James Shaw Jr. is your typical hero.

That is, he doesn’t consider himself to be a hero, even though what he did was heroic in the extreme.

What was that? All he did was wrestle the gun out of the hand of a madman who had opened fire over the weekend at a Nashville, Tenn., Waffle House. The gunman killed four people before he fled from the restaurant.

Police caught the man suspected of committing the murders. He reportedly was hiding in the woods behind an apartment complex.

As for Shaw, well, he is a hero. He can tell us all he wants that “anyone would do” what he did. However, “anyone” wasn’t there at the time; Shaw was there and he likely saved the lives of many other restaurant patrons through his heroic action.

The gunman had opened fire, then stopped momentarily to reload his weapon. That’s when Shaw jumped him, realizing he had more than a moment of time to seek to disarm the shooter.

I think of the term “presence of mind” as I ponder what James Shaw did at the Waffle House. The young man has it in abundance.

James Shaw Jr. has earned his place among regular American heroes.