Every 13 seconds, someone uses a firearm in self defense.
2.5 million times a year.
Here are just four.
Relatives of the homeowner say the suspect picked the wrong house, because the man who lives there is a retired member of the military and was not afraid to protect himself.
Deputies say the homeowner was taking a shower at around 10:30am when he heard a loud noise and grabbed a gun.
Lt. Jeff Stauber with the Harris County Sheriff’s Department Safe Home Task Force said, “As he came into the living room, he spotted the suspect leaning inside his house from the window he had broken out.”
That’s when the man told deputies he fired a single shot, hitting the home invasion suspect in the face.
“Just imagine coming out of the shower and seeing someone you don’t know in your house,” said Lt. Stauber. “I mean, any one of us would be in fear of our life.”
The wounded suspect fled, but he made it just a few miles before deputies caught up with him in a fast food parking lot near Veteran’s Memorial and West Mount Houston. He was taken to Ben Taub Hospital, but deputies believe there could be a second person involved. Neighbors say burglaries in the Northwest Park neighborhood have become all too common.
The shop owner, Edgar Llorens, told News 10 that around 9:30 a.m., as he was about to depart for the bank with the week’s deposits, three armed men entered the shop and demanded money.
Llorens said he gave the men money from the register, but then his wife emerged from the back of the shop with a weapon and shot one of the men in the leg.
The would-be robber dropped the bag of money and all three men fled the shop, but not before one of the men stole his cell phone, Llorens said.
Officers received a call reporting a burglary in progress with shots fired at the mobile home of Jay Franklin, 1015 Golf Course Road, at 2:09 a.m.
Franklin told officers that he was asleep inside his home when he heard a noise.
“He heard a noise, turned the lights on and saw three black males in his kitchen,” Julian Greer, assistant police chief, said.
Franklin told police that he fired either four or five shots from his .38 caliber handgun after seeing that one of the men had a gun.
The men fled his home without taking any of Franklin’s belongings, Greer said.
A few minutes later, at 2:13 a.m., a call came in from Neshoba County General Hospital that a man, Dolontee Riley, 20, of 10530 Road 717, had been brought to the emergency room with a gunshot wound, he said.
The Stockton Police Department reported that about 8:20 a.m. Wednesday, a 31-year-old man saw a dark gray Lexus involved in an earlier break-in attempt pull up outside his home in the 4200 block of Dolcetto Lane. The man grabbed a handgun, and the Lexus drove away.
The man followed, but lost sight of the Lexus. When he returned home, he saw the Lexus parked in his neighbor’s driveway and saw two people trying to open his front door. The man told police he confronted the pair, and that when one reached for his waistband, the man fired, injuring one of the would-be intruders.
A short time later, the 15-year-old boy checked in at Lodi Memorial Hospital, where he was treated for a gunshot wound police said was not life-threatening.
Officers say the homeowner, 35-year-old Preston Taylor, heard a knock on his back door just after 11 p.m. Thursday, and opened the door to find a man holding a knife.
The armed man said he was going to rob Taylor, and Taylor started to close the door on the suspect. Taylor was stabbed in the left hand by the man as he closed and locked the door, according to police.
Investigators say the suspect then started breaking the window next to the door, and Taylor ran to get his personal handgun out of fear for his family.
Taylor fired several shots at the window and the suspect ran off down an alley, police say.
Lives saved because they have the great equalizer: the personal firearm.
