My friend worked for a telecom company and told me about a conversation that came up in the office. One of her co-workers said that her son had been shot over the weekend by a stray bullet from a drive-by. This got the other 10 people to all bring up their stories about friends, relatives or themselves being shot. They asked my friend if she knew anyone who had been shot. My friend said, “No. My father was a cop for 30 years and not only was he never shot but he never even had to pull his gun. And most of his friends were cops and none of them were ever shot.”
Please don’t take this as racist as I am just clarifying the situation: my friend is a suburban white woman and her co-workers were all urban black females so I don’t know if this had any bearing on the encounters with gun violence.
Do you know anyone who had been shot? I would like to exclude military situations. Can you please tell me your race, location (urban/suburban/rural), and circumstances of the shooting (accidental/suicide/murder/etc). I would like to see whether my friend and I have just led really sheltered lives with the prevalence of shootings being higher than we ever thought or if maybe my friend just happened to meet an anomalous cluster.
I am a suburban white male and know no one who has ever been shot.
My dad’s been shot. (White, grew up in rural environment). His brother was handing him a rifle and it went off and grazed his forehead pretty good. He went and got it stitched up, and later that day was shoeing a horse and it kicked him right where he got shot.
He was also in Vietnam, but never got shot there. He thought he got shot, but the bullet hit the can of tomatoes he was carrying in his pants.
I have a friend who got shot in the shoulder when he was a teenager. He’s kind of mum about the details. He’s a white male but grew up in a very poor Hispanic part of West Palm Beach.
OK, maybe I should exclude military situations and hospitals (unless you know someone who was shot while in the hospital). I am related to lots of doctors and nurses so they all have seen GSWs especially the Saturday night “Knife and Gun Club” participants. I am looking for your personal relation to the victim, not a patient.
I knew someone who was shot in a drug deal gone bad. Fortunately it was the impetus he needed to get out of that life. He’s black, I’m white and we used to work at the same place. At the time we were both living in a densely populated urban/suburban area.
I also knew another black male who was shot in the suburban neighborhood where I grew up - we were neighbors. He had a job as the playground supervisor over the summer and he saw a kid show a gun off to another kid at the playground. IIRC, he tried to take the gun away and got shot in the leg in the process.
My husband’s cousin also shot and killed a friend by accident (both white, rural area). I didn’t know the friend, but they were messing with the cousin’s dad’s guns with tragic result. It tore that family apart.
A county cop I know was shot in the face by a disturbed man who had a car trunk full of guns and explosives. The officer’s partner returned fire and killed the man; probably prevented a mass murder. (The wounded cop recovered; still on the force, training rookies.)
A friend of mine had been had been a helicopter pilot in Viet Nam. I noticed that part of his thumb was missing; he said, “Never let anybody tell you you can’t catch a bullet.”
My next-door neighbour in Texas shot his brother in the forehead with a BB gun. The BB embedded itself in the soft tissue, but no bone damage I think.
A friend’s girlfriend’s father, who I met (he survived), was shot in the neck in a sectarian attack during The Troubles in Northern Ireland in the 1980s.
Apart from that, no.
ETA: white, suburban/urban, male, UK, US & Ireland.
My cousin moved to Dallas from Utah quite a few years ago. He and his wife were going somewhere when his tail lights went out so he pulled into a parking lot behind a 7-11 and found the fuse was blown. He was changing the fuse when a couple pulled up in car.
The woman had a gun and told my cousin’s wife to hand over her purse, which she did. My cousin, a big man with more brawn than brain, retrieved the purse. The woman gave the man the gun and told him to shoot my cousin, which he did. The bullet entered his chest, puncturing his left lung, tearing the sac around his heart but missing it, before hitting is shoulder blade and being deflected downward, ripping through his diaphragm and then somehow missing the rest of his vital organs.
The hole in chest presented the immediate problem, as it can lead to a collapsed lung. The cousin had his wife drive them around to the front of the store, where fortunately there was as off-duty officer who applied first aid. My cousin was hospitalized for a while and it took months and months to recover.
My cousin had copied the license plate down, and the police were able to find the suspects. They were picked up separately and both confessed to being there, but claimed that the other had done the shooting. They had thought that my cousin was killed. They had robbed someone else before and after my cousin, so they had continued robbing after they thought they had killed someone.
My grandmother told us the news, and added, “but they didn’t get the purse.” Wonderful. A few millimeters away and he would have died for $20.
A good friend of mine was shot. She and her boss were taken from a store in St. Louis where she was working as a clerk to a suburban high school track, where they were both killed. It was reported that she was shot once in the back of the head while kneeling.
I’m white. So was she. So was her boss. And both of the killers.
My dad (white) got mugged and was shot in the process. This was about seven years ago in the French Quarter in New Orleans, just outside the apartment where my dad lived.
Two guys approached him, shot first (got him in the arm, the exit wound left a pretty nasty scar just below his elbow) then demanded his wallet. Eventually the cops caught them - a couple of 16 year old gang members with an extensive record. Dad was pretty bewildered that they shot him before grabbing his wallet - he told me he would have just handed it over, with no need for him to get shot.
During college, one friend was shot by another in the stomach by a .38 while he was sitting in a recliner watching a movie. Thought the gun was unloaded, which still violates every rule most gun owners have ever been taught. White, suburban, accident.
Knew two men who voluntarily ate bullets. White, urban, suicides.
Knew two men shot in hunting accidents, one fatally. White, rural, accidents.
H.S. friend shot dead in possible drug deal gone sour. White, suburban, murder.
I know a few people who have been shot. One was a (white) South African who got shot by his brother with a .22. I don’t know exactly where he was living, but it was a farm in SA somewhere.
A cousin shot himself in the leg practicing his quick-draw. He was a cop in rural Colorado.
I’ve been shot at, does that count?
Seems there was a couple other guys that were shot in drinking accidents. But I can’t think of anyone that was shot intentionally.
Suburbs, Colorado.
He was a wife-beater and gave his two young sons sips of alcohol from his beer can. He was an abuser and would not have been a good parent so I can’t summon up that much grief for him. But the circumstances are truly grievous.
He and his wife and sons moved to Mississippi. He was working in a gas station when someone tried to rob the store. The store had been robbed several times before and he decided he wasn’t going to put up with it anymore so the robber shot him to death.
The awful part? His wife and two young sons were in the station with him. His sons witnessed the whole thing. As far as I know they have never received counseling.
I particularly feel for these kids because they ain’t just my cousins, they’re my half-brothers…their mom is my mom, too, well before this marriage.
My uncle (inlaw) has been shot in the back in a hunting accident. I have a cousin that shot himself in the head in a failed suicide attempt. I have a now ex coworker who shot himself in the head in a successful suicide.
I’m a white male. All three are (were) white males in suburban WI.
I know a cop who was shot working a drug bust. His vest caught two rounds, one went through his leg… Also know a hunter who was accidentally shot in a hunting accident. I suppose that goes with the territory, once in a while.
The first is an NYC cop, now retired, consults at work. The second a white male from New Brunswick.
