After college, he enrolled at the newly opened Vermont Law School, where he befriended an irreverent and equally loquacious classmate named Richard Feldman. The two shared a bawdy sense of humor and both joined an informal law student shooting club. Jannuzzo had been taught about guns as a child and enjoyed plinking bottles and cans in the Vermont woods. He subscribed to the NRA’s view—that guns per se were not a problem; it was guns in the hands of the wrong people that threatened society. He decided to become a prosecutor and put the bad guys in jail.
Armed with a J.D., Jannuzzo passed the bar in New Jersey and became an assistant district attorney. He enjoyed the work and helped with a major death penalty case. After learning his way around the courtroom for several years, he moved on to the more lucrative private practice of law in 1985. At a small firm in Red Bank, he handled criminal defense assignments and represented companies in product liability cases. Some of his clients were gun retailers who had been sued when firearms they sold were later misused.
Jannuzzo became an active member of the New Jersey Coalition of Sportsmen, the local NRA affiliate, where his path crossed again with that of his law school friend Feldman, who was a regional organizer for the NRA in the Northeast. Feldman recruited Jannuzzo to testify against gun-control laws before the New Jersey legislature. “Paul was a very effective witness,” Feldman recalled. “Here’s the young ex-prosecutor telling the politicians that New Jersey’s version of the assault weapons ban is just symbolism.”
Feldman was so impressed by Jannuzzo’s performance that he asked him to address a pro-gun rally on the State House steps in Trenton in 1990. Jannuzzo obliged, appearing before a rambunctious, casually dressed collection of hunters and handgun owners. The attorney wore his usual dark suit and conservative tie, as well as horn-rimmed eyeglasses that made him look more like a law professor than a rabble-rousing Second Amendment activist. For several years afterward, the NRA used a video of the event in its advertising.
By 1991, Karl Walter realized that Glock, Inc.’s, increasing litigation burden required a full-time staff lawyer. He called Feldman, who was an acquaintance, and asked if he knew any attorneys who were “not assholes.” Feldman suggested Jannuzzo. “I guess it didn’t totally escape my attention that it wouldn’t be bad to have my friend working inside Glock, the up-and-coming manufacturer in the industry,” Feldman told me. “Was I looking out for my own interests? Sure. But Paul really was perfect for the job.”
Jannuzzo became Glock’s in-house attorney and, over time, its main spokesman, as well. Sharply worded sound bites came naturally to the ex-prosecutor. Responding to an Associated Press report on liability lawsuits against Glock, he said: “Nike gets sued by people who have twisted ankles. It doesn’t matter if you make tennis rackets or pistols, you get lawsuits.” That may be true, and it is certainly glib, but of course sneakers are rarely implicated in life-threatening injuries. Jannuzzo was not above bending logic to make his point.
Within the company, he became a popular figure, admired for his ability to impress Gaston Glock without being pretentious. Most of the American employees in Smyrna were intimidated by the German-speaking Austrian and his entourage. Jannuzzo, a quick study, picked up enough German to figure out what the Austrian executives were saying. But rather than hoard this information to his own advantage, he used it to try to reassure his American colleagues. Out of the Austrians’ presence, Jannuzzo would roll his eyes or wink when explaining how to “manage up” in the company. “I’m not embarrassed to say I loved the man,” said Ed Pitt, a gunsmith employed by Glock. “He was a straight shooter.”
A fall 1992 newsletter sent to members of the Glock Shooting Sports Foundation, a company-sponsored group that held competitions, featured a profile of Jannuzzo, describing him as an exemplary employee. Jannuzzo arrived earlier and stayed later than anyone else at the Smyrna corporate offices. The circular added: “The most common remarks heard about Paul are: ‘He’s always up. You never see him angry.’ ‘I value his opinion and advice.’ ‘A great sense of humor.’ And, more often than not, ‘He’s a lawyer, but I like him anyway!’ ”
Sherry Collins had helped promote a .38-caliber revolver at Smith & Wesson marketed to women as “The Ladysmith,” for which she became well known in industry circles. But to her, Smith & Wesson seemed lost, despite the affection she still felt for the company. She left S&W in late 1991 to edit a gun-industry magazine.
In 1994, Glock, Inc., offered her a job as head of public relations in the United States. Collins, like Jannuzzo, thought the foreign label had a unique advantage: “Glock owners have a kind of brand loyalty that’s incredible, because they were pariahs in a way. You know, you own ‘the hideous plastic gun.’ ” So she agreed to move to Smyrna.
CHAPTER 10
Massacre in Killeen
About eighty people were crowded into Luby’s café in Killeen, Texas, eating lunch on October 16, 1991, when George Hennard, a thirty-five-year-old former merchant marine, crashed his pickup truck through the plate-glass front of the restaurant. Some customers, thinking the vehicle was out of control, moved to help the injured. Then Hennard began shooting.
“He was firing at anyone he could shoot,” said Luby’s patron Sam Wink. He “had tons of ammo on him.” Another witness described him shooting “as fast as he could pull the trigger.” When he emptied one seventeen-round magazine in his Glock 17, he inserted a fresh one. Some witnesses said Hennard spoke to his victims as he approached them. “Was it worth it?” he asked before pulling the trigger of the Glock.
Hennard’s fellow residents in Belton, Texas, would describe him as a strange man. On occasion, he came out of his house screaming. He had sent neighbor Jane Bugg a rambling letter about “treacherous female vipers … who tried to destroy me and my family.” Bugg gave the letter to police, but they did not investigate.
On the day of the attack, Texas state law enforcement officials happened to be leading a class for local police officers in Killeen. The coincidence probably saved a number of lives. Cops arrived less than ten minutes after Hennard started shooting. They found the café floor covered with glass, blood, and spent ammunition. The police opened fire and wounded Hennard, who retreated into a hallway leading to the restaurant’s restrooms. Trapped, he shot himself fatally in the head. But by then, he had killed twenty-two people and injured many more. At the time, it was the worst mass shooting in United States history.
An investigation revealed that Hennard had purchased the Glock legally. It was swiftly traced by its serial number to the company plant in Smyrna, which told the police that the gun had been sold to a distributor in Sparks, Nevada. The distributor transferred it, legally, to Mike’s Gun House, a federal firearms license holder in Henderson, Nevada. Mike’s sold the Glock to Hennard, who at the time was staying in Henderson with his mother. Hennard provided the salesclerk with all of the information requested on the registration form required in Clark County, Nevada, a jurisdiction that had relatively stringent rules governing gun purchases. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department ran a criminal background check on Hennard, but it turned up only a 1981 misdemeanor arrest for marijuana possession in El Paso. A felony conviction would have disqualified him from owning the weapon; the misdemeanor dope arrest did not.
On the day Hennard made history in Killeen, the US House of Representatives was debating proposals to tighten national rules about gun ownership. House members gathered in the Capitol to consider a major anti-crime bill, a version of which the Senate had passed in July. Republicans and Democrats were waging a raucous political contest to claim the title of toughest crime-busters.