Texas Gov. Perry may well be aware several citizens used their own guns to suppress former Marine Charles Whitman when he opened fire from the University of Texas Tower, killing 14 and wounding 32 people on Aug 1, 1966. Police have credited these civilians with limiting the carnage until two police officers stormed the tower and took Whitman out. I was coming of age in Texas back then, as was Gov. Perry. Such things stick in the mind.
It was quite common back in that day for people to carry long guns in their vehicles, often in plain sight perched in a gun rack over the back windshield of a pickup truck. And we knew nothing then of any prohibition on handgun possession. That would have been totally laughable.
Perhaps due to proactive citizen involvement in Austin that hot summer day, the body count in the Whitman incident was much less severe than that of Virginia Tech, where apparently there was nothing but stool pigeons present, save for the lone professor and former concentration camp survivor who fought back. If only he'd had a gun like those people in Austin.