Story highlights Colin Goddard: NRA likes to say the answer to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun

The shocking shooting of two journalists on a live shot shows the emptiness of NRA's response, he says

Editor's note: Colin Goddard is a Virginia Tech shooting survivor and a senior policy advocate for Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control advocacy group. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.

(CNN) Early Wednesday morning, Alison Parker and Adam Ward were on assignment in Moneta, Virginia -- Parker as a reporter and Ward as a cameraman. Working for WDBJ7, Roanoke's CBS affiliate, they were working on a story about the 50th anniversary of Smith Mountain Lake and interviewing Vicki Gardner, who leads Smith Mountain Lake's Chamber of Commerce.

Colin Goddard

In other words, they were doing their jobs.

Until, in a few terrifying moments on live TV, they weren't.

Instead they became two more victims of our nation's gun violence epidemic. A disgruntled former WDBJ employee shot them both, severely wounding Gardner in the process. It was a chilling look at gun violence in this country, a crisis that kills more than 30,000 Americans each and every year.

Wednesday's horror hit particularly close to home for me, because, like Ward, I, too, am an alum of Virginia Tech. It's conceivable that I could have crossed paths with him during our shared time on the Blacksburg campus. A little over eight years ago I survived the infamous mass shooting at Tech, which is less than 80 miles from where Ward died. Shrapnel is still lodged in my body from that day, but I was lucky to emerge with my life intact. Thirty-two others were killed.

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