Randy Gardner was settling into a chair, chatting with an elderly woman also waiting to meet U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords last Saturday, when the sound of gunshots collapsed his world into a blur of gray figures and ricocheting screams.

It was only much later, as he lay on the ground with a bullet wound in the right foot that his mind hurtled back: May 4, 1970. Kent State University.

"Here I am again," he thought, "dodging bullets."

As a sophomore at Kent State, Gardner had joined a group of students protesting the Vietnam War, when members of the Ohio National Guard suddenly opened fire. He sprinted toward a field and "hit the ground" to avoid the bullets. Later, he discovered four of his classmates were killed, including a girl from his English class.

More than four decades later, his political inclinations would once again throw him into a landmark national tragedy.

A dedicated Democrat, Gardner had always admired Giffords. He had received an automated phone call about the "Congress on Your Corner" event the night before.

Gardner quickly decided to reroute his Saturday-morning errands. If the Safeway wasn't crowded, he thought, he would stop by to show his support for Giffords' vote on the health-care bill.

"I wanted to tell her to stand tall in the efforts to repeal it," said Gardner, 60, who was a mental-health therapist for more than 30 years.

A week after the shooting, Gardner is recovering at home. He tugs at his cotton pants, revealing a soft cast reaching almost to his knee. Doctors told him a bullet had traveled through his right foot, amazingly avoiding any bones.

Gardner spent one night in the hospital, then returned to the quiet cul-de-sac in northwest Tucson where he lives with his partner of 25 years, Barbara Hanna.

At first, he said he could only watch television reports on mute. Gardner discovered with a pang that the grandmother he had been talking to - Phyllis Schneck, 79 - was killed in the rampage.

Slowly it is dawning on him that the scope of last Saturday's events might be as large as the Kent State shootings. If he considered himself lucky then, he considers himself lucky now.

His injuries will heal, he said. The crutches will soon be unnecessary, the cast shed. He and Hanna have no plans to change their routines or beliefs.

"We won't be scared," said Hanna, 67, a retired psychiatric nurse who is similarly politically minded. "We're not going to start carrying guns."

But what Gardner continues to be troubled by most are reports of killings he hears in the news every day: The homicides, the robberies gone awry.

He held up his thumbs and index fingers to form a 2-inch square.

"They're going to get a little piece in the paper that they got shot," he said. They would never get to meet the president, as he and Hanna had been able to on Wednesday night. Gardner can't understand why this sort of everyday violence doesn't attract the same outrage: "It's that acceptance that's always bothered me through the years."