Originally Posted by bill_daniels
Irony alert. Charles Whitman was able to gun people down from the University of Texas clock tower with impunity precisely because there weren't any armed folks around to stop him.
And how was Whitman able to bring guns on the campus? That isn't permitted, right, so how did he get the weapons to the tower?
From Wiki:
Sniper fire commences
Main building of the University of Texas at Austin from where Whitman, who was just under the clocks, fired upon those below.The first shots from the tower's outer deck came at approximately 11:48 a.m. A history professor was the first to phone the Austin Police Department, after seeing several students shot in the South Mall gathering center; many others had dismissed the rifle reports, not realizing they were gunfire. Eventually, the shootings caused panic as news spread and, after the situation was understood, all active police officers in Austin were ordered to the campus. Other off-duty officers, Travis County Sheriff's deputies, and Texas Department of Public Safety troopers also converged on the area to assist.
Around 20 minutes later, once Whitman began facing return fire from the authorities and armed civilians who had brought out their personal firearms to assist police, he used the waterspouts on each side of the tower as gun ports, allowing him to continue shooting largely protected from the gunfire below but also greatly limiting his range of targets. Ramiro Martinez, an officer who participated in stopping Whitman's rampage, later stated that the civilian shooters should be credited as they made it difficult for him to take careful aim.[22] Police lieutenant Marion Lee reported from a small airplane that there was only a single sniper firing from the observation deck. The airplane circled the tower while Lee tried to shoot Whitman, but turbulence made it difficult for him to get a clear shot. The airplane, piloted by Jim Boutwell, was hit by Whitman's rifle fire but continued to circle the tower from a safe distance until the end of the incident.
Whitman's choice of victims was indiscriminate; most of them were shot on Guadalupe Street, a major commercial and business district across from the west side of the campus. Efforts to reach the wounded included an armored car and ambulances run by local funeral homes. Ambulance driver Morris Hohmann was responding to victims on West 23rd Street when he was shot in the leg, severing an artery. Another ambulance driver quickly attended to Hohmann, who was then taken about ten blocks south of UT to Brackenridge Hospital, which had the only local emergency room. The Brackenridge administrator declared an emergency, and medical staff raced there to reinforce the on-duty shifts. Following the shootings, volunteers donated blood at both Brackenridge and the Travis County Blood Bank.
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