The Massacre That Didn’t Have to Be

There is often a lot of examination for massacres right after they happen, but then that discussion gets lost over the years as the next thing drowns out so many voices.

Earlier today, while writing my VIP piece about gun-free zones and how they make people into prey, I thought about yet another massacre that many people don’t spend much time discussing anymore, and we shouldn’t let that happen.

On October 16, 1991, a maniac crashed his pickup truck through the front window at Luby’s Diner in Killeen, Texas, and started shooting after declaring it “payback time” for some perceived slight by Bell County and women in general. The man was unhinged, killing 23 people and injuring 27 others.

The thing about this shooting, which separates it from oh-so-many others that we talk about, is that we know definitively that this didn’t have to be as bad as it could have been.

Suzanna Hupp was in that diner with her mother and father. In her car was a .38 revolver. She didn’t carry it at the time because the law said she couldn’t. Luby’s Diner was, effectively, a gun-free zone because Texas didn’t have concealed carry at the time. That was later passed by then-Governor George W. Bush.

Had Hupp had her gun, she could have ended the shooting much earlier. We know she could have because we’ve seen it happen time and time again. The Greenwood Park Mall is a prime example, as was the incident at a church in White Settlement, Texas.

Good guys with guns ended those shootings before they could proceed beyond the initial outburst of violence.

Hupp, however, was disarmed by the law, the same law many believe makes us safer. The same law that those same people want back, despite every state in the nation having passed some form of concealed carry since then.

Luby’s Diner was a rallying cry for concealed carry, but it’s also illustrative of any law that disarms people to any degree in any given place. All that changed was that now gun-free zones are specific targets rather than potentially giving killers the option to hit anywhere people might gather, assuming they’re smart enough to plan around such things, which most are.

For all practical purposes, Luby’s Diner was another gun-free zone.

Other gun-free zones see numerous massacres, such as schools, shopping malls, churches, and anywhere that people are in large enough numbers, and how many people were disarmed because the sign on the door said they couldn’t carry? How is that making anyone safer?

The response to Luby’s Diner was what the response to massacres should be. Gun control efforts failed, and pro-gun measures were made instead. People were trusted to defend themselves since the law failed to do so.

This is what we need, and the lessons from this incident are largely ignored today.

Those laws failed, were changed, and largely work in this day and age, except for the places where the old rules still apply. Most people seem to have learned nothing from Luby’s Diner, or if they did, they forgot those lessons.

We didn’t.

Editor’s Note: Self-defense is a human right, but the gun control lobby wants to violate that right and leave us disarmed and defenseless.

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