Real Stories Tell the Truth . . .

1. The Thomas Terry Incident
2. The Suzanne Gratia Incident
3. The Miami, Florida Cab Driver Incident

In December 1991, Thomas Terry was in a Shoney's restaurant in Anniston, Alabama, when three armed robbers entered the restaurant.

As the gunmen were herding the nearly two dozen restaurant patrons and employees into a walk-in freezer, Terry hid from the armed bandits. Attempting to escape the building to summon police by opening a locked door, he triggered an audible alarm. Alerted to his presence, one gunman ran out of the restaurant and the remaining two went after Terry who was legally carrying a .45 caliber handgun tucked under his sweater in the small of his back.

In the ensuing battle, Terry sustained a graze-wound to his hip but killed one gunman and severely wounded the other. None of the patrons or employees was injured.

Terry was licensed to carry a concealed firearm.

Alabama has a concealed carry law that allows its citizens to carry concealed firearms for protection.

On October 16, 1991, Suzanna Gratia, a thirty-two year old chiropractor, was having lunch with her mother and father at a Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, Texas. Suddenly, George Hennard drove his truck through the front window of Luby's and began randomly shooting customers. Gratia was unarmed. Her gun was outside in her car.

Gratia and her parents turned their table over hoping it would shield them from Hennard's deadly assault. But Hennard shot Gratia's father, then shot her mother as she held his head in her arms, while Gratia crouched helplessly, unable to protect her parents or herself.

The gunmen shot and killed twenty-two helpless, innocent people that day before turning the gun on himself.

Up until several months before Hennard's deadly rampage, Gratia had carried a handgun in her purse for protection. But fearing that she would lose her professional chiropractic license if she were caught carrying a gun, Gratia had left her handgun in her car.

A Dade County resident, among the first to apply for a carry license, was also the first to exercise his right of self-protection. A few short months after receiving his license, Miami police reported that on March 5, 1988, a thirty-three year-old Miami cab driver was attacked and forced to defend himself. He shot and killed a robber who had pointed a firearm at him, had demanded and received money, and then had told the cab driver he was going to kill him.

The robber, a twenty-nine-year-old ex-convict, tried to fire a Smith & Wesson 9nm semi-automatic handgun at the cabby at point blank range. But he had forgotten to disengage the safety. In the few split seconds during which the robber was distracted, the cab driver pulled and fired his own gun - a Colt .45 caliber semi-automatic handgun - killing his attacker.

The ex-convict's past included an arrest for armed robbery, gun violations, and attempted first-degree murder of a police officer. In 1981 he shot out the windshield of a Hialeah patrol car, causing it to crash. He also shot at Miami Springs police during a chase. He was sentenced to twelve years in prison, but seven years later he was back on the street pulling the trigger on the law-abiding cab driver.

The criminal justice system failed to protect the cabby, but Florida's new concealed weapons licensing law made it possible for him to protect himself, his very life. As reported in the Miami Herald, March 6, 1988, following the incident, the cab driver "used the weapon correctly to defend himself. Without the law in effect, he would be a dead man this morning." The Miami police sergeant on the scene told reporters that the incident "sends a message to the rest of the robbers out there."