Posted on 06/01/2022 9:40:08 PM PDT by beaversmom
The modern era of mass shootings began here on a searing summer day in 1966. Just before noon, from high atop the University of Texas Tower, an ex-Marine sharpshooter named Charles Whitman leveled his rifle over the railing, peered through his scope and shot a pregnant student in the belly.
He hit her boyfriend in the neck. He shot a teenager in the mouth. Blasting at victims 500 yards away, the 25-year-old engineering student fired at will for 20 minutes — the time it took for students and residents to fetch their own high-powered rifles and shoot back, helping an unprepared and outgunned police force.
Some worked alone, taking position on roofs or behind bushes. Others partnered with Austin police officers, whose handguns and shotguns could not reach Whitman nearly 300 feet above. Officers even raced to gun stores to get ammo for the civilians, who were told to shoot to kill.
“These guys were pretty good shots,” said Bill Helmer, then a graduate student who witnessed the mayhem. “There was a lot of lead flying up there at him.”
On Monday, survivors will attend the unveiling of a memorial on the 50th anniversary of Whitman’s rampage, which left 17 dead and more than 30 wounded. That same day, Texas becomes the nation’s eighth state to allow students to brings guns onto university campuses and, in some cases, into classrooms and dorms.
The extraordinary timing of the new law, which permits only concealed weapons, distresses gun-control supporters and survivors of Whitman’s attack. Gun rights advocates are delighted. In their push to expand campus-carry laws across the country, they have cited the impromptu cavalry that took on Whitman as evidence that armed law-abiding citizens are the best defense against mass shooters.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I grabbed a 45 ACP and a carrier with six spare mags and threw them into my trunk to go to the school.
The park next to the school was calm with kids doing last day of school events.
Drove two streets next to the school and observed parents calmly picking up kids, three police vehicles out front.
Turned on a side street and circled back to a church next to the school and parked in the back parking lot 50 yards from the backside of the school.
Watched a school resource officer let staff out to that back school parking lot.
After 20 minutes, I observed no alarm or urgency and went back home.
*For you feds monitoring this channel, I never went onto school property.
Officer Ramiro Martinez talks about shooting Charles Whitman:
https://youtu.be/DG6JH9eM9mg
Thanks for your post about being ready to take action. Scary times out there. I was struck from the article about how many citizens were firing back at Whitman and how the police encouraged that. Compare to now where the police were pepper spraying and tasering parents.
I’d bet money there were people involved who understood suppressive fire from experience in WWII or Korea.
And they police got assistance from citizens who had hunting rifles in their pickups.
Pretty good doc, less than an hour long, of the events as they unfolded that day.
The best defense is and has always been a well armed populace. That the democrats want to disarm us speaks volumes.
I think I see a pattern here.
The autopsy revealed a "pecan-sized" tumor. So much for asking for help.
The globalists blame guns, knowing full well their intent is to disarm a population to commit atrocities against them.
Harry Chapin’s “Sniper” is based on this event. Powerful song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT1cxP3JT0c
The NRA was founded after the Civil War for the very purpose of teaching civilians to shoot, so that when the next war broke out, soldiers would be better shots and more effective in battle.
Thank you for stepping up. Not many people would do that these days
One hour prior to the announcing the lockdown, 55 year old Mr White carrying a pistol in his pocket shot himself in the foot while in the school office.
One of the accounts said he left a note asking for an autopsy of his brain, suspecting something was wrong. Turns out he did have a brain tumor; but research was not advanced at that point; no one thought much of it. The values of that day focused on the seriousness or criminality of the act, not the reasons or excuses of the perpetrator.
We need those values again. I have never understood excessive "mercy" towards violent felons because of mental defect or childhood trauma, without any corresponding cure for their condition.
If we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. —Karl PopperTolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil. —Thomas Mann
I knew there was a reason I didn’t like them...
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