Survivor of Luby massacre defends Second Amendment

By Judith Pannebaker

Dr. Suzanna Gratia Hupp’s calm recounting of a sequence of events that occurred on Oct. 16, 1991, in a Luby’s restaurant in Killeen, kept the crowd at the Bandera County Public Library riveted. As one participant noted, “Nobody moved. You could have heard a pin drop.” It’s one thing to read about the massacre of 23 people in newspaper articles – and quite another to hear an account from a person who survived the killing field. Hupp, the author of “From Luby’s to the Legislature: One Woman’s Fight Against Gun Control,” appeared at a book signing at the library on Wednesday, Jan. 13. While in other parts of the country, the right to bear arms is a controversial issue, not so in Bandera. When Hupp asked, “How many of you own guns?” nearly every hand in the SRO crowd shot up. “This is going to be an easy audience,” she noted. “I don’t have to worry about offending anyone.” Hupp recalled that as a child, she and her brother, Bandera chiropractor, Allan Gratia, had grown up in a home where their father, although not a “gun fanatic,” had respected the Second Amendment. “When I was 21, a friend of mine, an assistant district attorney in Houston, gave me a .38 Smith & Wesson Air Weight,” Hupp said. At that time, however, it was illegal to carry a handgun in Texas. Worried about losing her just-acquired chiropractic license, she demurred from accepting the gun. “He told me, ‘You need to carry this at all times. You don’t see the things I do. Stuff happens and you need to be prepared’,” Hupp recalled. Fast forward to a sunny day in 1991 when she had met her parents for lunch in a Luby’s restaurant near their home in Copperas Cove. “Luby’s was packed that day since it was Boss’s Day,” Hupp noted. Suddenly, a pickup truck plowed through the front window, sending people flying. Thinking the crash was an accident, Hupp got up to help the driver – and then heard gunshots. She and her parents immediately took cover behind overturned tables. The truck blocked the exits. “It took me about 45 seconds to realize he was there to execute people,” Hupp said, describing the shooter going from person to person, deliberately taking aim and pulling the trigger. When the gunman was about 15 feet away, Hupp assessed the situation, noting, “I can use the table as cover and stablize my arm on the top. I’ve got this guy.” Then with a sinking feeling, she remembered that, fearing for revocation of her medical license, she had imprudently left her gun in her car “100 feet away in the parking lot.” All that was left in way of defense were salt and pepper shakers and a butter knife. Attempting to subdue the gunman, Hupp’s father, Al Gratia, charged, but was shot instantly. “The shooter had complete charge of the situation,” Hupp said. “My father was shot seven or eight feet in front of me.” She recognized the wound was fatal. However, her father’s sacrifice caused the gunman to veer to the left – away from Hupp and her mother, giving them extra moments. Just seconds later, a man launched himself through a plate glass window, opening an avenue of escape. “I grabbed my mother and starting running,” Hupp said. It was only after reaching safety that she realized her mother, Ursula, hadn’t followed her. “I should have known she would never leave my father.” After law enforcement officers stormed the building, the shooter “rabbited to a back room and killed himself,” Hupp said. In the final gruesome tally, 23 people had been shot to death and another 20 wounded. The incident at Luby’s remained the deadliest shooting rampage in the United States until the Virginia Tech massacre in April 16, 2007, in which 32 people were killed. In the aftermath of the shooting, interviewers asked Hupp about her feeling toward the shooter. “I can’t be mad at the man. He went nuts. It’s like being mad at a rabid dog,” she said. Hupp added repeatedly, however, “But I’m mad as hell at the legislators who legislated me out of the right to protect myself and my family.” She continued, “It’s the most frustrating thing in the world to lie and wait for it to be your turn.” Rethinking her decision to comply with then law, she said, “I’d rather be sitting in prison with a felony and have my parents here.” Hupp’s subsequent testimony about the shooting proved instrumental in the approval of Texas’ conceal carry statute. Via appearances on talk shows, she brought her story to millions of people who “wouldn’t have necessarily heard about the other side of gun control. “I wrote my book because I wanted my children to know my version of the story as it relates to guns and my recollections of how I formed by views of the Second Amendment,” Hupp said. Not surprisingly, she has little tolerance for people she regards as “squishy” when confronted with every US citizen’s fundamental right. “One time on a call-in radio program, a woman caller told me, ‘I’m not sure I could pull the trigger even to save my children.’ “I told her, ‘Then, by God, you shouldn’t be procreating – because even a goose protects its own’.” Hupp continued, “I’m not a hunter but I believe in the God-given right to protect myself and my family.” Not one to mince words, while testifying before a Senate subcommittee, she confronted New York Democrat Chuck Schumer, a member of the panel, saying, “The Second Amendment is not about duck hunting. It’s about protecting us from you up there.” Hupp concluded by painting a harrowing scenario. “You’re at a restaurant with your family and somebody in a trench coat catches your eye. As you watch, he pulls out a gun and starts executing people. If you don’t have a gun, do you think you might hope the guy behind you does?”

via www.bccourier.com