As Janet Paulsen prepared to leave her husband, who had become increasingly volatile over their 15-year marriage, she slipped down to his gun safes one night while he slept to try to change the combination locks.
“There were 74 firearms in my house,” said Paulsen, who was stunned by how many guns she found, but could not figure out how to change the codes. “When I went to get my protection order, I brought pictures of all of those firearms with me.”
Georgia, where she lives, is not among the 21 states with gun surrender laws that can force people to relinquish their weapons while they are deemed a risk to themselves or others. So Paulsen’s husband, whom she accused of threatening and erratic behavior, was only ordered to stay away from her and their 13-year-old twin boys until a court hearing.
That changed a few days later when she said he tried to track them through a phone locator app, a violation of the protection order that prompted a misdemeanor charge, two hours in jail and a court order to confiscate his guns.
As Paulsen and the boys rode out the week at a motel where they had taken refuge while he moved out, deputies removed more than 70 firearms from their home, a modern Craftsman nestled in a lakeside community about 30 miles northwest of Atlanta.
Police, though, left a handgun in a pickup truck parked in the driveway, unsure if the order covered Scott Bland’s vehicle, she said.
Five days later, Bland ambushed Paulsen in the garage as she stopped home with groceries. He used the 9 mm semiautomatic pistol to shoot her six times, as she tried to flee, before killing himself.
“It took me five years to get up the courage to divorce him, because I knew I would pay a price. And you know what happened when I did? He shot me,” said Paulsen, 53, a former property manager and endurance athlete who was left partially paralyzed in the 2015 shooting.
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