DETROIT – Her siblings now jokingly call her Rambo.

However, Paris Ainsworth easily could have been killed. Her attackers shot her four times, but she had eight bullets for them.

"If I wouldn't have had my gun I would be dead today," she said.

It was late Saturday night when she arrived home after working a double shift. She saw two men moving closer to her as she was about to get out of her car. Before she got out, she put her .45 caliber handgun in her pocket.

"He said, 'Don't pull it,' and he shot immediately,'" said Ainsworth.

She was hit three times in the side and once in the hand. It was not her shooting hand.

"I said, 'You mother (expletive),' and pulled out (my gun) and started shooting. One, he was right in the middle of the street. The other one was right here on the (side of the street)," she said.

Ainsworth waited on a neighbor's porch until EMS arrived.

"I kept applying pressure to my side and where the blood was coming from," she said.

A police source says the two men were arrested after showing up wounded at Sinai-Grace Hospital in west Detroit, the same place where Ainsworth was being treated. Ainsworth had shot one of them in both of his legs.

"I'm extremely proud of her because she was able to return fire back. She had something to protect herself. If she didn't, she would be dead," said Ainsworth's sister, Twila Ainsworth.

Paris Ainsworth has a faint scar and a strong memory of a mugger hitting her with a gun 10 years ago. Two years ago, she got a concealed weapons permit.

"This is ludicrous, the way that they are just robbing and trying to take stuff from people, and killing people," she said.

She praises Detroit police for the help they gave that night, but she is convinced that law-abiding citizens need to protect themselves.

"He didn't shoot me because he felt that I was going to shoot him. He didn't care. He just shot. He didn't look like, 'Oh my God I shouldn't have.' He just had the devil in him," she said.

Ainsworth is 51 years old. She has four grandsons and works in health care. She has two handguns and trains regularly.

"I thank God that I'm here with my family. It was horrible. I never want to see anything like that again," she said.