Posted on 09/10/2008 4:55:30 AM PDT by marktwain
Imagine what you can do with twelve minutes of your life. For some, the time is spent making a call to check on their mother, for others, it’s a quick smoke break while at work.
One deranged murderer used his time to kill twenty people and wound twenty-one others.
Just twelve minutes changed the life of at least one hundred people in the Killen, Texas Luby’s restaurant, and for some that same twelve minutes was a lifetime. They died during a hellish attack on the innocent. Gun advocates know how Suzanna Hupp lost her parents in the massacre and took matters into her own hands by becoming an advocate for legal concealed carry in Texas.
What people don’t realize is it took more than twelve minutes for the first responding officer to arrive. Although that officer acted heroically by shooting the rampaging gunman he was too late for at least forty-one people.
When order was restored victims were found where they hit the ground in a vain attempt to avoid the gunshots. One man, Suzanna Hupp’s father, tried to end the rampage but was gunned down in the process. Another threw his own body through a plate glass window and opened a path to safety for countless strangers.
It wasn’t enough for the forty-one people who were shot that day.
People who survived were often lucky, but some were willing to do whatever it took to get out of the killing zone. Americans, now more than ever, have to be willing to take their personal protection into their own hands. Honest law-abiding people need to see to it that the next time it takes twelve minutes for the police to respond the outcome will be different. Concealed carry laws nationwide will help, but only if people are empowered to carry.
Ohio’s concealed carry law has improved drastically since its inception, but it isn’t enough.
Right now, the poor are effectively barred from getting a concealed handgun license due to the cost, which often is in excess of $200 when all the fees are added up. Combined with the expense of a gun, ammunition and holster, it is simply too much for many to afford. Even those in the middle class have a hard time prying that much from their family’s budget.
Establishment media commentators, political pundits and politicians carry on about the cost of prescription medication and health care. Yet, say nothing about the fact that the most basic right to self-defense is priced out of the market for many Ohioans.
The most dedicated know the choice to carry might be the difference between life and death. But for those not intimate with the personal protection community it never enters their mind. They read news reports of spree killings and think it always happens to someone else. Adding to the apathy is the feeling the police will respond and save the day.
However, twelve minutes was way too long for forty-one people at the Luby’s in Killeen, TX. In the case of the Northern Illinois University killings, the police responded in just about three minutes. Still, five died and twenty-one were wounded. Even three minutes is a long time when someone starts shooting innocent people.
As an aside, the death toll for the NIU killings is reported as six, including the gunman. He gets no such inclusion here, and doesn’t deserve to be considered among the senseless deaths that day. His death wasn’t senseless, killing himself was the only justified action he took that day. Too bad he didn’t simply kill himself alone in his hotel room and leave five innocent people alive, and others uninjured.
Even when the police response was under three minutes, twenty-six people were shot and five were killed.
The law enforcement community is getting better at responding to active shooter situations. Instead of waiting outside for far too long, as they did at Columbine, they move in quickly to stop the carnage. Three minutes is a long time to wait when someone is shooting in a crowded place.
During the rampage at NIU, the murderer got off over thirty rounds in that time.
So, even with an excellent response time of three minutes the carnage was far too great. Only luck kept the death toll from being much higher since twenty-one people who were wounded survived.
During a combined total of fifteen minutes twenty-five people were left dead, and forty-two others wounded.
That total falls at the feet of all the anti-gunners out there who left the victims at the whim of a murderer. They bear moral responsibility for acting in such a careless and illogical manner by thinking their gun bans would disarm criminals or the deranged. Pro-gun advocates, in our desire to be thought of as reasonable are, at times, not harsh enough on the anti-gun crusaders who leave twenty-five people to be slaughtered.
We get no such mercy from the anti-gunners, partially because they survive on lunacy and partially because they thrive on the illogical.
Next time you come across an anti-gun loon, ask what they would do with their last few minutes on earth. After the answer, remind them of the last few minutes of Suzanna Hupp’s father or the last moments of the five people killed at NIU. Point out to your anti-gun adversary how gun bans didn’t stop the criminals from getting a gun, and only succeeded in getting twenty-five innocent people slaughtered.
The anti-gun crowd’s pet gun bans allowed the murders in Killen, and at NIU, to see the risk of being stopped by an armed victim as reasonable and worth taking. Both knew every victim would be unarmed because the massacres took place in so-called gun free zones which are touted as one piece of reasonable gun control.
Their willingness to push gun control made the murderer’s job frighteningly easy.
Simply stated, there is nothing reasonable about that.
Twelve minutes ... “When seconds count, the police are only twelve minutes away!”
Mr. Valentino doesn’t really get the point about armed citizens. When it is known that people in a school or a restaurant may well be armed, and that in a large group of people, the sort of group that attracts crazies intent on dying in a blaze of murderous glory, it is probable that one or more people are armed, the choice to try for mass murder is not made. It is not worth the effort if one thinks he might be able to only to get off a shot or two before being ignominiously shot down by an armed citizen. The prevention of these shooting sprees by the existence of carry laws will probably never be demonstrated because it is hard to see the decision to not shoot people.
“When it is known that people in a school or a restaurant may well be armed, and that in a large group of people, the sort of group that attracts crazies intent on dying in a blaze of murderous glory, it is probable that one or more people are armed, the choice to try for mass murder is not made.”
You are assuming, of course, that a potential mass murderer is thinking rationally. Pretty big assumption.
http://www.washingtonceasefire.com/content/view/23/35/
Just one final statement.
I’ve been sitting here getting more and more fed up with all of this talk about these, pieces of machinery, having no legitimate sporting purpose, no legitimate hunting purpose, people, that is not the point of the second amendment!
The second amendment is not about duck hunting, and I know I’m not going to make very many friends saying this, but it’s about our right, all of our right to be able to protect our selves from all of you guys up there.
And nobody’s talked about that.
Dr. Suzanna Gratia, Killeen massacre survivor who watched as her parents were murdered because she obeyed Texas law and left her handgun locked in her car. Appearing before Rep Schumer’s committee hearings on the assault weapons ban
They tend to be calculators. Places that advertise their gun-free status attract them. Places where it is known that there are armed people simply do not experience these attacks. Irrationality can and does include coldly rational elements and those planning a shooting like that are not necessarily even irrational. They have merely chosen actions that are contrary to civilization but are rational in their preparations for attaining their goals. There are occasional shooters that might not be affected by the thought that people may be armed, like Walt Whitman in the Texas Tower but in that case armed citizens or police present would not have had much quick effect. He chose his location where he would have time and it would require a sharpshooter with a rifle to end him quickly. CCW laws are not relevant to such a shooter. None of the shooters have been irrational in their procedures once they have decided what they wanted to accomplish. The possibility of encountering armed people is such an effective deterrent that one will never be able to prove it except statistically sometime in the future.
The possibility of encountering armed, law abiding people in Illinois is real close to zero, since the entire state is a "gun free zone" and it is a felony for an ordinary citizen to carry.
--Charles, not Walt--big difference--
I am NOT arguing against concealed carry, but I am arguing that severe nutcases like the guy at Virginia Tech will eventually carry out a plan somewhere. In his case, I don’t think there’s any question he never intended to escape or survive, so if every venue he could imagine would have involved armed people, he simply would have chosen a place where he could have taken out people more quickly.
A friend’s husband had just left Luby’s. A work colleague of hers was one of those killed.
A ban that Joe Biden helped to write and always championed. The best part of that video except for the words spoken passionately is seeing the uncomfortable look on chuckie schumer's face. He looks as if he's been forced to take a huge bite of a fresh poop sandwich! That image always makes me happy.
The fellow at VT certainly would NOT ave tried his stunt at VT if CC were permitted on campus. The flagrant advertising of VT’s gun-free status ensured that he would do it there and may well have contributed to his decision to do it at all. Here was the chance to kill a LOT of people before getting himself killed by police or before he decided to finish it himself. He would not have had the incentive to go shooting anywhere else that he was familiar with or had access to anywhere else around him and these people “going off” like that is not inevitable but often is the product of opportunity and a function of the direction of their own resentments. That fellow did not have any animosity against people on the street. His problems were with people on that campus. He probably would not have done his thing anywhere else if VT were no-go because of CC. Mass shooting is not the only outlet. Descent into self-destruction is another way out-alcohol or drugs or other. VT’s gun-free policy crystallized for him his particular path to hell.
Charles. That’s the guy. Walt was more of a pacifist, no?
—and a homosexual even before the word was coined-—
I’m absolutely astounded by your insight into the VT killer. Especially how wrong it seems.
This guy was completely bonkers. He was going to go nuts somewhere, sometime. Yes, he planned this out
“rationally,” but by golly he was gong to kill a bunch of people somewhere.
Probably wrong. It is likely that he would have sunk into drugs or, if he killed it would have been his family rather than members of many other peoples’ families or he would have chosen suicide-by-cop and got in a shootout with police 40 years ago he would have carried a bomb onto a plane.What has been true of these people is that they want to do a lot of damage, kill a lot of people. They will only do it in circumstances where they can accomplish that damage before they are killed themselves. Schools are the best places for that. No one will have a gun in a school, but that is changing now around the edges. Places with Concealed Carry laws do not experience this sort of mass shootings. not because the citizen carrier whips out his piece and shoots down the wacko but because the wacko doesn’t even try it.
Indeed. Thank you for posting it.
Suzanne Hupp did a segment on Penn & Teller's Bullsh*t! about gun control and her experiences. She was succinct, persuasive, and her testimony was (and is) very moving.
You can find it by going to Google Video *pops* and searching for "Penn and Teller Bull Sh*t Gun Control" without the quotes and with the "i" added back in place of the asterisk.
It is well worth the few minutes to watch, IMO.
Let us return to the days of yesteryear, the days of yore, the days of legend in the old west.
What if, just if, anyone was allowed to carry, openly or concealed, anywhere?
How many places do you believe the VT killer would have found where no one was carrying a weapon?
I am a great believer in the old saw of, "An armed society is a polite society"
Could he have killed some people? Yes
Would he have killed as many? I seriously doubt it.
“Let us return to the days of yesteryear, the days of yore, the days of legend in the old west.”
Doesn’t work for me at all. EVERYBODY (OK, that’s an exaggeration) then, including some really bad guys and law enforcement types who were awful, carried guns. Although it’s allowed in my state, I have no desire to see every other person in my city carrying a gun on his or her hip.
“I am a great believer in the old saw of, “An armed society is a polite society”
I know that movies and old tales of the West are often exaggerated, but I see no evidence anywhere that those armed societies were polite or safe ones. Can you provide real evidence to the contrary? Even societies today that are heavily and obviously armed (many Muslim and African countries) seem without exception to be dangerous and incredibly impolite.
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