SPEAKING OUT: PROP B PROPONENT RECALLS EXPERIENCE IN SHOOTING

Dr. Suzanna Gratia Hupp has long been an advocate of laws allowing concealed weapons.

"I have owned a gun since I was 21," she told the group Missourians Against Crime that supports Proposition B that would let Missouri residents carry concealed weapons.

Hupp, a Texas chiropractor and three-term state representative, was in Cape Girardeau Saturday to address backers of Proposition B.

Missourians will vote Tuesday on the proposed law.

Supporters and critics of Proposition B have conducted meetings throughout the past month, hoping to rally voters to support their position before Tuesday's vote.

Hupp was a witness and survivor to a shooting that left 23 dead in a cafeteria at Killeen, Texas, eight years ago.

"Sometimes it's difficult to talk about it," Hupp said at the gathering at the Drury Lodge. "My mother and father were two of the victims that day."

As a survivor of the 1991 shooting, Hupp has been a sought-after speaker and has been thrust into national debates on the right to keep and bear arms. She has been quoted in the US News and World Report, the Wall Street Journal and Time Magazine.

She has also appeared in political advertisements on televison, urging support of the conceal-carry measure in Missouri.

She tells her story:

"When I was 21 years old, a friend taught me how to fire a weapon," she said. "I wasn't raised in a violent area -- we had a BB-gun at home -- but I did carry the gun with me, illegally at that time."

On a bright, sunny day, Hupp and her parents decided to have lunch at the Killeen Cafeteria. She left her gun in the car.

While in the cafeteria, a truck suddenly came through the wall into the restaurant.

"A guy got out of the truck and started walking from one person to another, shooting them, execution-style" said Hupp. "My parents and myself got down on the floor. I reached for my purse, before realizing I had left the gun in the car."

Hupp's father decided to lunge for the guy and was shot.

"Some people were leaving the cafeteria through a broken window," said Hupp. "I told my mother we needed to get out and headed for the window."

When Hupp reached the window she turned to her mother, who wasn't there.

"My parents had recently observed their 47th wedding anniversary," said Hupp. "My mother wasn't going to leave my dad's side. Police told me later that the gunman shot her as she held my father in her arms."

Twenty-two people were dead. When police started moving in, he shot himself.

"I was not mad at the guy who did the shooting," said Hupp. "He was like a mad dog. Something apparently snapped. He wasn't on drugs, but people who said they looked into his eyes say there was nothing there, just a blank look."

"I was angry with my Texas legislators," said Hupp, adding that they had failed to provide her with any chance she may have had to defend herself.

"Place yourself in a similar scenario," she said. "With a gunman pointing a weapon at your parents or your children. You hope that somebody in the crowd will have a gun."

Four years after the Killeen shooting, Texas established a concealed weapons permit law.