This has been a good week for heroes. We even know the names of some of them.
For example, the cop who arrested the driver of the rented van , the man who drove down Yonge Street in the north end of Toronto, knocking over people like bowling pins. The officer was alone. He faced a man who made threatening gestures, as if he were drawing a handgun and pointing it at the officer. He yelled, “Shoot me! Kill me!”
But the police officer, Constable Ken Lam, didn’t.
I’ll repeat that, in case you missed it -- he didn’t shoot!
Const. Lam said afterwards that he was just doing his job, the way he had been taught.
I suppose something similar may happen in the Excited States, sometimes. But I’ve never seen it on TV. Have you?
But there was another hero, in the mass shooting at the Waffle House restaurant in Nashville. James Shaw Jr. wrestled the shooter’s rapid-fire assault weapon away from its owner. (I’m deliberately not naming the perpetrators in these two incidents -- they get too much publicity already.)
Shaw said, “I was just trying to get myself out. I saw the opportunity and pretty much took it.”