Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Killeen, Tex., 1991

It was October 1991 when an unemployed merchant seaman drove his pickup truck into a Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, Tex., leaped out and opened fire. He killed 23 people and wounded more than 20.

Hupp and her parents were having lunch in the restaurant when the shooting started. Hupp instinctively reached into her purse for her .38-caliber Smith & Wesson, but she had left it in the car. Her father tried to rush the gunman and was shot in the chest. As the gunman reloaded, Hupp escaped through a broken window, thinking her
mother was behind her.

But Hupp's mother had crawled alongside her dying husband of 47 years to cushion his head in her lap. Police later told Hupp they saw her mother look up at the gunman standing over her, then bow down before he shot her in the head.

"I'd like people to think about what happened to me, and try to place themselves in that situation," Hupp said yesterday between a string of interviews in which she relived the tragedy as Exhibit A in her argument against restrictive gun laws. "Now, instead of thinking of their parents, have it be their children.

"Even if you choose not to have a gun, as the bad guy who ignored all the laws is getting close to you and as he levels that firearm at one of your children, don't you hope the person next to you has chosen to carry a gun and knows how to use it?"

3 comments:

texlahoma said...

Yeah, I guess people in this part of the country are pretty level headed about things like that.
I've been waiting for the anti-gun rights people to start talking up gun control.

Nancy said...

Both my sisters who ages are 73 and 60 carry concealed weapons in Minnesota. They have each other's backs.

In MA it is against the law to carry pepper spray. I don't, I carry mace, I got it from a policeman friend in Minnesota.

They open our new ER crisis center on May 10th. The crisis center in the new ER is now even further away from civilization because they didn't want the emergancy assoted nuts to intrude on the ER medical patients, as it is now it's just across the hall, the new one will be down a long hall a mile away and across the street. So if your over there with a mean drunk you are on your own. So I guess my mace is coming to work with me starting May 10th.

They did provide a call bell if you get into a situation just push it, have you ever been in a hospital and pushed the call bell for help? Yeah, so I am bringing my mace to work me like I said.

texlahoma said...

In MA pepper spray is illegal but mace isn't? I think MA lawmakers and Okla. lawmakers would get along fine. Laws that make no since are their specialty.

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