April 21, 1994
MEMORANDUM
FROM:  PHB
SUBJECT:  MASS MURDERS 

On Nov. 1, 1955, Jack Gilbert Graham blew up a United Airlines 
plan on route from Denver to Seattle to collect insurance he had 
bought for dear old mom, whose luggage he checked.  He killed 44 
persons, precisely twice the number from Luby's in Killeen, 
Texas, and there is still no ban on checking luggage (although 
too many patrons seem to impose one on themselves) nor searches 
of checked luggage for bombs.

On March 25, 1990, Julio Gonzalez set fire to the Happy Land 
social club in the Bronx, killing 87 persons, almost precisely 
four times the number killed in Killeen (the largest mass murder 
with a gun)  -- although the Alternative News Network, as 
reported in Gun Week of April 17, 1992, says six more later died 
of burns, for as total of 93 -- and the miscreant has been 
sentenced to 25 years to life (on each count, but the sentence to 
be served concurrently), so Julio ought to be out of prison a 
couple of years after the Feinstein bill is set to sunset.  So he 
was sentenced to a few months per victim, New York's gov being 
big on banning "assault weapons" but weak on punishing murderers.  
(The social club, for code violations, got its owner convicted 
and sentenced to $150,000 fine and 50 hours of community 
service.)

Virtually all serial killers -- Juan Corona, John Wayne Gacy, Ted 
Bundy, et al. -- prefer to commit their crimes without guns, 
although their victims would have been willing to beg for the 
relatively instant and painless death by gunfire to the torture 
serial killers inflict, with most killing more persons over time 
than even the most vicious of mass murders with firearms.

The Puerto Rico hotel fire, set as part of a labor dispute on 
December 31, 1986, reportedly killed 96 persons in the Dupont 
Plaza Hotel in San Juan.  Three persons pled guilty in the Puerto 
Rico fire.  One was sentenced to 75 years for obtaining the fuel 
with which the fire was started.  One was sentenced to 99 years 
for inciting to start the fire.  And the third was sentenced to 
two concurrent 99 year terms for actually starting the fire. 

At the time of one of the mass murders, I did a check with FBI 
data, and found that, pretty much however one defined mass murder 
(say, Jamie Fox's over five, or five or more in one incident -- 
without Jamie's little exclusion of arson), the plurality weapon 
of choice was fire, not handguns, nor rifles, etc.

And this means that just two mass murders by arson during the 
past ten years have killed more persons than the total who were 
killed with "assault weapons" in virtually every widely 
publicized multiple homicide, including San Ysidro (even 
pretending that the Uzi killed the 21, rather than that only 6 
died from Uzi fire), Stockton, Killeen, the 'Frisco law office, 
the Long Island train, the printing plant in Louisville (?), the 
shopping center in Florida, the recent Hasidim on the bridge in 
NY, etc.  Indeed, the number killed in those two fires probably 
exceeds the number killed or wounded in all of those other widely 
publicized slayings.

One can't be sure of the precise count, but counting fire, smoke 
inhalation, suffocation, and unknown etc. as fire, but deleting 
gunshot, knife, and blunt object, there were about 52 killed by 
fire in the Branch Davidian compound on April 19, 1993.  The 
killer remains at large (in the DOJ's biggest office).  If 
they're dead, it counts as murder by arson (even if there's some 
dispute about who the culprit is or was).

So the total for just three cases of felonious arson in the past 
decade is 235 dead (or roughly the estimated total for the annual 
number of homicides associated with all "assault weapons" -- 
based on the 1% figure).

Throw in Jim Jones (I believe the killer there was sentenced to 
hell), and none of the five leading mass murders by Americans 
were committed with firearms (although firearms were used 
tangentially in two), and each killed a minimum of twice the 
number in the greatest mass murder by firearm in American 
history.