A country short on heroes could be paying more attention to James Shaw
Go Deeper.
Create an account or log in to save stories.
Like this?
Thanks for liking this story! We have added it to a list of your favorite stories.

For a country that loves -- and smothers-- its heroes, James Shaw is getting stiffed.
He's the guy who disarmed the gunman at a Waffle House in Nashville, during which six people were shot, four of them fatally.
"I don't want people to think that I was the Terminator, or Superman or anybody like that. It was just, I figured if I was going to die, he was going to have to work for it," he said, insisting that his was a selfish act.
Hero.
Turn Up Your Support
MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all.
That was five days ago and the country has mostly moved on.
But Shaw hasn't. He started a GoFundMe page to help pay the funeral expenses of the dead. He set a $15,000 goal, which is far too low as decent funerals go, but it didn't matter because by this afternoon, he's raised $173,000.
Typically by now, we'd be pretty sick of seeing him on TV, but other than a news conference on Sunday and a ceremony honoring him at the Tennessee state house, the response seems comparatively muted. He got a tweet from the vice president, but that's been pretty much it as far as the most visible American politicians, who generally flock to heroes like flies to light.
"Please don’t let someone like James Shaw Jr. fade so quickly from our memories," former Minneapolis police chief Tim Dolan said in a letter to the Star Tribune this week.
Dear reader,
Political debates with family or friends can get heated. But what if there was a way to handle them better?
You can learn how to have civil political conversations with our new e-book!
Download our free e-book, Talking Sense: Have Hard Political Conversations, Better, and learn how to talk without the tension.