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Michael Paul Williams asks Colin Goddard what he thinks about the incident:
Published: July 21, 2009
July 19, 2009: Man who fatally wounded robber recounts tense shootout
Colin Goddard can relate to the experience of the frightened patrons who ducked behind counters or fled Golden Food Market during a robbery-turned-shootout.
Goddard was wounded April 16, 2007, when Seung-Hui Cho burst into a Virginia Tech classroom and opened fire. Now 23 and a Tech graduate, God dard works as an intern at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence in Washington.
When told how a gun-toting customer had felled a man who'd shot the owner of Golden Food Market, Goddard hardly sounded like an anti-gun reactionary.
"You can't deny what happened, you know," he said. "The guy was able to successfully defend himself. Our movement is not against responsible gun owners exercising that right when their lives are in danger."
"That worked out in that situation," said Goddard, whose family lives in Richmond. "There are other situations where that doesn't work out. And that situation could have worked out in a million different ways."
Recalling that fatal day at Tech, he doubts that a classmate with a firearm could have produced a similar outcome. Things simply happened too fast to respond, he said. "I didn't realize what was going on until I had been shot."
The hero of the Golden Food Market incident does not want his identity released. But if he were known, he'd surely be a darling of the National Rifle Association and held up as an example of how a weapon in the right hands can deter crime and save innocent lives.
Richmond Commonwealth's Attorney Michael N. Herring must wince at such a thought. He hopes what happened on Jefferson Davis Highway on July 11 does not inspire a trend.
"No. No. It's not the answer," Herring said. "And as fortunate and heroic as the actions were, ultimately we were just plain lucky. Most citizens are not trained to shoot. And you can't judge the rightfulness of the conduct by the outcome."
And, as Herring pointed out, the first time someone in a similar situation misses the bad guy and nails a bystander, "then we will be at our wits' end on how to respond to that. And it will surely happen as long as we continue to fire guns in public."
The customer was within the law by using lethal force as a last resort in coming to the aid of someone facing possible death, Herring said. But clearly, in Herring's view, he should be viewed as an exception rather than an example.
Police, with all their training, don't always respond successfully to those situations. Civilians should not make a habit of trying.
Becca Knox, director of research for the Brady Campaign, says there are fewer than 200 justifiable gun homicides each year out of a total of more than 10,000 gun homicides.
"There's absolutely no evidence that if you make [a gun] easier to carry, gun violence goes down," Knox said.
What happened at Golden Food Market was a singular event carried out by an apparently remarkable individual. But anyone viewing this as a sort of template in the war on crime is tragically mistaken.
A society in which citizens see themselves as the last line of defense already has lost the battle.
Contact Michael Paul Williams at (804) 649-6815 or mwilliams@timesdispatch.com.
Michael Paul Williams asks Colin Goddard what he thinks about the incident:
Published: July 21, 2009
July 19, 2009: Man who fatally wounded robber recounts tense shootout
Colin Goddard can relate to the experience of the frightened patrons who ducked behind counters or fled Golden Food Market during a robbery-turned-shootout.
Goddard was wounded April 16, 2007, when Seung-Hui Cho burst into a Virginia Tech classroom and opened fire. Now 23 and a Tech graduate, God dard works as an intern at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence in Washington.
When told how a gun-toting customer had felled a man who'd shot the owner of Golden Food Market, Goddard hardly sounded like an anti-gun reactionary.
"You can't deny what happened, you know," he said. "The guy was able to successfully defend himself. Our movement is not against responsible gun owners exercising that right when their lives are in danger."
"That worked out in that situation," said Goddard, whose family lives in Richmond. "There are other situations where that doesn't work out. And that situation could have worked out in a million different ways."
Recalling that fatal day at Tech, he doubts that a classmate with a firearm could have produced a similar outcome. Things simply happened too fast to respond, he said. "I didn't realize what was going on until I had been shot."
The hero of the Golden Food Market incident does not want his identity released. But if he were known, he'd surely be a darling of the National Rifle Association and held up as an example of how a weapon in the right hands can deter crime and save innocent lives.
Richmond Commonwealth's Attorney Michael N. Herring must wince at such a thought. He hopes what happened on Jefferson Davis Highway on July 11 does not inspire a trend.
"No. No. It's not the answer," Herring said. "And as fortunate and heroic as the actions were, ultimately we were just plain lucky. Most citizens are not trained to shoot. And you can't judge the rightfulness of the conduct by the outcome."
And, as Herring pointed out, the first time someone in a similar situation misses the bad guy and nails a bystander, "then we will be at our wits' end on how to respond to that. And it will surely happen as long as we continue to fire guns in public."
The customer was within the law by using lethal force as a last resort in coming to the aid of someone facing possible death, Herring said. But clearly, in Herring's view, he should be viewed as an exception rather than an example.
Police, with all their training, don't always respond successfully to those situations. Civilians should not make a habit of trying.
Becca Knox, director of research for the Brady Campaign, says there are fewer than 200 justifiable gun homicides each year out of a total of more than 10,000 gun homicides.
"There's absolutely no evidence that if you make [a gun] easier to carry, gun violence goes down," Knox said.
What happened at Golden Food Market was a singular event carried out by an apparently remarkable individual. But anyone viewing this as a sort of template in the war on crime is tragically mistaken.
A society in which citizens see themselves as the last line of defense already has lost the battle.
Contact Michael Paul Williams at (804) 649-6815 or mwilliams@timesdispatch.com.