Maya Angelou appreciates owning (and using) her guns:
“I do like to have guns around,” she told Time’s Belinda Luscombe when asked if she shared her mother’s fondness for firearms. “I don’t like to carry them. But I like — if somebody is going to come into my house and I have not put out the welcome mat, I want to stop them.”
Apparently she’s used her guns too:
“Have you ever fired a weapon?” the interviewer asked.
“Of course!” Ms. Angelou affirmed. “I was in my house in North Carolina. It was fall. I heard someone walking on the leaves. And somebody actually turned the knob. So I said, “Stand four feet back because I’m going to shoot now!” Boom! Boom! The police came by and said, ‘Ms. Angelou, the shots came from inside the house.’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t know how that happened.’”
I’m not going to comment on Ms. Angelou’s tactics or legal proceedings, nor the misconceptions about home invasion realities vs. where crime (attacks) typically happen.
No… just let it sink in that Maya Angelou understands that guns have a place in the lives of private citizens. She understands that guns can be tools used for protection (she apparently inherited the love of guns from her mother, who the Time interviewer referred to as ‘her protector’). She obviously considers herself a good, law-abiding, upstanding citizen, and appreciates that she was able to have — and use — a gun for her personal protection.
I don’t know when her home-defense incident occurred, but relative to that date consider…
…it could have prevented I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings from ever existing.
…it could have prevented Ms. Angelou from speaking at President Clinton’s inauguration.
…it could have denied the world of a civil rights leader.
…she likely would not have received the Presidental Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2011.
…and the world would have lost one of its great writers, speakers, and influencers.
If Maya Angelou understands this, why don’t you?
Stuff From Hsoi 
You should have listened to the video from which most of these posts came.
Granted, the WA Times didn’t link to the video, from which they misquote her (partially)…but, Fox News Insider did: http://nation.foxnews.com/maya-angelou/2013/04/03/poet-maya-angelou-blasts-gun-home-intruder
These lines are not spoken in the video provided by Time: “The police came by and said, ‘Ms. Angelou, the shots came from inside the house.’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t know how that happened.’”
I’m not sure why they included the “quote” without video evidence. The entire video that is available on Time.com is 6:00 long. If there is more to it (including the above quote), Time has not made it available (yet?).
I wonder if Time isn’t attempting to make Maya appear as “an old fool” by “not knowing how her gun fired”. She knew exactly what she was doing. She also KNEW she was shooting AT a person – even thought she doesn’t want to admit it (which IS included in the video – not in the quotes above, but IN THE VIDEO).
I actually went and found the video. I realized the linked-to article was WATimes quoting from Time, so I went to Time, found out the content isn’t public (yet? seemed to maybe be a for-pay subscriber thing now, maybe becomes free later?) and then found that Time did post the video of the interview to their YouTube account.
You are right that the last line was NOT in the video. Was it part of the interview at all? was it added by the WaTimes? was it edited out of the video? That’s TBD.
So I don’t know what’s all up with that… but again, I didn’t want to really comment on all the legalities, the tactics, whatever. That’s another discussion. I think it’s more important that this woman, honored by Presidents Clinton and Obama, that voted for them, that campaigned for them, and that tends to be held in high-esteem by a general political populace that tends to also be anti-gun…. well…. she appreciates guns. If the antis won’t listen to us “rednecks” (to use their phrasing), maybe they’ll listen to her?