The Massacre That Could Have Ended Very Differently

Since I’ve been looking at historic massacres, including several that didn’t involve firearms, I figured this was a good time to talk about one that was a bit more recent.

This was sparked by my piece looking at the Luby’s Diner shooting in Killeen, Texas. In that incident, Suzanna Hupp would have carried a gun, but didn’t because of the law in Texas at the time.

I couldn’t help but think of the 2019 Virginia Beach massacre. It took place in a municipal building, and it’s one that’s been coming up a lot recently.

On May 31, 2019, a 40-year-old engineer with the sanitation department sent an email with his resignation. He was apparently in good standing with the city, with no notable disciplinary actions to speak of. He still had his security badge, even.

He went to his car, got his H&K USP Compact with a suppressor, and walked into the building, changing things forever.

It was a rare moment when a suppressor was used in a massacre, and it is now being brought up to oppose the step we just took toward the deregulation of suppressors.

What doesn’t get mentioned very much is that this whole thing could have gone very differently, but didn’t because of anti-gun policies.

On May 30, a Virginia Beach employee named Kate Nixon had a feeling there would be some kind of violence at the municipal building the next day. She wasn’t psychic or anything like that. Instead, she knew someone was getting fired the next day, and was worried he would start killing people. The guy was going to be escorted from the building by police, so clearly her feelings weren’t completely out of line.

Her husband, Jason, urged her to carry her pistol to work, just in case. Jason says she had her carry permit and was trained in how to use her firearm. However, she didn’t have it that day.

City policy forbid employees from carrying guns while at work. She didn’t want to risk her job.

Now, personally, I’d probably figure concealed means concealed, but Kate may not have been quite concerned enough to want to risk her job. She may have felt that her feelings were overblown. I’m not judging her for her decision, though. Risking one’s job is something no one really wants to take lightly.

But if she had been concerned a bit more, or willing to risk her employment over a potential nothing, how could things have turned out?

I can’t say no one would have died, because I don’t know where in the building Kate was, but I know the reports would have been quite different. Not even a suppressor, the super-destructive device that renders all awareness of everything (as presented by gun control advocates), would have helped the killer nearly as much as some believe.

He’d have met armed resistance, and while I can’t swear to you that Kate Nixon would have come home to her husband that night, I can’t help but believe that someone else who perished might well have. 

The news coverage would have likely died out quickly, and the fact that an armed citizen engaged the killer, likely killing him, might have nerfed the coverage of the fact that he had a suppressor that day.

Still, it was a shooting that could have turned out very differently. It didn’t, though, not because of a lack of gun control–someone who lawfully got a suppressor was likely to get anything lawfully available on the market, after all–but because of anti-gun sentiment driving policy in the Virginia Beach municipal government.

It didn’t have to be that way.

Unfortunately, it’s too late to change what happened that day. It’s only enough to make changes so it doesn’t happen again.

Editor’s Note: Massacres like Virginia Beach don’t have to happen, but gun control advocates keep trying to pretend that they only happen because of your gun rights.

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