UT Tower shooting - 55 years ago

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Thanks @Larry Ashcraft

Avenger29 posted this 23Dec09 (both links to Art Eatman below still work):

I probobly wont have to do counter sniper work or shoot through walls but you never know. it happened in austin texas in 1966 when local citizens return fire to a sniper in a tower. they were unable to pentrate the snipers cover, but they were able to keep enough supressing fire on him that porboby saved many lives.

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=308139&highlight=Whitman

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=272239&highlight=Whitman

And deer rifles, full caliber deer rifles were used.

None of the professor’s offices were occupied except for one whose door was open. As I walked down the hall toward that office the sound of a large caliber rifle thundered from that open doorway followed by two men talking. After all the bizarre events of the last few minutes it didn’t seem strange to me when I peeked around the office doorway to see one professor shooting a deer rifle at the top of tower while the other fed him ammunition. It never entered my mind to question why an English professor would have his deer rifle in his office complete with boxes of ammunition. This was Texas after all. Guns were commonplace. From the office windows, we could see the top of the tower clearly. Small puffs of smoke were coming from the rifle of the sniper on the observation deck. The large glass faced clock above the observation deck was shattered from others shooting back at him. The professor ran through several boxes of shells before running out of rounds. My ears were ringing.

It is important to note that the deer rifles provided suppressing fire but did not neutralize Whitman
 
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas_tower_shooting
It has been suggested that Whitman's violent impulses, with which he had been struggling for several years, were caused by a tumor found in the white matter above his amygdala upon autopsy

In the months prior to the attack, Whitman had sought professional help for "overwhelming, violent impulses",[3] including fantasies about shooting people from the tower.[5] An autopsy conducted after his death revealed a hypothalamic tumor.

Yep, crazy. I knew most of the story already, but only now read that he had murdered his wife and mother immediately before he went to the UT campus.
 
When I had about five years on the street (late seventies) I bought a copy of Street Survival... At that time it was the best book available on the tactics needed to improve your odds in an armed confrontation. All of this was long before the armed citizen movement and the book was directed towards law enforcement tactics and techniques with a very healthy dose of reality (more than a few crime scene pics of downed officers...).

At any rate they did a first rate analysis of the Texas tower incident and did a series of photos showing what officers and citizens on the ground could see, looking up at the building - as well as photos showing exactly what the shooter could see from his position. Those photos showed just how exposed those on the ground were - even behind cover of some sort that they thought would protect them... In short - on the ground you could see where the rounds were coming from - but you didn't have the slightest chance of hitting the shooter, while the offender had a clear view of almost everyone below him and was easily able to engage any target he chose...

I no longer have my copy of that book (lent it out -never returned...). but if you ever run across it - give it a look since there's still lots of good tactical advice about armed incidents that all us need to hear about...
 
How do you stop/ prevent a mind like that; there are probably many minds like that among us right now but they have not yet been pushed hard enough to be explosive. So, by default you take the weapons away because those type of minds cannot (usually) be predicted or corrected - and that is where we are.
What seems to me to be very ironic is that the DOD (USMC) taught him to be more proficient with a rifle - that seems like crossing some strange boundary to me - somewhat counterintuitive in a very strange way.
 
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When I had about five years on the street (late seventies) I bought a copy of Street Survival... At that time it was the best book available on the tactics needed to improve your odds in an armed confrontation. All of this was long before the armed citizen movement and the book was directed towards law enforcement tactics and techniques with a very healthy dose of reality (more than a few crime scene pics of downed officers...).

At any rate they did a first rate analysis of the Texas tower incident and did a series of photos showing what officers and citizens on the ground could see, looking up at the building - as well as photos showing exactly what the shooter could see from his position. Those photos showed just how exposed those on the ground were - even behind cover of some sort that they thought would protect them... In short - on the ground you could see where the rounds were coming from - but you didn't have the slightest chance of hitting the shooter, while the offender had a clear view of almost everyone below him and was easily able to engage any target he chose...

I no longer have my copy of that book (lent it out -never returned...). but if you ever run across it - give it a look since there's still lots of good tactical advice about armed incidents that all us need to hear about...

Amazon has the 1987 edition from $3.65 to $76.00. I have no idea where my copy went but I remember it was very good.
 
How do you stop/ prevent a mind like that; there are probably many minds like that among us right now but they have not yet been pushed hard enough to be explosive. So, by default you take the weapons away because those type of minds cannot (usually) be predicted or corrected - and that is where we are.
The take-away from the Texas Tower incident, at the time, was more pro-gun than antigun, because of the large number of citizens that were able to fire back and suppress the gunman. In fact, of the two people that finally stopped the gunman, one was a civilian volunteer using his own M1 carbine. (The other was a Hispanic policeman.) Nobody was particularly upset that the gunman was able to get his guns. Easy access to weapons was definitely a double-edged sword here.
 
The take-away from the Texas Tower incident, at the time, was more pro-gun than antigun, because of the large number of citizens that were able to fire back and suppress the gunman. In fact, of the two people that finally stopped the gunman, one was a civilian volunteer using his own M1 carbine.

Actually Officer Houston McCoy was with Officer Martinez that day and they both fired on Whitman.

Allen Crum fired in advance of Whitman rounding a corner he never rounded. So "fired on" is not necessarily inaccurate. Lots of people "fired on" Whitman without hitting him.

Allen Crum helped, but did not use his own M1 carbine and certainly didn't shoot Whitman (not that you said he did).
https://apps.texastribune.org/guns-...helped-stop-ut-tower-shooter-charles-whitman/

After that failed, he and Crum returned to the ground level and came across a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper named W.A. Cowan, who was carrying a handgun and an old Remington .30-caliber rifle. Crum asked if he could use the rifle, and Cowan handed it over.
 
How do you stop/ prevent a mind like that; there are probably many minds like that among us right now but they have not yet been pushed hard enough to be explosive. So, by default you take the weapons away because those type of minds cannot (usually) be predicted or corrected - and that is where we are.
What seems to me to be very ironic is that the DOD (USMC) taught him to be more proficient with a rifle - that seems like crossing some strange boundary to me - somewhat counterintuitive in a very strange way.
He had sought help from a psychiatrist. Autopsy showed he had a brain tumor.
 
Was it Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys ?
It was.
"...There was a rumor/about a tumor/nestled at the base of his brain/..."


be very ironic is that the DOD (USMC) taught him to be more proficient with a rifle - that seems like crossing some strange boundary to me - somewhat counterintuitive in a very strange way.
Given the times, and being in rural(ish) Florida, he probably brought a bunch of skills to the USMC.

Sadly, some people just aren't right, and that's hard to proscribe let alone predict.
 
I recall it well.

Living in NYC,it was a shocker to me that so many had rifles in that city.

They did keep him pinned down and that helped save lives = for real !

There was a documentary type movie about this,pretty accurate too.
 
What seems to me to be very ironic is that the DOD (USMC) taught him to be more proficient with a rifle - that seems like crossing some strange boundary to me - somewhat counterintuitive in a very strange way.

You mean ironic in the sense that Marines are extremely disciplined and his decision to kill innocent American citizens with skills he learned explicitly for the defense of his countrymen?
 
I was there also. I was crossing the campus on my way home from my morning classes (first term in law school) when the shooting broke out.
I was too - summer school taking Civil War history with Dr. Lathrop.
My roomie & I were eating burgers at the Holiday House on the Drag. We noticed ambulances roaring up the street but had no clue what was going on.
When we finished, we walked out back to the parking lot on 21st just up from Littlefield Fountain to my car, then saw some other students crouching behind their cars.
They shouted to us that a sniper was shooting from the Tower, so we dropped & crouched behind my VW Bug about the time we really heard Whitman’s gun firing. We could clearly see him leaning over the parapet on the observation deck to shoot downwards.
Then, when lots of return fire from the ground picked up, he disappeared... only to start shooting through the drain gutter openings. We saw the little Cessna-type plane circling the Tower, but it veered away after W. Shot at it.
When we saw a white cloth being waved above the parapet, it seems like hundreds rushed up to the Mall below the Tower. We stepped over several pools of blood to join the swelling crowd which probably grew to several thousand.
Pretty tragic day, but there were no “counselors” made available (nobody thought about the necessity). We just went down to Scholz’s that evening & got drunk.
 
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