beyond the Lincoln. He
made sure to avoid hitting it.
Petrona jumped back into the white
Lincoln to reload his empty revolver as Rory got out of his Kia.
There was a pause in the shooting as Vertigan took up a position
using the top of his open door as a rest and holding the gun in both
hands. He saw the UPS driver leave his van and run for cover.
Petrona’s
left foot hit the pavement as he turned back towards Rory and raised
his revolver. Vertigan let go several more shots at the Mexican.
Petrona
retreated back into the car then Rory saw the Lincoln’s reverse
lights come on. He got back into his Kia for protection as the bigger
car hurtled backwards and smashed into his car knocking it back about
five feet. Rory was holding his gun up in his left hand when the
Lincoln hit his Sephia. The windshield slammed back into his gun
and hand. The glass shattered and cut his hand. The cars ended up
at an L position to each other.
Rory fired several more rounds and
saw Petrona flinch. One round went through the back window of the
Lincoln, through the front seat, and hit Petrona in the shoulder.
Vertigan
realized his slide was locked back on an empty chamber. He was now
in a bad position. He had an empty gun, no more ammunition, and was
facing an armed adversary. It was fight or flight time. He could
run at his attacker or run away from him. Rory chose to charge him, “because
I’m too fat and too
slow to run in the other direction.”
As he
ran at Petrona, he managed to stuff his empty Glock into his waistband
at the back. The Lincoln’s door was still open and Rory slammed
into it. The suspect had his revolver in his left hand and appeared
to be groping with his right hand for something on the floorboards
of the Lincoln.
As Rory
slammed into the car door pushing it forward, Petrona brought up
the .357 Magnum revolver, stuck it right in Vertigan’s face, and pulled
the trigger...
Exerpt from Chapter Six
HOTEL HOLDUP: STEVE ROBEY
Shortly after 9:30, there was a knock on
the door. Steve assumed it was the maid returning and went to the
door. Sarina was still in bed, trying to go back to sleep. He opened
the door to find two black men, standing one on each side of the
door. One was in his early twenties and the other in his early
forties. The younger one was over six feet tall and weighed nearly
two hundred pounds. He was later identified as Ernest Henry Major;
the older man was Phillip “New
Wave” Nelson. Major towered over Robey who is five feet, five
inches tall.
Major asked Steve for a loan of couple of bucks. Steve
replied that he didn’t
have any money – it wasn’t exactly the truth. He started
to close the door.
“I almost had the door shut and they pushed their way through
and Major stuck a gun in my face,” Steve said later in a deposition.
It
was dark inside the hotel room with the curtains closed and the only
light coming from the television screen.
Major demanded money while
Nelson picked up a blue zippered bank pouch which was lying on the
bed. Inside the pouch were some bits of paper relating to the house
hunt. It also contained nine thousand dollars in one hundred dollar
bills. The money was the proceeds from the house in Cape Coral Steve
had sold before moving north to New Smyrna Beach.
As Nelson was trying
to unzip the pouch, Steve handed Major his wallet. This distracted
the two robbers and they never found the nine thousand dollars. Steve
had some photos of his two-and-a-half year old daughter who lived
in Ohio in the wallet. They were the only photos of her that he had
so he asked Major for them. The robber ignored him, rifled through
the wallet, then passed it to Nelson who dropped the bank pouch.
The older man looked through the wallet then threw it on the floor.
Steve had a bunch of keys clipped to his belt loop. Major unclipped
them and took them. He ordered Steve to lie down on the bed with
his face in the pillow.
Sarina poked her head out from under the covers
and Major realized that there was someone in the other bed. He screamed
at Sarina to get into the bathroom. She got out of bed, wearing shorts
and a T-shirt. Major grabbed her hard by the arm, hurting her. When
she was six-years-old, she had cut her arm badly when she went through
a glass door and it still hurt. Major steered her towards the bathroom,
which was at the back of the hotel room.
“Who is he to you?” Major asked her.
“He’s my father,” Sarina replied.
All the while,
Major kept the small revolver he was holding pointed at Steve. The
robber pushed Sarina into the bathroom. Once inside, she locked the
door.
Meanwhile, Steve turned to look at Nelson who was standing beside
him.
“Get your f---ing face in that pillow,” Nelson yelled.
It was a fatal mistake.
The older robber smacked Steve in the face
then pulled his shirt up with his left hand as though to draw a gun.
Steve did what he was told. He lay face down on the bed.
“I knew I was gonna be killed, and I didn’t know what
they were gonna do with my daughter,” he later told Detective
Mike Rakestraw of the Lee County Sheriff’s Office. “I
assumed that they were going to shoot me in the head or something,
rape my daughter, and who knows. But I couldn’t let that happen.”
Under
the pillow was Steve’s Colt Combat Elite, a .45-caliber semi-automatic
pistol. He had a Florida concealed weapons permit but he only carried
the gun when he was traveling. The gun held a magazine with seven
rounds in it but the chamber was empty and the hammer at halfcock.
Convinced
that he was about to be shot in the back of the head by Nelson, Steve
groped for the gun...
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