my hero James Shaw Jr. pic.twitter.com/BRnuYEURdv
— Emma González (@Emma4Change) April 29, 2018
In the “Stuff That *Doesn’t* Suck” category…
… Just days after the 40-year-old rapper tweeted of his support for President Donald Trump, [Kanye] West shared a photo of Gonzalez and referred to her as “my hero” on Saturday…
Gonzalez, who has openly rebuked Trump and called for stricter gun laws in the country since the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting on Feb. 14 that killed 17 people, did not return West’s compliment. Copying the format of West’s tweet, she paid tribute to James Shaw Jr., who attacked a gunman who fatally opened fire at a Tennessee Waffle House restaurant on April 22 and likely saved lives by wrestling the assault-style rifle out of the assailant’s hands…
James Shaw Jr., the hero of the April 22 Waffle House shooting, has raised over $183,000 for victims of the deadly attack. https://t.co/c2piu4bzvD pic.twitter.com/7YRPP1Rcjc
— ABC News (@ABC) April 28, 2018
James Shaw Jr., the hero of the April 22 Waffle House shooting, has launched a campaign on a crowdfunding site to raise money for the victims of the deadly attack in a Nashville suburb.
Shaw initially wanted to raised $15,000. The site had collected over $188,000 as of early Sunday morning.
“Please take the time to donate as all of the proceeds will be given to the families. Thank you again for your generosity and blessings!” according to a message from Shaw on the site, which ABC News has confirmed is authentic…
Authorities said Shaw’s bravery saved numerous lives, but he has refused to call himself a hero, saying only that he stood up to the gunman to save his own life.
“I never thought I would be in a room with all the eyes on me but, you know, I am very grateful to be here,” a humble Shaw told the Tennessee State legislature during a ceremony honoring him. “All I can say is … this was a true test of a man. I do, once again, apologize to the people that lost loved ones, friends or family.” …
From the NYTimes, “I Just Wanted to Live”
The young woman, bandaged and shrouded in bedsheets, began to cry when James Shaw Jr. walked into Room No. 26 on Monday morning. Then, as the woman’s father drew near, one of Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s trauma surgeons turned to him: “Have you met James? James saved a lot of lives.”
The men embraced, crying, the woman’s father clapping Mr. Shaw on the back…
Law enforcement officials and customers said they had Mr. Shaw, a 29-year-old electrician, to thank for preventing greater bloodshed. But in the frenzied, dizzying hours since the attack, he has found the sudden and very public surge of respect and gratitude uncomfortable.
“I’d rather you regard me as James, you know, just a regular person,” he said in an interview on Monday afternoon. “Because I feel like everybody can do pretty much what I did.”Only a few hours earlier he had slipped into Vanderbilt’s trauma unit, visiting two women who survived the shooting. He spoke to them softly and stayed perhaps two or three minutes in each room, deflecting any talk of his bravery…
Through their quiet tears, it seemed, the patients could only whisper back. As the father of a 4-year-old girl, Mr. Shaw said the morning’s most striking exchange was his tearful embrace with the young woman’s father.
“We had a father moment when we saw each other,” Mr. Shaw said afterward in the lobby, where one woman approached him for a selfie. “If you can imagine, actually, your child being there and meeting the person who saved their child, it was very touching.”
On Monday, Mr. Shaw, who suffered a graze wound from a gunshot and a second-degree burn on his right hand when he grabbed the barrel of the rifle, was taking incremental steps toward his own recovery. His hand was throbbing with a large blister, and he had to see a doctor…
“I acted in a blink of a second,” Mr. Shaw said. “When he reloaded his clip, that felt like 30 minutes. I looked at him, and he wasn’t looking at me. He just had the barrel down. It was like, ‘Do it now. Go now.’ I just took off.”
He scuffled with the man, whom the police later identified as Travis Reinking, a 29-year-old construction worker with a history of brushes with authorities. Mr. Shaw managed to seize the rifle and hurled it over a countertop. Mr. Reinking, he recalled, began cursing him.
“He was mad at me,” he said. “I was just trying to live. I wasn’t trying to get no money from him, I wasn’t trying to do anything from his standpoint. I just wanted to live, and he was, like, astonished, that I wanted to live.”
Mr. Shaw said it did not occur to him to chase Mr. Reinking, who would be arrested more than 24 hours later in a wooded area near his apartment complex. Only when Mr. Shaw tried to leave the restaurant did he realize that he was among the wounded. His truck was bloodied, his right arm dripping and painful.
Since then, he has insisted he did not act for the common good. The shooting played out too quickly to contemplate acts of heroism, he said. “I know I saved other people. I have a 4-year-old daughter: I didn’t even think about her. In the midst of it, I was just trying to save myself.”…
If the president won't honor James Shaw Jr., we will. And if you want to thank him for his heroism and heart, donate to this gofundme page here: https://t.co/QvdwwlMqjp pic.twitter.com/fXY7pzy2BL
— Full Frontal (@FullFrontalSamB) April 26, 2018
Omnes Omnibus
Anyone who tries to use that against him can fuck themselves right fucking now.
efgoldman
Weasel Face is afraid of black cooties if he shakes Shaw’s hand.
Of course he absolutely would have rushed the guy.
After he hid under a table shitting his drawers.
Quinerly
Nice post. Thanks.
Villago Delenda Est
This man is a genuine effing hero.
So, naturally, Cheetolini tweets about Kanye West.
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s time to keep all the receipts. You know, you KNOW folks are gonna come after him for this or something else in his past. We gotta quash that bullpuckey early.
Mnemosyne
You never know how you’re going to react in an emergency until it happens. People with years of training can freeze up while people like Mr. Shaw act instinctively.
Training can make it less likely that you’ll freeze up, which is why everyone should get basic CPR and first aid training, but you never truly know until you get thrown into the situation.
dmsilev
Obviously, Mr. Shaw went about saving those people in the wrong way. He’s a black guy without a gun, not an NRA-approved White Guy With A Gun.
(nb: To the NRA, ‘White’==’Good’)
Neldob
He is the definition of cool. I wish him the best.
gene108
@dmsilev:
The gun lobby has been a thinly veiled front for white supremacists to stock pile formidable arsenals.
There are groups nuttier than the NRA, who think the NRA are liberal squishes.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et Al.)
I’m not going to wait up for Donald Tяump to say anything about this guy. Why would he? He’s a Black guy. Black guys don’t save white people’s lives, we all know that. Black people shoot white people. That’s what they do. I’m sure he’ll tell us all it’s only fake news soon enough.
Adam L Silverman
@gene108: Give this a read:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/does-jesus-want-gun-toting-christians?ref=home
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
I thought it was Ted that hid and shit his drawers. Not taking any odds that Twitldumb wouldn’t shit his as well though.
James Shaw Jr.
We should remember that name. This man showed and continues to show far more class and humanity than any repub politician could beg, borrow, steal or buy. Actually more than all of them put together.
Fair Economist
He says he didn’t think about heroism but he did. We are consciously aware of only a small amount of the thinking that takes place in our heads. His brain absolutely thought about risks, saving other people, strategies for taking the guy down, and the possibility of flight and chose to do what he did.
cain
OMG, that child is absolutely adorable I can totally understand why he wanted to live especially with someone that precious depending on him.
hitchhiker
Feels nice to remember that our species includes some wonderful people. Shaw makes me proud to be a human being.
Mnemosyne
@Fair Economist:
I think you misunderstand his meaning. What he means is that he didn’t stop and think, If I do this, I will be a hero and become famous. By his own account, what he thought was, If I don’t do this, this guy is going to kill me and everyone else here.
Of course, it’s that latter thought that made him into a hero. The people who step into that situation thinking of themselves as a hero for doing it usually wind up dead.
gene108
@Adam L Silverman:
Interesting they extensively quoted Larry Pratt. I hope people aren’t trying to normalize him. SPLC’s take (though I assume you are aware of his history):
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/larry-pratt
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
Such grace. And honesty.
Reinking probably thought Shaw was an uppity negro who needed to know his place and die. Too bad (for Reinking) Shaw didn’t agree.
Adam L Silverman
@gene108: I am. I want theological interpretation from Larry Pratt like I want another hole in my head!
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Mnemosyne:
Yeah. As unintuitive as it may sound, acting on instinct may actually give people an edge in those situations rather than people who are too self-consciously thinking about how their actions may make them into a hero.
Adam L Silverman
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: Reinking probably thought someone was going to pick the rifle up and perforate his pasty, naked ass!
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
So I completed my absentee ballot for the primary election next week and plan on mailing it tommorow. I decided to vote for Issue one (redistricting reform). That article from Daily Kos a commenter linked to from here convinced me that it was better than the status quo. I’m cautiously optimistic about it. Also voted for Cordray. I think him and Issue One will win pretty easily.
Also, quick question about postage: the paperwork says that one ballot needs $0.50 for postage. I’m thinking that means that the envelope needs at least 0.50 cents of postage stamps right?
Mnemosyne
I have an interesting book on my shelf that seems apropos here: The Mystery of Courage. The author started writing it thinking there would be some kind of definitive answer why some people are able to perform acts of courage and others are not, but there really isn’t. You can train people to react in a certain way to a specific situation, but you can’t train them to be courageous.
jl
@gene108: Wants to write a new book of Judges for the US.
” In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes. ”
Judges kind of dissolves into a ancient Mideastern of Mad Max Thunderdome Killerrama (whatever the title was, I dunno). Bunch of tribal gangs running around through a barren ruined landscape, revenging revenges, and killing each other off. Xtianity: a heresy.
Someone once said ‘judge a tree by its fruit’, but Xtianists don’t think they have listen to those sissy lectures.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
Because thats what he thinks he’d have done had the situation been reversed. But I have to ask, for assholes like this one, how many mass shootings have been done by people of color? How many by women? How many by fucked up white dudes? I’m going with – vast majority on the last group.
Adam L Silverman
@jl:
I believe the title was Mad Max: Anarchy in Ashdod!
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
I’m not usually big on saying that a white dude who starts shooting strangers in a public place is crazy, but when he does it in the nude, I start to lean towards that explanation.
jl
@Adam L Silverman: I was thinking of Badasses from Bethel.
jl
@Adam L Silverman: I think Shaw said the shooter kind of shuffled off at a leisurely pace in a daze, which doesn’t quite fit fear of getting shot. I dunno if legally insane, but I think most of these shooters are seriously disturbed.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
It’s adrenaline. Knowing how to use it to your advantage. You still have to know what to do and how to do it but for many people adrenaline doesn’t clarify the mind, doesn’t slow it down to a useable degree, doesn’t focus it. Some people can use adrenaline naturally but most have to learn, both the task and the control. Adam does that with martial arts. I did it with motorcycle road racing. Others do it with surfing or hang gliding or sky diving, or…….
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
If you walk into some place with the intent to shoot people you don’t know, have never met or interacted with and who aren’t in a group that is actually trying to kill you, you are crazy. Straight jacket and padded room crazy? Maybe, maybe not. But crazy? Yes, yes you are. The very thought and act confirms that. Taking off your pants first just removes any doubt whatsoever.
Amir Khalid
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Assuming your instincts will steer you right in a given situation, which is not a sure thing.
jl
@Ruckus: martial arts hasn’t helped me channel any adrenaline. I guess I am untrainable. My nickname in class is ‘the face with a love for the glove’. I still tend to freeze or go in exactly the wrong direction.
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
The book is definitely worth reading (or listening to, for the folks who are into audiobooks). Some of the most highly-trained people in the world can freeze up in the moment, adrenaline or not.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
Yes.
Survival instinct can make you do things that many might not otherwise do, like Mr. Shaw, but it might also make you dive for cover.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Ruckus:
Story time?
slag
@Villago Delenda Est: One thing Kanye West and Donald Trump have in common is that Obama saw them both as jackasses. That’s their bond. Having been insulted by a man who outclasses both of them in every way. Sad!
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Ruckus:
Otherwise known as “fight or flight”.
True. I don’t know what I would have done in Shaw’s place. I wasn’t even a hero in my own dreams: I had a dream once where I was being hunted down by soldiers. It was a bizarre experience that didn’t make much sense but I vividly remember I was caught and surrounded towards the end. I didn’t suddenly become an action hero and “save the day”; I cowered and begged for my life from what I can remember.
So, courage is something that is very special and can’t be trained into people.
Bess
Has that fetid asshole in our White House actually said nothing about what this man did?
Ruckus
@jl:
I had a good kid working for me once who amateur boxed. He was bad at it because he had no sense of timing and what to expect from others. I was twice his age and could out box him every day of the week and twice on Sundays. And I’m no boxer. At all.
@Mnemosyne: Is correct, and is why I said that you have to have training and knowledge to use that adrenaline hit, not just what to do.
Mnems, this is one of the things that military training has a difficult time with. They can teach all the moves, they can shoot over your head but when someone is shooting at you, trying to kill you, you not only have to know the moves, you have to be able to use the right ones, to have the timing to get it right and often a shit ton of luck. James Shaw had a shit ton of luck and he executed the moves well enough to make it work. You are 100% correct that not everyone can do this and you should know that the people that can sometimes do it, are not always able to. I know someone who was a competitor at the very, very top of his sport, who competed with a new guy and he was amazed at what the new guy could do. He didn’t understand how this person did what he did. And he was maybe 4 or 5 from the best in the world. He couldn’t comprehend what the new guy was capable of. All of us are different, some in huge ways, some in little ways. We all have adrenaline, some can use it well, some have no clue and some hate the rush.
Ruckus
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
No.
jl
@Bess: Maybe Trump is too busy praising Kanye West for praising Trump.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Ruckus:
How come, if I may ask? Your business is your business and I respect that. I was only curious because it sounded interesting.
Ruckus
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
Survival is not the same thing. Survival is just that. Fight or flight is not always the answer, but some think that is the only way to survive. The gun nuts think that fighting/killing is the only way. And yet most of them have to do insanely stupid shit, like the guy at the Waffle House to fulfill their concept of fight or flight. They aren’t tethered to the earth very well, they’ve bought into the bullshit that certain groups are trying to kill them, when it’s obviously not true. Who attacked this moron? Anyone? No. Yet his concept of survival is that he has to kill. That’s not survival, he was surviving OK. That’s why survival is not the same as fight or flight. And flight is far more often a better survival option. But if someone is shooting at you with an AR-15 especially in a closed area flight is not possible. I’ve said before that I know someone who was at Las Vegas and the person standing next to him got shot in the torso. I don’t know if that person died or not but there was no place to run to, no place to hide, survival was just a shit ton of luck. No adrenaline assist, no fight or flight, no diving for cover, nothing. A SHIT TON OF LUCK. A lot of the time/most of the time that’s all you’ve got.
Ruckus
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
I’d like to remain as anonymous as possible for reasons I’m not going into here. Nothing nefarious or illegal, it’s just my life and I’d like it to remain as private as reasonably possible. Most of us don’t use our real names for the same reasons.
Life is just easier that way.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Ruckus:
I totally understand. I probably share more about myself than I should but that’s me.
Ruckus
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:
I have, over the more than a decade on this blog, shared a fair amount. But I do it in bits and pieces and few will remember many of those bits and pieces. Same for you. We mostly live in our own little worlds, this humongous back yard fence we all share gives us a bit of exposure to other like minded individuals. But we are all still different, for example I’ve found out a number of people are of a different gender than I thought from comments and handles and that there are a lot of old geezers on here. That shows my preconceptions more than anything else but there you are. And it makes people even more interesting than anything else.
Brachiator
I’ve got nothing but praise for Mr Shaw. I wish him well.
It’s kinda sad that some people are discomfited by his refusal to try to capitalize on his current fame. There’s a reality TV show and a slot on Dancing With the Stars waiting for him.
It’s funny. Even if he was only trying to save himself, the fact that he was able to recognize a moment when he could reasonably act and did so is amazing, wonderful, lucky.
Blessings to Mr Shaw.
Mary G
Mr. Shaw had been out at the club and wanted waffles before calling it a night, got to the restaurant about 3:30 a.m., wrestled the gun away, dealt with the cops and was taken to the hospital to have his injuries treated. Then he went home, got cleaned up and went to church with his family!
When he got out the press and public descended on him and he looked like a deer in the headlights and insisted he wasn’t a hero. I thought he was so gracious when all he wanted to do was hug his daughter and get some sleep. I want to return this country to them from Twitler and his gang.
David Evans
@Omnes Omnibus: Surely no-one would do that. Hasn’t Ayn Rand explained to us that selfishness is the highest morality?
opiejeanne
@Ruckus: Ha! I expected you to be black because of a comic strip character named Uncle Ruckus. Totally silly association. I’ve missed on the gender of commenters too.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: I’ve missed the gender of some commenters, in once case until I met him.
Amir Khalid
@Ruckus:
James Shaw is a good man who is very fortunate to be alive. I for one never want to see him tested like this again.
Amir Khalid
@Bess:
What can the foetid arsehole think of to say? He understands nothing of James Shaw’s courage and decency.
seaboogie
I appreciate James Shaw’s comments about how he was only acting to survive, and so not identifying as a hero. That rings true.
As a recent victim of a violent armed robbery, the experience is so surreal, and one acts mostly to survive the situation, which is normal.
What does make Shaw a hero is his generous and selfless acts after the shooting, raising funds for the victims’ families.
We shouldn’t need people to be heroes in the face of gun violence. We should get rid of – at least the worst of the guns.
That a Parkland student used his body as a shield for his friends should never be a thing. That elementary students should have active shooter drills should not be a thing. This is a sickness in this country that must stop.
Wh
JGabriel
ABC News via Anne Laurie @ Top:
When they make the inevitable movie about Shaw, I nominate J. August Richards (Charles Gunn in Angel, Mike Peterson in Agents of SHIELD) to play him.
Patricia Kayden
@gene108: It’s not thinly veiled. Watch Dana Loesch’s shrieking videos where she targets BLM activists and you know what’s up. What’s especially telling is the NRA’s silence when Black men who legally own and carry guns are murdered by the police.
BretH
When the Air Florida plane went down in the Potomac River so long ago my partner and I ran all the way across the 14th St. Bridge in fairly deep snow past maybe a hundred people and got to the VA side in time to help people from the helicopter to ambulances and (in my case with Nikki Felch) to a Metrobus for first aid.
It was only later that I realized just how far we had run – in boots and snow… It was almost crazy. I think about Lenny Skutnik, who dove into the icy River and was recognized as a hero. I don’t think it’s conscious thought… Just something inside that compels action.
evodevo
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: One Forever stamp is good for up to 1oz on a letter. If you are unsure, just slap two stamps on it and it’s good to go. (I am a rural carrier and deal with this stuff every day lol)
Elizabelle
I love hearing more about James Shaw Jr. Wonderful guy.
Moar helpers. Less insanity-monitoring.
Skepticat
How sad that one truly good, selfless, ordinary man seems extraordinary to us these days. I so wish I could shake this man’s hand–once it heals.
Ruckus
@opiejeanne:
I didn’t even know about Uncle Ruckus until I had been using the moniker a while. Someone mentioned him and I checked it out. At first I thought, I’ve got to change this, that’s not me at all. And then I realized, no, that’s exactly the reason you chose the nom de plume in the first place. So there it sits for all these years. Besides if it makes someone think I’m black, that’s a bonus! Three of my personal heroes are black. I’ve just added a fourth, James Shaw Jr.
Ruckus
@seaboogie:
Here, here.
Well stated. And sorry that you had to go through that experience.
The Moar You Know
@Amir Khalid: I’ve been getting the vibe he is incredibly well aware of that.
If he was, that would imply a level of sheer cruelty to this universe of ours that I feel, sadly, is probably the norm. The odds are with him, though. Hope he lives as long as he wants to and has a good life. You can’t say this about most people, but he deserves it.
w3ski
I have heard of “Flight or Fight”, this man chose to Fight. We are all proud of him now. We all wonder if “we” could have done what he did?
It was never “a good man with a gun”, it has always been “A Good Person” that saved the day.
We need to raise up our own Sons and Daughters to refuse to live in fear, and then we will see a World Wide Change.
w3ski