On Thursday afternoon at half-past-three, a man walked into Otto Miller Hall at Seattle Pacific University, carrying a shotgun and a handgun. He opened fire, killing one person and injuring three more.

When the shooter stopped to reload, according to police reports, an engineering student named Jon Meis sprayed him with pepper spray, incapacitating him, before grabbing him in a chokehold. Passers-by helped Meis hold the gunman until police arrived on the scene.



"There are a number of heroes in this," assistant police chief Paul McDonagh said, according to the Associated Press. "The people around [the gunman] stepped up."

Bill Badger is one of few people alive who may be able to understand what Meis went through.



On the face of it, the two have little in common. Meis is a student in his early 20s; Badger is a retired US army colonel in his 70s.



But on 8 January 2011, Badger was invited to an event given by US representative Gabrielle Giffords in the parking lot of a Safeway in Tucson, Arizona. At 10 past 10 that morning a gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, drew a pistol and shot Giffords before opening fire on other attendees.



“I could see this guy standing there with his gun,” Badger recalled. “It was regular, steady shots, just bang, bang, bang, bang.”

After the gunman shot the group standing around Giffords, he started on the row of chairs where Badger was standing, shooting at point-blank range.

“All of a sudden he stopped and he looked at me and pointed his gun right at my head. I dropped to the ground, and felt the bullet hit the back of my head.”

Badger was injured, but not incapacitated. When the shooting stopped, he stood up and saw the gunman not two feet from him, reaching into his pocket to reload. At that moment another bystander lunged at Loughner with a folding chair.

Loughner ducked, and Badger grabbed his wrist and hit him as hard as he could in the back. Pat Maisch, another attendee, who had dropped to the ground when the shooting started, wrested the ammunition from Loughner's grasp.



Loughner hit the sidewalk. Badger, who was 74 at the time, grabbed him by the throat and held him there for eight minutes, until the police arrived on the scene.



Seattle police say shooting could have been worse. Guardian

“I would say this to Jon [Meis],” Badger told the Guardian, echoing the comments of hundreds of people who took to social media around the hashtag #JonMeis. “You’re a real hero.”



Maisch, who in 2011 helped Badger subdue the Tucson gunman, agreed. She said Meis had “made a difference in a number of people’s lives. We’ll never know how many, but we know he saved lives.”



She said that for her, every new shooting incident like Seattle vividly brings back the memories of that day in Tucson.



“I think of those people that were murdered every day,” Maisch said. “We can’t help but remember, because there’s so many tragic incidents that are allowed to happen in this country. Lately it seems like almost weekly.



“Some people say to me, ‘Aren't you glad you were able to move on,'” she said. “I tell them it’s not an incident you move on from. It’s always there. You incorporate it into your life.

“It’s either at my back, by my side or in my face, depending on things that are happening that day.”

She told the Guardian that every day she wears a pendant in the shape of a butterfly, in the memory of Loughner's youngest victim, nine-year-old Christina-Taylor Green.

Badger also said he re-lived the shooting daily, and that he has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“But re-living it is part of trying to do something that will prevent these from happening,” he said, “in Seattle and places like that.”

For Maisch and Badger, campaigning for better background checks has become a way of coping with what happened that day.

“This is part of my life’s purpose now,” said Maisch. “To help make a difference, so other people don’t have to see six dead people on a sidewalk.”

Pat Maisch, right, hugs Pam Golden, stepmother of Gabe Zimmerman, who was killed in the 2011 Tucson shootings. Photograph: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call Photograph: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

Maisch, who runs an air-conditioning business with her husband in Tucson, was thrown out of the US Senate chamber last year for shouting “shame on you” after a vote to pass an amendment mandating background checks on gun purchases failed by four votes.



“It’s a shame that our legislators don’t seem to have the guts to stand up to gun manufacturers or the NRA,” she said.

Badger said: “We need to keep working to try to prevent these from happening again.

“Just when we think we’re making progress, there’s another.”

