Virginia Tech shooting victim urges more gun control

Colin Goddard was shot four times in the 2007 Virginia Tech rampage. He is seen here at a press conference on 4/16/12 at the House Triangle in front of the Capitol Building. Colin Goddard was shot four times in the 2007 Virginia Tech rampage. He is seen here at a press conference on 4/16/12 at the House Triangle in front of the Capitol Building. Photo: photo courtesy of Colin Goddard Photo: photo courtesy of Colin Goddard Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Virginia Tech shooting victim urges more gun control 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

WASHINGTON - All-American and a strapping 6-foot-3, Colin Goddard seems an unlikely poster child for gun control.

Indeed, Goddard, 26, never thought much about the gun issue as a Virginia Tech student majoring in physics and drilling with the ROTC cadet corps - until he was shot four times in the 2007 campus rampage.

"I assumed we did everything we could to keep guns out of the hands of someone who should never have them,'' Goddard said in his office at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "I was shocked to learn that we don't."

These days Goddard lobbies lawmakers to require background checks for all gun sales, even private ones. Last year, he went to Austin to oppose a measure before the Legislature to permit carrying concealed weapons on campus.

"It has a big impact when someone like Colin can come here and say 'I was there, I was shot,' " said John Woods, a University of Texas at Austin graduate student who led the bill's opposition.

Gun-rights advocates have their own Colin Goddard. One of them, Suzanna Hupp, lost her parents in the 1991 shooting at a Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen. She served 10 years in the Texas House and championed the idea that more guns, not fewer, are the solution to mass shootings.

10 minutes of terror

In his lobbying visits, Goddard has recalled the events of that day - April 16, 2007 - hundreds of times. In each retelling, he seems transported back to those 10 minutes of French class on the second floor of Norris Hall, the building where most of shooter Seung Hui Cho's 32 victims died.

He spares no horrific detail: the rising crescendo of gun shots, scrambling for cover amid overturned desks, the smell of gun powder, gurgling sounds from a wounded classmate, a sea of shell casings on the floor, the first bullet's impact like a swift kick above his left knee.

"It was that moment when I realized this is real, I just got shot, this is really happening,'' he said.

Goddard also was shot in both hips and his armpit, with the final bullet exiting his right shoulder. Bullets remain in both hips and knee, and a titanium rod is implanted in his left thigh.

'I have to do something'

Cho, a fellow student with a history of mental health problems, saved the last bullet for himself.

But even though federal law bars gun purchases by anyone adjudicated as mentally ill, Virginia required only that the names of those committed to mental hospitals be forwarded to the FBI's background-check system. Because Cho had outpatient care, he passed the background check.

The ease with which Cho got a gun infuriated Goddard. He tried to move on, but kept coming back to the shooting. Eventually Goddard called the Brady Campaign and told them, "I have to do something about this."

In addition to lobbying for background checks for all gun purchases - legislation co-sponsored by Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee - Goddard travels the nation on speaking tours and was featured in a documentary called "Living for 32" (the number of dead at Virginia Tech).

Last year on MSNBC, he squared off against Texas Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, sponsor of the campus guns bill. He also wore a hidden camera to gun shows in cities across America, including San Antonio and Fort Worth, to illustrate how easy it is to legally purchase weapons with "no tax, no paperwork, no nothing," as one private seller in San Antonio put it.

No stranger to criticism

Goddard's outspokenness has made him the man gun control advocate that gun-rights supporters love to hate.

"This (expletive) Collin Goddard wants to destroy a whole country's Constitutional Rights by fooling people to believe that more restrictions will make us safer,'' said one online comment to Goddard.

Goddard brushes off most of the criticism. But the one that stings goes something like: If you'd had a gun that day at Virginia Tech, you would have walked out of Norris Hall without a scratch, all your classmates would be alive and you'd be a hero.

"I would love to think I could have saved the day,'' Goddard said, but even if he had a gun, "There's no way I can say, 'Yes, I would have saved people.'"

dan@hearstdc.com