Unfair Park from p6 “He pointed the gun at her face,” Towers says, “and pulled the trigger.” Click. The chamber was empty. Or maybe the gun malfunctioned. At any rate, Joan es- caped. “She still hears that click whenever she closes her eyes,” Towers says. For others, particularly newer Killeen residents (the city’s population has more than doubled since 1991), the shooting is just something they hear about on anniversaries. “There’s very little to remember it by,” Tow- ers says. The Luby’s is now a Chinese restaurant called Yank Sing, and residents are far more likely to talk about the recent rash of disap- pearances, suicides and sexual harassment at Fort Hood. “You hear about Fort Hood more than you do anything else,” says Stephen, a Killeen resident who moved to the area in 2019 and asked not to use his surname. He and his wife often dine at the Yank Sing, and until the 30-year anniversary a few months ago, he had never heard of the Lu- by’s shooting. “Family and friends will ask about Fort Hood,” he says, “if they ask about anything.” Memory aside, the consequences of this 30-year-old shooting still linger. James Alan Fox, a criminologist at North- eastern University, believes there is a link between Hennard’s murders and the mod- ern-day calls for fewer gun restrictions. He also argues that increased gun controls will have little effect on mass shootings but a sig- nificant effect on other types of crime. “The mass shooters generally are deliber- ate, determined and will find a way to get a gun no matter what we put in their path,” Fox says. “Now, should we make it more dif- ficult? Yes. But those policies that are pro- posed in the wake of mass shootings would have the greatest effect on the type of ordi- nary gun violence we have every day.” Dallas police Chief Eddie Garcia holds a similar view, which is why he joined the chorus of law enforcement officials who op- posed the “constitutional carry” bill Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law in 2021. That law eliminated the requirements for people who carry a handgun, including a back- ground check, four to six hours of training and a shooting safety and proficiency test. “A minimum level of training is not ask- ing too much for carrying a firearm, and it is consistent with the Second Amendment,” Garcia said at a news conference from the state Capitol last May. He and other law en- forcement officials had gathered to state their opposition to the bill that Abbott would make law just a couple months later. Other leaders on hand, including Doug Griffith of the Houston Police Officers’ Union, emphasized that “constitutional carry” poses a safety issue. Safety issues, he argued, should be bipartisan. “It makes our job, the job of our men and women, more dangerous,” Garcia said. “Gun owners have a duty to ensure that their fire- arms are handled safely and a duty to know ap- plicable laws. The licensing process is the best way to make sure this message is conveyed.” Meanwhile, the people who survived the 88 Luby’s shooting have carried on. Those who still live in the area occasionally cross paths. Mike Brooks “It still happens,” Hupp says. “Every once in a while, I’ll run into someone who was there.” She was speaking at an event in Temple some six years ago when a man walked up to her. It was Vaughn, the same guy who flung his body through the glass, saving her and many others. “And God love him, he was tearing up and asking to give me a hug,” Hupp says. “People’s lives are so intertwined. You never know how, or what the ripple effects are.” Towers, who continues to console and counsel those affected by the Luby’s shoot- ing, is now the pastor at Lifeway Fellowship in Killeen. He allows people to carry guns into his services but asks that they refrain from open carry so as not to distract the chil- dren. For the most part, he says, people have been cordial and respectful of his wishes. “Attitude people really don’t fit in our con- gregation,” he says. Still, Towers often thinks about safety and security. After the 2017 shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs, he added some secu- rity upgrades to LifeWay Fellowship. Most of them are not plainly visible, he says. Security guards share space with the lighting equipment in the church’s balcony, which sits above the pews and the pulpit from which Towers preaches. One day, the preacher was talking to his brother-in-law, a veteran and marksman, about the church’s security set-up. “He said, ‘Do the guys upstairs have a long gun?’” Towers recalls. “And I said, ‘Why would you ask that?’ And he said, ‘Well, there’s 100 feet between them and your po- sition on the platform, and if someone comes up to you on the platform, someone with a pistol isn’t gonna be able to do any- thing.’ And I thought that was interesting.” Nowadays, Towers says, the people he talks to in Killeen are more worried about COVID-19 than they are about another mass shooting. Yet the pandemic has inspired a surge in gun sales. As reported by The Trace, the National Rifle Association, which helped popularize the “good guy with a gun” narra- tive, has contributed to that spike in recent gun interest. “I hope I survive the coronavirus,” says a woman in a 2020 video released by the orga- Pastor Jimmy Towers stands in front of the memorial to the 1991 shooting in Killeen. nization. “That’s up to God. What’s in my control is how I defend myself if things go from bad to worse.” Killeen was not immune to that rise in gun sales. In the summer of 2020, local gun seller Damon Cross (whose store is called Texas License 2 Carry) told local news he was limiting customers to only two boxes of 9mm ammunition, his most popular product at that time. “People think that they’re going to be walking outside and they’re going to come across a group of rioters and that they’re go- ing to want to damage their property or break into their homes, and it’s just not true,” Cross said. Later that year, the Killeen Daily Herald published a story that asked, “Is Killeen los- ing the war on crime?” The rate of violent crime has gone up in recent years, the story noted, and the mayor was calling for “a united front.” By the following fall, the rate of violent crime had significantly fallen, yet violence was still top-of-mind for the city’s residents. The mall shooting in early De- cember was the latest incident to take over headlines and local news, and the attempted murder cast a pall over the town. Local parent Jeff Thompson was per- turbed by an automated text he received from the mall not long after the shooting. “It’s a little odd, because I got a text mes- sage from the mall today, telling me about some great deals they had, and it kinda seemed a little odd just to keep going on af- ter so many went through this,” he told a news reporter. “You never know when your loved one is going to be trapped in a school, university or a mall and be a victim to some- one who’s lost their marbles. Hopefully, we find out the root cause of this is actually, and we tackle it instead of just putting it under the rug again and say it’s another day in Killeen.” Other Killeen residents were talking about buying a gun for the first time. “You never know what it’s like until you experience something like that,” a woman named Marguerite Wright, who was in the mall that night, told a local reporter. “People see it on TV, people see it on YouTube, peo- ple see it in the news, but it’s different when it happens to you.” ▼ POLICING BIG BUCKS ment of Justice announced that it was dis- tributing about $126 million to add policing and public safety measures in schools. About $1.8 million of that funding is coming to six different school districts in the area. Districts in Dallas County and Tarrant A County are receiving some of the largest chunks of cash; Garland ISD in Dallas County will get over $700,000 and Saginaw ISD in Tarrant County will get at least $500,000. “Schools must be safe places to learn, and today’s investment of more than $125 mil- lion under the STOP School Violence Act will help ensure that they are,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a press re- lease announcing the grants. Some challenge whether adding more funding for cops in schools is good for stu- dents, though. A 2018 study from the University of Texas at Austin found that Texas schools with police funded by U.S. federal grant pro- grams see a 2.5% decrease in high school graduation rates. College enrollment rates for students at Texas schools with federally funded cops are 4% lower than their less- policed peers, according to the study. Black students are far more likely to be disciplined Nationwide, funding for cops in schools has ballooned in recent years. Former Presi- dent Donald Trump signed the STOP School Violence Act into law in 2018, following the shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School. The number of school shoot- ings rose every year after, from 32 in 2019 to 149 in 2021. The awards to North Texas districts come following a tense past few weeks at public schools in the region. Late last month, several middle and high school students in Frisco were taken into custody after posting on social media that they were going to participate in a “National School Shooting Day.” A few days before, a Rockwall High School student was taken into custody. Authorities received a tip about the student threatening to shoot up the school, and found a series of texts that featured the individual posing with what turned out to be airsoft guns. As “National School Shooting Day” social media posts started going viral that same day, Kaufman ISD officials decided to close its high schools to keep students safe. Just a few days before, Frisco ISD closed Lone Star High School after police were alerted to social media posts about a threat to kill students at the school. A few months earlier, in October last year, a Timberview High School student brought a gun to school and shot and injured two fel- low students and a teacher. THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS SENDING MORE MONEY TO COPS IN NORTH TEXAS SCHOOLS. BY MICHAEL MURNEY wave of funding for police in North Texas schools is on the way. Late last month, the U.S. Depart- MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2014 JANUARY 13-19, 2022 DALLAS OBSERVER DALLAS OBSERVER | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | MOVIES | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | SCHUTZE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS dallasobserver.com dallasobserver.com
