Last Thursday, a deadly mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon that left nine dead and five wounded. During the chaos, one military veteran with a concealed firearm made the conscious decision to stay out of the gunman’s path.

John Parker Jr., an Air Force veteran and UCC student, always carries a concealed gun just in case he needs to use it to help others. Though the college campus is technically a gun free zone, Oregon state law allows students to carry concealed weapons on the premises.

Parker was glad to have his firearm handy during the shooting, but he was also glad that he didn’t try to play the hero. With mayhem and fear running rampant throughout the campus, Parker was concerned that law enforcement would mistake him for the shooter instead of a good guy with a gun.

“Luckily we made the choice not to get involved,” he explained. “We were quite a distance away from the building where this was happening. And we could have opened ourselves up to be potential targets ourselves, and not knowing where SWAT was, their response time, they wouldn’t know who we were. And if we had our guns ready to shoot, they could think that we were bad guys.”

Rather than seek out the gunman, Parker focused on protecting his class just in case the gunman tried to attack them.