Luby's shooting

The restaurant reopened five months after the massacre, but closed permanently on September 9, 2000. In 2006, a buffet called "Yank Sing" occupied the former Luby's. The restaurant remains open as of June 2022.

The Texas State Rifle Association and others preferred that the state allow its citizens to carry concealed weapons. Democratic governor Ann Richards vetoed such bills, but in 1995 her Republican successor, George W. Bush, signed one into force. The law had been campaigned for by Suzanna Hupp, who was present at the massacre; both of her parents, Alphonse "Al" Gratia and Ursula "Suzy" Gratia, were killed by Hennard. She later testified that she would have liked to have had her .38 revolver, but said, "It was a hundred feet away in my car." (She had feared that if she was caught carrying it she might lose her chiropractor's license.) Hupp testified across the country in support of concealed handgun laws, and was elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1996.

The Luby's shooting was a mass shooting that took place on October 16, 1991, at a Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas. The perpetrator, George Hennard, drove his pickup truck through the front window of the restaurant. He shot and killed 23 people, and wounded 27 others. He had a brief shootout with police, refused their orders to surrender, and fatally shot himself.

On October 16, 1991, 35-year-old George Hennard, an unemployed former merchant seaman, drove a blue 1987 Ford Ranger pickup truck through the plate-glass front window of a Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, at 12:39 p.m. October 16 was Boss's Day, and the cafeteria was unusually crowded with around 150 people. Hennard then began firing from inside the truck while holding Glock 17 and Ruger P89 pistols; the first victim was veterinarian Michael Griffith. Hennard exited the truck and yelled, "All women of Killeen and Belton are vipers! This is what you've done to me and my family! This is what Bell County did to me ... this is payback day!" He then opened fire on the patrons and staff with both pistols. Hennard then circled around the cafeteria, selectively picking his victims. Hennard said "You bitch" to a woman before fatally shooting her.

On his 35th birthday, October 15, 1991, Hennard spoke with his mother on the phone. Later that evening, while eating a cheeseburger and french fries outside of Belton, Hennard had a sudden outburst of rage as he watched television coverage of Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearings. “When an interview with Anita Hill came on, he just went off,” Bill Stringer, a manager, said. "He started screaming, 'You dumb bitch! You bastards opened the door for all the women!'"

In 1990, Hennard called Isaiah (Ike) R. Williams, a port agent for the national maritime union in Wilmington, California, stating that he needed a letter of recommendation in order to regain his papers and rejoin the Merchant Marine. "I don't recall having given him one," Williams claimed. Hennard had learned in mid-February that his attempt to be reinstated had been denied. Several months later, Hennard entered a drug treatment program in Houston.

Hennard was described as reclusive and belligerent, with an explosive temper. He was discharged from the Merchant Marine on May 11, 1989 for possession of marijuana and racial incidents. That same month, Hennard's seaman papers were suspended after he had a racial argument with another shipmate. Numerous reports included accounts of Hennard's expressed hatred of women. An ex-roommate of his said, "He hated blacks, Hispanics, and gays. He said women were snakes and always had derogatory remarks about them, especially after fights with his mother." Survivors of the shootings later said Hennard had passed over men to shoot women. Fourteen of the twenty three people killed were women, as were many of the wounded. He called two of the victims a "bitch" before shooting them.

Early in the investigation of the massacre, the Killeen police chief said that Hennard "had an evident problem with women for some reason". After his parents divorced in 1983, his father moved to Houston, and his mother moved to Henderson, Nevada. The Glock 17 and Ruger P89 9mm pistols which Hennard used were purchased in February 1991 at Mike's Gun House, a gun shop in the town of Henderson, Nevada.

Hennard had begun to work at several different jobs, including construction crews in South Dakota and Killeen while living part-time in Henderson, Nevada, with his mother in a redbrick colonial home in Belton that his family had purchased in 1980 shortly after moving to Fort Hood.

George Pierre Hennard was born on October 15, 1956, in Sayre, Pennsylvania, in a wealthy family. Hennard was the son of a Swiss-born surgeon and a homemaker. He had two younger siblings, brother Alan and sister Desiree. Since the age of 5, Hennard and his family moved across the country as his father worked at several army hospitals. Hennard's family later moved to New Mexico, where his father worked at the White Sands Missile Range near Las Cruces. After graduating from Mayfield High School in 1974, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served for three years, until he was honorably discharged. Hennard later worked as a merchant mariner, but was dismissed for drug use. Several months later, Hennard enrolled in a drug treatment program in Houston.