The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia hosted a virtual community forum on Firearms and Domestic Violence last week in an effort to promote awareness and start a dialogue about the lethal combination of firearms and domestic violence.
Speakers included DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston, Dr. Lauren Hudak, Brian Johnston of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Sharla Jackson of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia BJay Pak, CBS46 anchor Karyn Greer and Janet Paulsen, a survivor of domestic abuse who was shot six times by her then-husband Scott Bland in November 2015.
Sometime during her twin sons’ football practice on Nov. 5, 2015, Paulsen said she returned to her home in Cobb County and found Bland leaning against the garage, waiting for her with a gun. A voice took over in her head and told her she had to get out of the garage or he would kill her. She listened, put her car into reverse and crashed through the garage door and into the neighboring yard. Bland followed. Paulsen continued to try to escape but eventually found herself on her back in the driveway with six bullet wounds.
“I knew instantly I was paralyzed,” Paulsen shared. “He walked over to me and stood over me, and I put up my hand to block his face. I didn’t want him to be the last thing I saw. He said, and it’s the only thing he said during the whole attack, ‘Watch this,’ and turned the gun on himself. It clicked because he had unloaded the magazine on me.”
Bland returned to the garage, reloaded his firearm and shot himself. He later died at Kennestone Hospital.
Paulsen was dead on arrival at the hospital but was revived by a hospital trauma surgeon who acted quickly to clamp the aorta so blood could get to her brain and lungs. He pumped her heart with his own hands, then stimulated it with injected epinephrine. She regained a pulse and entered into surgery to treat her other wounds — a bullet in the left knee, one through her back that exited through the other side, one in her upper thigh, another that shattered her right femur, one into her right lung and a final shot to the spine.
Dr. Hudak said survival after restarting the heart as Paulsen’s had been restarted only occurs one out of a hundred times.
“I believe I am here today because I am meant to share my story,” said Paulsen, who spent three and a half weeks following her attack in a medically induced coma. She is now what Hudak referred to as a hemiplegic, meaning she is paralyzed in one quadrant of her body. Her paralysis extends from her right hip through to the right toe. “That is why I survived.”
Paulsen explained that her husband had been abusive many times before the shooting. She said he was an alcoholic who threatened her when she, after five years of abuse, said she wanted a divorce. His threats escalated, so she contacted her attorney and the police. Both advised her to seek a temporary protective order.
Armed with photos of the 74 firearms in Bland’s collection, she went to Cobb County family court to request the protective order. It was granted later that afternoon, but Paulsen said police were unable to confiscate the one gun remaining in his vehicle. It was the weapon he shot her with a mere five days later.
“We are one of the only states left in the nation that does not have legislation in place to remove firearms after a TPO [temporary protective order] has been put into place,” Paulsen said.
Boston and Pak said they are doing their part at the state and federal level to try and make up for the loopholes that still exist in removing firearms from violent repeat offenders, especially those with a history of domestic violence.
“One of the things we did when I was first elected as Solicitor General in 2011 was start a project that would address firearms in domestic violence cases at the misdemeanor level. We created a protocol for the surrender of firearms by perpetrators of misdemeanor domestic violence,” Boston said. “BJay [Pak] knew I was passionate about filling this loophole in the law and I was excited when he became U.S. Attorney because I knew he was in the position to help us fill that gap where the law wasn’t working for us.”
Pak did not disappoint. He asked Boston and her team to identify cases they could send to his office for federal prosecution that could not be prosecuted locally. So far, over 30 cases have been presented. Of those, 15 cases are pending. Three have been sentenced at the federal level.
Making legislative change to fill these loopholes is something that, according to Wednesday’s speakers, must come from local representatives.
“This kind of tragedy is very common. Someone sitting right next to you in your office or in traffic or at the grocery store could be suffering from this. Women are more likely to be shot by an intimate partner than by a stranger. Think about that,” Sharla Jackson said. “Contact your local representatives. We have to be more open and more accepting that these crimes happen. It is so common. We can’t ignore it or sweep it under the rug.”
In Gordon County, victims of domestic abuse can reach out to the Gordon County Domestic Violence Outreach Office for assistance at (706) 625-5586. The Georgia Family Violence Hotline is 1-800-33-2836.
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.