EXPLAINING GUN CONTROL: a timely reminder.

On Wednesday, October 16, 1991, [Suzanna] Hupp and her parents were having lunch at the Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen [TX]. She had left her gun in her car to comply with Texas state law at the time, which forbade carrying a concealed weapon. When George Hennard drove his truck into the cafeteria and opened fire on the patrons, Hupp instinctively reached into her purse for her weapon, but it was in her vehicle. Her father, Al Gratia, tried to rush Hennard and was shot in the chest. As the gunman reloaded, Hupp escaped through a broken window and believed that her mother, Ursula Gratia, was behind her. Hennard put a gun to her mother's head as she cradled her mortally wounded husband. Hupp's mother and father were killed along with twenty-one other persons. Hennard also wounded some twenty others.

I remember it only too well, since at the time of the massacre, I was living about 90 miles south of Killeen in Mountain City TX.



Gun control advocates argue that strict gun laws could have saved those lives by preventing George Hennard from acquiring the weapons he used. But that ignores the dual question: how many of those lives could have been saved had less strict gun laws allowed Suzanna Hupp to carry her weapon into the cafeteria?

There are roughly 12,000 gun-related homicides annually in the U.S. How many could have been prevented had there been armed and able citizens in the vicinity at the time of the homicide?

Suzanna Hupp’s biography is here.

[Update] “If we got to fight, we got to fight.”