‘Good guy with gun’: Training essential
Joe Zamudio intervened at 2011 Giffords shooting
He was in a drugstore when he heard the gunfire outside the neighboring grocery store. He ran to the scene, clicking the safety off his weapon, and saw a man holding a gun.
He mentally prepared himself to fire.
In those moments, Joe Zamudio became a proverbial good guy with a gun, one who arrived at the scene of a mass shooting before police officers.
It was January 2011. The shooting at the Tucson-area Safeway store would leave six people dead and 13 — including the gunman’s intended target, then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords — wounded.
Zamudio helped subdue the gunman, but he didn’t pull his weapon. If he had, he might have shot an innocent man. It’s a decision he chalks up to be-
ing able to keep a cool head, along with his knowledge of weapons.
It’s why he believes that if teachers are going to be allowed to have weapons in school — an idea supported by President Donald Trump — they should be welltrained on how to use them.
“They need to get training and they need to get educated,” he said during a phone interview on Thursday. “That’s what people need: education.”
With guns, training is critical
Trump brought up the idea of arming teachers Wednesday in discussing the Feb. 14 shooting at a Florida high school that left 17 dead. Trump said, during a discussion with survivors of school shootings and family members, that a high-school coach who died in that shooting could have ended the shooting if he were armed.
“That coach was very brave,” Trump said. “But if he had a firearm, he wouldn’t have had to run; he would have shot, and that would have been the end of it.”
Though it sounds simple, Zamudio said such quick action requires training.
“Not just two hours’ training on a range,” he said. Zamudio took a 40-hour training course after the Tucson shooting. It was offered to him free by a tactical expert, Massad Ayoob, who heard of his story.
“I spent a whole week of my life practicing guns,” said Zamudio, who has since moved to Washington state, where he works in home construction. He said it is that type of intense training that has left him feeling prepared should he be unfortunate enough to be at another such incident.
“People with guns are dangerous no matter how you cut it,” he said. “But if people know about guns and train with them and are respectful of the death machine they have in their hands, they can protect themselves and others.”
Ayoob, in a phone interview from New Hampshire, said he reached out to Zamudio with the offer of a free tactical course in recognition of how well Zamudio handled the Tucson-area incident.
“The kid did fine,” he said. “Joe was a very, very young man who had a good head on his shoulders.” Zamudio was 24 at the time of the shooting. Ayoob, who offers courses that simulate using a handgun under stress, said he would recommend that any teachers who wish to be armed undergo a twoweek intensive course.
He said he would recommend follow-up training every quarter.
Zamudio said he fears what would happen if teachers were to get in a gunbattle with a madman at a school.
“That is the scariest part of all this stuff,” he said. “Once everyone starts shooting guns, everyone’s a target. Teachers could shoot each other in the school.”
Noticing the detail
Recalling the 2011 shooting on Thursday, Zamudio said when he reached the scene, he saw a man holding a handgun up in the air.
The man shouted, according to Zamudio, “I’ll kill you.” He then shouted an expletive.
“I think: ‘Plug him,’ ” Zamudio said.
But Zamudio quickly noticed an important detail: The slide on the gun was locked back. That automatically happens when a gun has fired its last bullet. “It was empty,” Zamudio said, “You could see that.” So instead of drawing his weapon, Zamudio grabbed the man’s arm and slammed it against the wall, disarming him.
Others shouted at him that the man wasn’t the gunman. Zamudio then helped hold down the gunman, later identified as Jared Loughner.
Loughner was convicted and sentenced to life in federal prison.
Zamudio became a talking point following the shooting, with many pointing out that an armed person nearly killed an innocent man.
‘I could have shot him’
Zamudio said those stories blew the incident out of proportion.
“My gun didn’t even play a part in it, besides making me feel comfortable and safe,” Zamudio said.
He didn’t tell anybody he was armed, he said, until he informed officers at the scene.
Zamudio said it was reckless of the man at the scene to pick up Loughner’s gun. Had Zamudio not noticed the gun was empty, he might have fired.
“It was luck,” Zamudio said. “I could have shot him in the back.”
Though he didn’t use his gun that January 2011 morning, Zamudio said he thought about it as he helped hold Loughner down.
“I was laying on top of that dude, saying, ‘I should kill this mother,’ ” Zamudio said. “He doesn’t deserve to go to prison and live.
“But then I’d be going to prison.”