Some articles mentioning Joe Zamudio

Gretchen Carlson: "Most people when they would hear shots they would hit the deck. You did the opposite."
Zamudio: ". . . I carry a firearm and I think maybe that."

From NBC News:

Joe Zamudio was down the concourse from the suspect, and when shots rang out, he sprang to action. "I didn't know until later he also had a knife on him. I just came running up to him - I carry a firearm, so I wasn't really afraid." . . .

From the NY Daily News:

One of the heroes who helped take down the Arizona assassin said Monday he was prepared to shoot the murderous maniac himself.

"I was ready to end his life," Joe Zamudio said. "I had my hand on the butt of my gun. If they hadn't grabbed him and he was still moving, I would have shot him."

Without hesitation?

"Damn right," said Zamudio. "This is my country, this is my town."

Zamudio, 24, spoke out three days after Jared Lee Loughner shot and wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and massacred six other people outside a Tucson supermarket.

"I was at the store buying cigarettes," Zamudio said. "I was at the counter when I heard the gun shots. I put my hand on my gun and ran out."

Zamudio said another man - identified as 74-year-old Bill Badger - had already knocked Loughner to the ground.

Zamudio said Loughner had already emptied his clip, so he "jumped on top of him."

As he held Loughner down, Zamudio said, he beheld a horror show.

"It was gruesome," he said. "It was organized mayhem. So many people hurt. So much blood. So many people looking for loved ones and not finding them. It's hard to comprehend."

And for that, Zamudio said, he wants Loughner "to pay for what he did." . . .

From CBS News:

CBS News correspondent John Blackstone reports we may never know why the shooting started, but it ended because Bill Badger, Joe Zamudio and Patricia Maisch saw a chance and took it.

With the gun aimed at his head, Badger, a 74-year-old retired army colonel, made a lucky move.

Badger indicates the back of his head, saying, "I turned my head[…]and the bullet went right though, right above my ears right above here." He points across the back of his head.

The gunman turned to Patricia Maisch. "I was really expecting to be shot," she says. "And just then the gunfire stopped and two men jumped on him."

One of those men was Badger, wounded and bleeding. "I got him by the throat," he says. "The other guy has him on his knee right on the back of his neck."

The gunman was down but trying to reload his 9mm handgun. "So I grabbed the magazine before he could and held onto it," says Maisch.

Joe Zamudio was buying a pack of cigarettes nearby when the first shots were fired. "I ran out the doors and there is a man running and he says, 'Shooter. Shooter. Get down,'" says Zamudio.

John Blackstone: "You heard the shots and you went running toward the shots?"

Zamudio: "I know. That's pretty crazy, huh?" . . . .

From a little more biased piece at the WSJ:

In some ways, Joseph Zamudio's experience speaks to why many gun-rights supporters think carrying a legal weapon can save lives.

After all, when he realized there was an incident occurring at the Tucson Safeway supermarket Saturday where Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was holding a constituent event, Mr. Zamudio thought he could help, since he was legally carrying a 9 mm semiautomatic.

"If I'd gone down there sooner, maybe I could have shot him myself," Mr. Zamudio, age 24, said in a phone interview Sunday night.

Mr. Zamudio, who works at a Tucson art gallery, was at a nearby Walgreen's buying cigarettes when he heard the shots and immediately turned and ran toward the commotion. "In that moment, I didn't think about it. I just reacted." . . .

The Economist magazine has this discussion.

Got that? Ms Giffords failed to tender a satisfactory reply to "What is government if words have no meaning?", was judged a fake, and...and Mr Loughner shot her in the head.

At this point, there is simply no sound reason to believe this deranged young man was fired up by "toxic" or "eliminationist" conservative rhetoric from Michele Bachmann or whomever. Why are we even having this conversation? It's nuts. It's offensive. Is there any, you know, evidence that political rhetoric is now more vitriolic or incendiary than usual? Maybe there is, but I know of none. A feeling in Mr Krugman's gut doesn't cut it. Doesn't it seem at least as likely that a 22-year-old would be inspired to an act of high-profile atrocity by violent video games or films? As far as I know there's no evidence of that, either.

Mr Loughner's obsession with language as a form of control seems rather less like Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin than Max Stirner, Michel Foucault, or even left-leaning linguists such as George Lakoff and Geoffrey Nunberg. Our own Johnson discusses speculation about the possible influence of one David Wynn Miller. But nobody's going to try to smear Max Stirner, George Lakoff, or David Wynn Miller in the pages of the New York Times by recklessly associating their teachings with the tragedy in Tucson because, well, that would be completely bonkers and, more importantly, Max Stirner, George Lakoff, and David Wynn Miller didn't just recapture the House. . . .