ASSOCIATED PRESS
Michelle Hobus, formerly Michelle Scully, held a wedding picture of herself and her late husband, John Scully, at her home in Hawaii Kai yesterday. Ten years ago a gunman entered a high-rise in San Francisco and killed eight people, including John Scully, who used his 6-foot-4 frame as a shield to protect his wife.
Fatal shooting
sparked gun controlA Hawaii woman recalls her
husband's death 10 years ago
Ten years after her husband was killed in a San Francisco massacre, Hawaii Kai resident Michelle Hobus still honors his memory every July 1.
Today will be no different as she and loved ones throw flowers in the ocean off Portlock Point, which she said was one of her late husband's favorite surfing spots while growing up in Hawaii. His ashes were spread there after his death on July 1, 1993.
"It was very healing for all of us," said Hobus, formerly Michelle Scully. "Afterwards, everyone got in the water and surfed. It was exactly what he wanted."
Hobus was visiting her husband, John Scully, at his San Francisco law firm, Petite & Martin, when Gain Luigi Ferri, a disgruntled former client, walked into the office armed with two semiautomatic TEC-DC9s and began shooting.
Michelle and her husband had sought refuge in the nearest room, but the door did not have a lock. They tried to block the door with a file cabinet, but it would not budge.
Finally, Scully spread his 6-foot-4 body over his wife to shield her as the gunman wordlessly opened the door and fired. Scully was hit six times, his wife once.
"Michelle, I am sorry," Scully said a few minutes later. "I am dying."
The couple had been married for just nine months.
Scully's death, along with those of the seven other people that day, spurred Michelle and other survivors to lobby Congress and push for stronger gun-control laws.
Their work was rewarded four months after the tragedy, when then-President Bill Clinton signed the Brady Bill, requiring background checks on gun purchasers. Then the following year, Clinton signed the assault weapons ban, which had been approved by Congress after emotional testimony from those who survived the shooting.
"Two years following the shooting, I really threw myself into the work," said Hobus. "We did a lot of lobbying in D.C. and Sacramento."
The California Legislature also strengthened the state's assault weapons ban in 1999, and last year it removed a state law protecting gunmakers from negligence suits. That law had been cited by the state Supreme Court in throwing out a lawsuit filed by the shooting's survivors against Navegar Inc., which made the TEC-DC9s.
But now it looks like the battle must be renewed again.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said last month that he will not call for a vote on the renewal of the assault weapons ban, which expires in September 2004. The House also passed -- and the Senate is considering -- a bill granting new legal immunity to companies that make and sell guns, effectively overturning the California law.
For pro-gun groups, the new atmosphere is long overdue.
"People use their hands, like clubs, to kill somebody more than they use guns," said Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America. "So the next step will be to amputate their hands?"
But while Hobus, who remarried seven years ago, wants to help any way she can, she said she is not sure how involved she wants to be in the fight this time.
The mother of two sons, ages 5 and 6, said she wants to spend this summer caring for her boys and then looking for a job as an attorney here after having passed the Hawaii bar exam in February.
"I just have to figure out what I can do here in Hawaii," she said. "Really, my goal is to make this world a better place to live in."
"If I can find a job that allows me to do that and still be home to take care of my kids, that's what I want to do."
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
