Back when the Port Arthur Massacre had just happened and the debate raged over gun control, it was common to hear about Texans saying things like "never woulda happened in Texas". They'd say this because, the theory goes, in Texas everyone is packing heat so when some nutjob pulls a gun, he'd only get to pop a few off before someone else took him out.
Reading about yesterdays terrible events I ended up reading about Luby's massacre, which up until yesterday had been America's deadliest (civil) mass shooting. It happened in 1991, four years before the Port Arthur Massacre. It happened in Texas. Of course, their reaction was to allow concealed weapons to be carried, which is quite a contrast to what happened here.