Disarming a Female?

Responsible Firearms Ownership and 2nd Amendment Issues

DISARMING A FEMALE??

Take the case of 49-year-old divorcee Sammie Foust of Cape Coral, Fla. "I used to love to
open the windows and doors and feel the gulf breezes flowing through my house, " Ms. Faust
says, "I got pleasure from watching sailboats pass by in the canal behind my home. Now I sit in
a closed-up room. I'm even afraid to answer the door."

Foust had fallen asleep cleaning house on the evening of May 9, 1996. The bed where she
lay was piled with bags of old clothing she'd decided to give away, along with old purses and
boxes of odds and ends. In her housecleaning, she'd also come across a tiny .25 caliber
semiautomatic handgun a friend had long ago insisted she take for self- defense, though
Sammie's father had warned her it was too small, advising: "Get a bigger gun. Wounded dogs
will bite you. Dead dogs don't bite."

The magazine of the .25 held four rounds. She'd checked it the night before, snapped the
little slide to chamber the top round, and then fallen asleep with the little gun next to her pile of
pillows.

When she heard the blinds rattle in the living room at dawn, she assumed it was her cat
returning. But it wasn't. It was three-time prison inmate James Wayne Horne, who had been
released for the third time only a few weeks before, after serving slightly more than one year of
a 10-year sentence for aggravated assault.

The robber-assailant rushed into the bedroom and slashed Foust's face with a box-cutter
knife.

She offered him her purse, which he dumped on the bed, finding $400 in bills. He then
demanded Foust tell him the location of her jewelry box, which she did. But the man was upset
with the cheap quality of the costume jewelry, returning to demand "her diamonds" and to
continue viciously slashing and beating her about the face.

"You know I'm going to kill you," he hissed. "So you might as well give it up. Die easy or
die hard, bitch."

Foust directed the man to a second credenza. She knew it contained only more costume
jewelry, but she needed space and time. Time to pick up the little .25, which she was amazed
her assailant had not spotted ... and to figure out what to do with it.

You see, Sammie Foust had never fired a gun in her life. She aimed for the man's center of
mass and pulled the trigger. It sounded like a little cap pistol. There was no recoil, no blood.
The man did not fly backwards or keel over dead. She figured the gun had Misfired. But she'd
certainly managed to upset James Wayne Horne, who flew back across the room, punching her
square in the face. "She literally heard her nose implode back into her skull," Waters reports.

"Dear God," she prayed, "don't let me pass out. Dear God, please let me hold onto this gun."

The assailant pulled her to her feet, grabbed her wrist, and tried to wrench the gun away her
with one hand while pummeling her with jackhammer blows to the face with his other fist.
Police later told her James Wayne Horne had knocked out four of her teeth, which she'd
swallowed. The bones in her gums were crushed, and her left cheekbone was fractured. Her
nose was broken and her larynx fractured. Horne pounded and slashed at her face with his knife
until one eyeball was hanging out of its socket.

But he did not get the gun.

Assuming her first two shots had missed, Foust resolved to save her two remaining
cartridges until she had a clear shot. Finally, as the man drew back his arm for a knockout
punch, she pointed the .25 at his stomach and fired again.

"Bitch!" he whispered, as he dragged her into the living room and continued beating her.
""Now I'm gonna take that gun and blow your brains out!" Instead, Foust shot Horne a fourth
time, in the abdomen.

With the man atop her, pounding and pounding, Sammie Foust believed she could not
survive. But finally, James Wayne Horne lay still. When police arrived, they found tables
knocked over, chairs broken, dishes shattered, the walls and floors smeared with blood.

They found James Wayne Horne where she had left him. The medical examiner concluded
the first shot had entered his mouth, the second his heart, the third and fourth bullets his abdomen
and groin. He had taken nearly an hour to bleed to death.

Sammie Foust noticed the police and ambulance personnel wincing whenever they looked at
her, cursing her attacker under their breath. When she finally found a mirror, she realized why.
Her eye was surgically reattached that day, and permanent loss of sight was minimal. She has
since run out of funds to pay for the proper repair of her gums and teeth. To this day, she eats
only soft food.

As an afterthought, as they hauled James Wayne Horne's body away, Sammie Foust pulled
her hand from her pocket and asked a police interviewer: "Would you like to have this?"

Foust recalled: "A policeman came back and knelt down on the driveway. He tried to pry
my fingers from the gun. And he started crying and said 'I'm gonna break your fingers. I can't get
them loose.' But I couldn't let go of the handle. My knuckles were swollen up, I was holding it
so tight. The grip I had on that gun was what kept my attacker from getting it from me. Even as
big a man as he was, he couldn't take it away."

And here I thought people like Sammie Foust would be better off if we banned all handguns.
Because if she had a handgun, you see, it would just as likely be taken away and used against
her. Right?