REMEMBER LUBY'S MASSACRE! - The Cost of Gun Control Laws

First, I'd like to thank BATMAN for his comment on my previous post, Changing the Culture with a Broad Notion of Gun Rights. He commented on a line from the article I posted. The line was in regards to restaurants which ban guns from being brought inside. His comment was, "In other words, open targets for criminals."

This comment jogged my memory all the way back to October 1991 and an incident that took place in Texas. It was called Luby's Massacre.

What was Luby's Massacre?

From Wikipedia, all emphasis mine:

The Luby's massacre was an incident of mass murder that took place on October 16, 1991 in Killeen, Texas ... when George Jo Hennard drove his pickup truck into a Luby's Cafeteria and shot 23 people to death while wounding another 20, subsequently committing suicide by shooting himself. It was the deadliest shooting rampage in American history until the Virginia Tech massacre.

On October 16, 1991, Hennard drove his 1987 Ford Ranger pickup truck through the front window of a Luby's Cafeteria ... then opened fire on the restaurant's patrons and staff with a Glock 17 pistol and later a Ruger P89. He stalked, shot, and killed 23 people while wounding another 20 before committing suicide ...

During the shooting, Hennard approached Suzanna Gratia Hupp and her parents. Hupp had actually brought a handgun to the Luby's Cafeteria that day but had left it in her vehicle because laws in force at the time forbade citizens from carrying firearms. According to her later testimony in favor of Missouri's HB-1720 bill and in general, after she realized that her firearm was not in her purse but "a hundred feet away in [her] car," her father charged at Hennard in an attempt to subdue him but was gunned down; a short time later, Hupp's mother was also shot and killed. Hupp later expressed regret for abiding by the law in question by leaving her firearm in her car rather than keeping it on her person. One patron, Tommy Vaughn, threw himself through a plate-glass window to allow others to escape. Hennard allowed a mother and her four-year-old child to leave. He reloaded several times and still had ammunition remaining when he committed suicide ...

***In other words, there would have been plenty of time while he was reloading for Hupp, or anyone else with a handgun to have shot him and prevented any more loss of life.***

Reacting to the massacre, in 1995 the Texas Legislature passed a shall-issue gun law, which requires that all qualifying applicants be issued a Concealed Handgun License (Texas's required permit to carry concealed weapons), removing the personal discretion of the issuing authority to deny such licenses.

As was quoted in my previous post, "The laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes." -- Cesare Beccaria, as quoted by Thomas Jefferson's

I was researching gun control and found an amazing article that is choke full of facts. I thank Benedict D. LaRosa for saving me a lot of time by placing all the information I was looking for in one indisputable, well researched, article. Can Gun Control Reduce Crime? The following are not direct quotes. The information he provided is intermingled with some of my own thoughts. In order to give credit where credit is due, I will italicized and highlight in yellow the information gleaned from LaRosa's work.

I wish we could all have a personal cop or body guard to protect us. Reality is that we don't.

Reality is that criminals
DO.
NOT.
OBEY.
THE.
LAW.
Thus making them CRIMINALS.

It is a PROVEN FACT that guns are used by citizens to STOP CRIME 60 times more often than guns are used to commit crime. 200,000 times a year a woman uses a gun to prevent a sexual attack. [“Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun” by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, published by the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology at Northwestern University School of Law]

My sister and nephews are among those whose lives were literally SAVED because she had a gun. At eight months pregnant, she had two intruders in her home. Locked in her room with her 2-year-old, she grabbed the gun and fired a shot into the wall when they wouldn't leave (okay, she tripped on the cat and the gun went off, but the point is that the men didn't leave until they heard gun fire).

Of course people argue that it's SAFER to wait for the police and let THEM shoot. After all, they're better trained. Well, the problem with this argument is that it makes no sense! People with concealed weapons are generally gun enthusiasts who target practice. Not only that, but

1) the intended victim is up close and personal with the criminal, putting them at a closer range;

2) the criminal isn't running off, so it's not a moving target;

3) the intended victim has actually SEEN the criminal, whereas an officer is going off a mere description.

The truth is that in contrast to the police error rate of 11% for shooting an innocent person, the individual citizen has an error rate of only 2%. [“Are We a Nation of Cowards?” in the November 15, 1993, issue of Newsweek by George Will]

Theoretically, gun control laws could be partially to blame for the era of school shootings. You see, Congress passed a law in 1990 that prevented anyone from having a gun within 1,000 feet of a school. Columbine occurred in 1999. While we all know about Columbine, what ISN'T so well known is that another school shooting WAS PREVENTED in 1997 by Joel Myrick, an assistant principal. He used a gun to stop a violent teen who was shooting up his school in Pearl, Mississippi. He succeeded in preventing a massacre, but was prosecuted for having a gun within 1,000 feet of a school.

Imagine the difference of loss of life at Columbine if someone there had been armed!

To further prove that arming the citizenry PREVENTS crime and SAVES LIVES, after the Shall Permit law was passed in Texas, their crime rate, which was 38% HIGHER than the national average, DROPPED 50%!

I strongly encourage you to ARM YOURSELF WITH FACTS from LaRossa's two part article! These are just highlights from part one. If we are to protect our rights from ignorant people emotionally reacting to government instilled fear, we must arm ourselves with truth and facts with which to teach them.

You can't blame someone for being ignorant, for we are all ignorant of some things, you can only blame yourself for not educating them.

(Bumper sticker available HERE.)

Arm Yourself With Truth,"
For the TRUTH shall set you free!" - John 8:32~*~*~Krystal~*~*~