Annie says "Go For Your Gun then dial 911"
by Rodger Iverson
On the way to the New Jersey State House in April of 1989 I picked up the local Trentonion newspaper. The headline on the front page was about an 80 year-old woman murdered in her home. The next headline was about an 81 year-old black woman named Annie Ryan who successfully defended herself with a handgun. She was arrested or at least, her hand gun, was arrested, by the Trenton Police. The article intrigued me and her home was just a couple of blocks from the State House, so I walked over and knocked on her door and introduced myself as the NRA guy.
Here was this soft-spoken, little black woman. She wore glasses and had her hair up with a kind of bonnet type hat as if she was heading to church. She had a smile on her face and welcomed me in, as if I was a long-lost cousin. “Please come in and let's talk” she said, “This is my nephew Bill Young, please sit down.” Then she started to relate her story
Annie told me that she had heard a noise at the kitchen door in the middle of the night, and she thought it was a squirrel or a raccoon in the garbage. When she opened the door a crack to take a peek, there was a ski-masked bandit on the other side of the door. They were eyeball to eyeball with each other! She tried to close the door and he pushed, then she pushed, and he pushed and she pushed.
She couldn't hold the door anymore, so she suddenly let it go. When she did, he fell onto the floor. She ran into the bedroom where she kept a loaded .38 under her pillow. As she snatched it up, with only the bed between them, she screamed, "Get out my house, get off my back, get out my house," and with that he started towards her.
She didn't want to kill him,. so she pointed the gun at his leg and she shot him in the thigh. And with that he spun around. Eyes peering through his ski mask, he said, "Lady, how many more bullets you got in that gun?" Annie said, "That's when I gave that sucker another one." And then she proceeded to chase him across the living room and back out the kitchen door.
She called the police and their response was to come and take her gun away from her. Because In New Jersey, anybody who possesses a firearm is considered to be unlawfully in possession until they can prove otherwise. The firearm was left to her by her deceased husband -- he'd purchased it in the 1920s or 30s -- and she didn't have any documents so, at that time she couldn't prove it was legal. They took the gun to hold it as evidence.
The police found the perpetrator at the hospital and they decided that they would keep the gun anyway until after he went to trial. She lived in downtown Trenton, New Jersey in a drug-riddled area. She was very fearful of living alone, without having the means to protect herself. That was the second time that she had had to use the gun.
So with her nephew's help, she applied for another gun permit, and they told her that it would take from one to six months to get the permit to purchase another firearm. And she was panicky because she lived alone in a crime-riddled neighborhood and she was left without the means to defend herself.
I was determined to help her, so I got some NRA people involved as well as some Coalition of New Jersey Sportsmen people and Roy Innis from the Congress of Racial Equality. We got the Speaker of the Assembly, and other legislators and the Governor's office involved.
There was such a clamor to get her gun back, even by the anti-gun press and others. The chief of police gave her an outstanding citizenship award and gave her the gun back. The Speaker of the Assembly handed her gun back to her in the State House with a full scale press corps taking notes that made front page in most papers.
Geraldo Rivera put her on his TV show and had her picked up in a limousine. Annie was a wonderful, sweet lady, and handled the TV interview magnificently. She was made Queen of the Easter Parade in Trenton, riding down Main Street in a convertible, waving to an applauding crowd.
Later, Charlton Heston presented her an outstanding member award from the NRA, in front of 1,500 applauding sportsmen and women. People donated an alarm system for her house and she lived there for several more years feeling secure with her deceased husband's pistol under her pillow. Loaded and ready to go!
Three years later, Annie was stabbed after a struggle in the same kitchen by a young woman, attempting to steal Annie’s purse that held her modest dollars. Once more she “snatched her pistol up” and gave chase. The thief made off with her purse but Annie survived thanks to her pistol. Annie said, “I was glad I didn't have to shoot. The mere presence of the gun was enough to send the knife welding thief on the run!”
http://www.gunstories.org/gunstories/story?sid=45
No comments:
Post a Comment