Ronald Reagan used gun to save nursing student.

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http://www.theiowachannel.com/politics/3392082/detail.html


Reagan Was Hero To Iowa Woman
Nursing Student Rescued From Mugger By Reagan



Former President Ronald Reagan is known as the "Great Communicator," but one Iowa woman will always know him as her hero.

Melba King (pictured, pictured below right) was a 22-year-old nursing student in Des Moines in 1933. She was walking home one autumn night when a mugger came up behind her with a gun and demanded her money.

At that moment, Ronald Reagan -- who was a Des Moines radio sportscaster at the time -- came to her rescue. Reagan pointed a .45-caliber revolver at the robber from the window of his second-floor rented room.

"And he said, 'Leave her alone or I'll shoot you right between the shoulders,'" King told KCCI.

Reagan scared the man off and calmed King's nerves. Then, the future president said he would walk King home.

King didn't see Reagan again until 1984, when Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad heard her story and invited her to an Iowa caucus campaign event (pictured, above left).

After King and Reagan hugged on stage, Reagan laughed, and said to the crowd, "This is the first time I've had a chance to tell you the gun was empty. I didn't have any cartridges. If he hadn't run when I told him to, I was going to have to throw it at him."

King's rescue became a national news story. "The phone rang constantly," King said.

All the media attention caused Reagan and King to stay in touch. The two families exchanged cards on birthdays, holidays, and during times of sickness and grief.

The Reagans helped King when she lost her husband Harold in 1987, and now she will send Nancy Reagan a sympathy note.
 
What a great story!

But why was he carrying an empty revolver? Maybe couldn't afford ammunition in 1933, the "dust bowl days"???:confused:
 
because he wasnt carrying it. he was in his apartment on the 2nd floor, talking from his window or something.

wonder what ever became of that revolver?
 
I am sure a lot of people here would just look the other way. Heaven forbid they get involved!!

I have always had a lot of respect for President Reagen. I have even more now.
 
I doubt it was actually a revolver. I will look it up, but what I remember from the bio titled "Young Reagan" is that it was a 1911. Remember he was in some sort of officer training program. The writer of the article probably doesn't know the difference. As for why it was unloaded, remember that only Reagan would know that, and he said it much later in life in Hollywood, when his buddies may not have wanted to hear he pointed a loaded hangun at someone.
 
in the video clip from the newstory it briefly flashes over a old article which clearly says ".45 Automatic"

i think okie is right. but there might be some Reagan afficianados here with some more concrete intel.
 
I seem to recall seeing a picture of Reagan sporting a 1911 at some point when I was a kid. Not sure if it was his, or a loaner. NRA event perhaps? Googling now...
 
While Reagon afficianados are doing research , maybe some can tell me the answear for this question also .

I have recently been informed that Reagn is in fact responsable for the current anti leanings in the PRK. Can anyone confirm or deny if Reagon actually got the ball rolling on an Anti Gun California?
 
I've got an article on this somewhere from back in the '80s, when Dutch told the story at a news conference. He said it was "a .45 automatic revolver," so I'm assuming a 1917 of some breed (not a Webley-Fosbury :) ).
 
I have recently been informed that Reagn is in fact responsable for the current anti leanings in the PRK. Can anyone confirm or deny if Reagon actually got the ball rolling on an Anti Gun California?
Click to expand...

I doubt it, as Reagan was pro-gun, or at least against gun control.
 
Yes, Reagan as governor (errr, "governator" now and forever in Calif) signed a bill basically ending open carry in California.

:scrutiny:

But there was probably a veto-proof majority. See, the Black Panthers had pulled the most boneheaded stunt in political history by walking into the capitol en mass while strapped with basically an entire gun shop's worth of toys :rolleyes:. While not illegal, there was soon more brown in the various legislator's unmentionables than there was on African-American skin :D.

Reagan seems to have regretted that vote and never did anything near so bad again.
 
Great editorial by President Reagan at that guns & ammo link. Worth reading. Favorite quotes:
True, guns are a means for committing murder and other crimes. But they are not an essential means. The Los Angeles Slasher of last winter killed nine men without using a gun. People kill and rob with knives and clubs. Yet we have not talked about outlawing them. Poisons are easy to come by for the silent killer.
Click to expand...

New Yorkers who suffer under the Sullivan Act know better, they know that the Sullivan Act makes law-abiding citizens sitting ducks for criminals who have no qualms about violating it in the process of killing and robbing and burglarizing.
Click to expand...

The gun has been called the great equalizer, meaning that a small person with a gun is equal to a large person, but it is a great equalizer in another way, too. It insures that the people are the equal of their government whenever that government forgets that it is servant and not master of the governed. When the British forgot that they got a revolution. And, as a result, we Americans got a Constitution; a Constitution that, as those who wrote it were determined, would keep men free. If we give up part of that Constitution we give up part of our freedom and increase the chance that we will lose it all.
Click to expand...

Makes his position pretty clear.
 
He was preyed upon and used as a stooge by Sarah Brady to get the Brady Bill passed (and IIRC the AWB). She was able to get his tacit endorsement, while actively suffering Alzheimer's, because, after all, her husband "took a bullet" for him which left Jim Brady as mentally impared as his wife. Reagan's son, Michael, explained several years ago how this happened and stated that his father would never have participated in it if he had understood and had full awareness at the time.
 
All right, I'm home now.

from Anne Edwards, "Early Reagan: the Rise of an American Hero" Coronet Books, 1987, page 150:

"About eleven p.m. he heard a scream. Poking his head out he saw a woman (Melba Lohmann) in a white nurse's uniform fighting off a man across the street near the nurses' entrance to the hospital. He grabbed a .45 caliber automatic gun he had just purchased (for target practice) and, aiming it directly at the man, shouted, 'Leave her alone or I'll shoot you right between the shoulders.'... Fifty years later, Dutch was to claim that the gun had not been loaded..."
 
Reagan was a great man. We shall never see his like again.
 

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This is the first time I've had a chance to tell you the gun was empty. I didn't have any cartridges. If he hadn't run when I told him to, I was going to have to throw it at him.
Click to expand...

I'd guess he was just being modest about it years later. I'd guess the gun was loaded.
 
So who was it who signed the May 1986 bill that stopped production of civilian-transferable fully automatic firearms?

Yes, I was two years old at the time, but still...
 
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