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Dr. Suzanna Hupp - A Daughter's Regret

Texan

Well-known member
The following article is over 8 years old now - the link no longer works. There is nothing more powerful than the story that Suzanna Hupp relates. It inspired her to become proactive in changing Texas law to allow concealed carry. It even inspired her to win a seat as a state legislator.

I only hope that nothing like this happens to any of you here - because you failed to be prepared for the unexpected. Or because you thought you lived in a place that was 'safe' - a place where things like this 'just don't happen.'

Dr. Hupp will carry her regret with her to her grave. But...in a way she was lucky. Instead of a daughter's regret - it could just as easily have been a mother's regret - it could have been her kids.


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A Daughter's Regret

Suzanna Gratia Hupp will live the rest of her life with regret. Had she been carrying her gun the day a madman executed her parents while she cowered helplessly and then fled, she is convinced she could have stopped one of the worst massacres in U.S. history.

She has told the story many times over. Tomorrow she will relate it again before advocates of gun rights in a counter-rally to the Million Mom March. Put yourself in her shoes, she asks, and then think again whether gun control is the answer.

It was October 1991 when an unemployed merchant seaman drove his pickup truck into a Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, Tex., leaped out and opened fire. He killed 23 people and wounded more than 20.

Hupp and her parents were having lunch in the restaurant when the shooting started. Hupp instinctively reached into her purse for her .38-caliber Smith & Wesson, but she had left it in the car. Her father tried to rush the gunman and was shot in the chest. As the gunman reloaded, Hupp escaped through a broken window, thinking her mother was behind her.

But Hupp's mother had crawled alongside her dying husband of 47 years to cushion his head in her lap. Police later told Hupp they saw her mother look up at the gunman standing over her, then bow down before he shot her in the head.

"I'd like people to think about what happened to me, and try to place themselves in that situation," Hupp said yesterday between a string of interviews in which she relived the tragedy as Exhibit A in her argument against restrictive gun laws. "Now, instead of thinking of their parents, have it be their children.

"Even if you choose not to have a gun, as the bad guy who ignored all the laws is getting close to you and as he levels that firearm at one of your children, don't you hope the person next to you has chosen to carry a gun and knows how to use it?"

The story is powerful, and not only because the question assaults the brain and invites no easy answers. With its implied alternative of an armed Hupp gunning down the bad guy before he gets too far, the story invokes the American legend of the frontier lawman who acts alone to thwart evil.

Unable to don that mantle when it could have saved her parents, Hupp, now 40, has been trying ever since to rally people against gun control.

When Texas debated the issue of concealed weapons in 1995, she strolled around the table at a committee hearing molding her fingers into a gun that she aimed at state senators. The next year, she ran as a Republican and won election as a state representative, an office she still holds.

She has promoted other issues, such as water rights. But her personal story trumps all other issues. For years, the National Rifle Association paid her expenses as she traveled the country testifying in favor of gun rights. Her story always commands attention. Before the massacre at Luby's cafeteria, nothing in Hupp's background suggested that she would become so closely associated with gun rights.

She was raised in central Texas, the middle of three children. Her father, Al, owned a heavy equipment store. Her mother, Ursula, was a homemaker.

Al Gratia was a man so gentle he didn't hunt and even quit fishing because he didn't want to hurt the fish. But he owned a BB gun, and taught his children how to shoot and practice gun safety. After Hupp's brother shot and killed a dove, however, no one in the family ever used the gun again.

As a child, Hupp was a victim of careless gun use. When she was 11, she was fishing with her brother and some friends when one of the youths handed a pellet gun to another youth and it went off. Hupp has a two-inch-long scar near her right elbow where the pellet entered her skin and had to be dug out.

After getting a degree as a chiropractor in 1985, she moved to Houston. An assistant district attorney who was a patient suggested she carry a gun as self-defense in the big city.

She argued against it, partly because it was then illegal to carry a concealed weapon in Texas.

"Better to be tried by 12 than carried by six," she recalls her patient advising her. Another friend gave her a pistol as a gift and taught her how to shoot it.

She carried it in her purse. But, afraid of losing her chiropractic license if she were arrested for carrying a concealed weapon, she often kept it beneath the passenger seat of her car.

That's where it was, 150 feet from Hupp's grasp, the day George Hennard burst into Luby's. The what-ifs haunt her. Hennard stood barely 10 feet from her. He was up, she was down. She had clear aim. The upturned table would have steadied her hand. Though not a crack shot, she had hit smaller targets from farther distances.

"The point is, people like this--no, scumbags like this; I won't put them in the people category--are looking for easy targets," said Hupp. "That's why we see things occurring at schools, post offices, churches and cafeterias in states that don't allow concealed carrying."

Nothing sways her. After the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School, Hupp seemed to suggest that teachers should carry concealed weapons. She insists that what she said was something different:

"I wanted to know why the state treats teachers like second-class citizens, when plumbers and doctors are allowed to protect themselves on the job," she said. "I would be happier sending my child to a school where a teacher whom I trust is armed and well prepared."

She is equally oblique when talking about places where guns are banned. Even in Texas, which began allowing concealed weapons in 1996, guns are banned from several types of establishments, including churches, sports arenas, government offices, courts, airports and restaurants serving alcohol. Hupp refuses to say outright that she believes people should be allowed to carry guns to church. She picks her words carefully.

"We have created a shopping list for madmen," she said. "If guns are the problem, why don't we see things occurring at skeet and trap shoots, at gun shows, at NRA conventions? We only see it where guns aren't allowed. The sign of a gun with a slash through it is like a neon sign for gunmen, 'We're unarmed. Come kill us.' "

To Hupp, the right to bear arms is a family issue. Her two sons will grow up learning to defend themselves with a gun. The elder son, 4, has been taught gun safety and has fired his first shot.

"A gun can be used to kill a family, or defend a family," Hupp said. "I've lived what gun laws do. My parents died because of what gun laws do. I'm the quintessential soccer mom, and I want the right to protect my family. What happened to my parents will never happen again with my kids there."


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59368-2000May12.html
 

Cal

Well-known member
Great post, Texan! I really think we need to work on Cattle Army slowly, one step at a time. Let's get her to carry a pea shooter in her purse, and after she gets accustomed to that, let's get her a good sling shot and a few pebbles....and go from there. :wink:
 

Larrry

Well-known member
I think CA should go get some weapons and self defense training. Everyone should have the weapons training because if someone else pulls it on you you have to know what their weapons are capable of. Being nervous because of a crook having a gun inhibits one from surveying and understanding their options. Being nervous will inhibit noting the crooks habits and charachteristics for IDing later.
 

CattleArmy

Well-known member
Larrry said:
I think CA should go get some weapons and self defense training. Everyone should have the weapons training because if someone else pulls it on you you have to know what their weapons are capable of. Being nervous because of a crook having a gun inhibits one from surveying and understanding their options. Being nervous will inhibit noting the crooks habits and charachteristics for IDing later.

If we are going on strickly what we think then here goes I think you should shut the hell up.

I feel lucky to live in an area where I don't feel the need to carry a weapon to be safe. I know all I need to know about guns that if one goes off one way or another someone or something is gonna be hurt.
 

kolanuraven

Well-known member
CattleArmy said:
Larrry said:
I think CA should go get some weapons and self defense training. Everyone should have the weapons training because if someone else pulls it on you you have to know what their weapons are capable of. Being nervous because of a crook having a gun inhibits one from surveying and understanding their options. Being nervous will inhibit noting the crooks habits and charachteristics for IDing later.

If we are going on strickly what we think then here goes I think you should shut the hell up.

I feel lucky to live in an area where I don't feel the need to carry a weapon to be safe. I know all I need to know about guns that if one goes off one way or another someone or something is gonna be hurt.


:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:



Get off CA's arse.

It is after all AMERICA and she can do as she wants about having or not having a gun.


I don't agree with her all the time nor most of the time.....but she's a big girl and can make her own decisions.

She has her reasons.....I have mine.....and other have their own...enough said.


Here again....everyone needs to mind their own business.
 

aplusmnt

Well-known member
I agree we do not need CA to get a gun, we just need her to not be an activist or ever vote in some way in regards any of us carrying a gun.

Some people really should not carry a gun. If you are not comfortable with them and willing to spend time target shooting and becoming familiar with it, you should probably work out and keep in shape so you can just run away if the something happens.

Me I am to out of shape to run :(
 

CattleArmy

Well-known member
The more some harp at me on here about my opinion will just make me vote against guns just to get at them with me knowing it. :wink: As I've said before agree with me or not my vote counts just as much as anyone elses at the polls.
 

aplusmnt

Well-known member
CattleArmy said:
The more some harp at me on here about my opinion will just make me vote against guns just to get at them with me knowing it. :wink: As I've said before agree with me or not my vote counts just as much as anyone elses at the polls.

Fortunately for once the Supreme court made a correct ruling and may have put and end to the legality of us gun owners. So vote all you want, us crazy gun fanatics will be packing and you will have to worry about us not us about your vote! :wink: :lol:
 

CattleArmy

Well-known member
aplusmnt said:
CattleArmy said:
The more some harp at me on here about my opinion will just make me vote against guns just to get at them with me knowing it. :wink: As I've said before agree with me or not my vote counts just as much as anyone elses at the polls.

Fortunately for once the Supreme court made a correct ruling and may have put and end to the legality of us gun owners. So vote all you want, us crazy gun fanatics will be packing and you will have to worry about us not us about your vote! :wink: :lol:

This is just not my day first that hopalong kiss that added up to like 5 personalities smooching me and my violation and now this. ****! :shock: :eek:
 

Larrry

Well-known member
I think you should shut the hell up.

A little testy are we. Just like a typical liberal socialist. if you don't like what the opposition just silence them. So there goes the first and second amendment.

I told you before do what you want. I am not going to sit around and tell myself "it never happens here"
 

CattleArmy

Well-known member
Larrry said:
I think you should shut the hell up.

A little testy are we. Just like a typical liberal socialist. if you don't like what the opposition just silence them. So there goes the first and second amendment.

I told you before do what you want. I am not going to sit around and tell myself "it never happens here"

I'm not testy just telling you what I thought. I don't wanna silence them just you.
 

Texan

Well-known member
Cal said:
Great post, Texan! I really think we need to work on Cattle Army slowly, one step at a time. Let's get her to carry a pea shooter in her purse, and after she gets accustomed to that, let's get her a good sling shot and a few pebbles....and go from there. :wink:
You really think she carries a purse? Like a normal girl? :lol:
 

CattleArmy

Well-known member
Texan said:
Cal said:
Great post, Texan! I really think we need to work on Cattle Army slowly, one step at a time. Let's get her to carry a pea shooter in her purse, and after she gets accustomed to that, let's get her a good sling shot and a few pebbles....and go from there. :wink:
You really think she carries a purse? Like a normal girl? :lol:

I'm not normal, I drive a tractor, ride a horse, and have a whole universe of people to talk to on the internet and I'm drawn to this bunch!

Bite me!
 
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