One of my friends from high school was kidnapped, raped and murdered. The guy who did it is awaiting his date with the needle.
I’ve been shot with a BB gun a number of times. I had a rifle go off and hit the ground a few inches from my foot. My dad was shot twice as a medic in Vietnam.
Unlike Hollywood, where shots to the shoulder are “flesh wounds” treated with an arm sling, and a sucking chest wound is healed in time for the next reel, firearm injuries in the real world tend to be far more traumatic and take much longer to heal than you would imagine, and usually with lasting consequences. Keep that in mind next time someone tells you, “But it’s not loaded.”
I’ve known a number of people who have been shot (and stabbed) but if we drop ex-military and police out of the picture the figure declines dramatically. I worked with a cook who had been shot in the gut with a .25 ACP by the husband of the woman he’d been having an affair with. According to him, he spent months int the hospital suffering from septicemia and trauma. When I was doing roofing in college one of our workers got shot by another (off-site) over some kind of crack or meth deal gone bad. I never saw either of them again. I had controls lab with a guy in college who had been shot in the chest by his brother with a .22 LR rifle while they were “fooling around”. The bullet apparently got stuck just under the sternum and remained in place without causing a problem.
I’ve been shot at, and the less said about that, the better. I wasn’t doing anything illegal, but it was the result of having stupidly gotten involved in something I should have kept my nose out of.
Stranger
A kid I was friends with in high school shot and killed himself our junior/11th grade year. Not sure if it was straight suicide or an accident; I’ve heard both stories. White, rural western WI.
Aside from a couple of cops, I recall one civilian who was shot. It was during a robbery; she was exiting a bar with the owner, carrying the bag of money, and they got robbed and she was shot in the thigh. I don’t think it broke the bone but it wasn’t a superficial flesh wound either.
She was white, middle class (as am I). This was in New London, CT, about 20 years ago.
FWIW, I know several people who were killed or murdered by strangulation or stabbing–one with a large spear–and another who didn’t die but was slashed extensively in an attempted murder by someone using a carpet knife. All victims and perpetrators were white and middle class, in a fairly nice area of Connecticut.
Tell me about it. I sliced my finger open once with a razor blade while sheet rocking, and the shock of blood flowing from a half-inch cut stunned me. I guess that’s why they don’t make movies about me.
Anyway, just dropped back to mention someone else I knew who was shot while deer hunting. He was the chief of police on campus, and I worked security, so he was my boss’s boss’s boss. As a life-time compus cop, he never ever drew his weapon, then gets shot in the ass. Of course, he was a pain in the ass, so sometimes there is cosmic justice. He’s white. His “friend” that shot him is white, but the deer are brown. No word if they were involved in the shooting or if their poor upbringing was a factor.
My cousin, his wife and I are all white and I didn’t think to ask what color the criminals were.
Not trying to sound all macho or anything, 'cause Og knows I’m not, but you eventually get used to it. It helps if you’re clumsy but refuse to admit it and have had a lifelong fascination with really sharp knives. Sometimes you get funny looks in the ER but, unlike gunshots, they don’t automatically call the cops when someone comes in with a knife wound (even if you’re drunk).
Yeah, I know a few people who have been knifed. I apologized to most of them.
I posted this before, so I will just link to it here
SSG Schwartz
Timely question.
A guy I went to school with, but wasn’t real close to (he was later roomates with one of my good friends) was shot and killed Sunday afternoon by the boyfriend of his ex-wife.
He had done a few things in the past that caused me to have a very low opinion of him, and I haven’t seen him in years, but it still came as a surprise that he was killed.
Me- white, small town male.
Him- white, raised in a small town male, killed in a suburban larger town.
Shooter- white, living in larger suburban town male.
Details of the shooting are still sketchy, but the shooter hasn’t been formally charged and it appears he was assaulted in his own home. I don’t know if I’d call it self defense, AFAIK the guy who was shot was not armed.
Oh, I almost forgot another couple.
White, small town male (a good friend of mine) shoots another white, small town male with a shotgun. Shootee was drunk and was trying to pick a fight with me and my buddy, then ran for his door (next-door neighbor to buddy) and said he was going to get a gun and kill said buddy.
Buddy had a shotgun he could get to easily and put a pre-emptive 2 rounds of birdshot into the guy before he could get his gun. Buddy got 15 years of probation and a fine, other guy (who was know to the ER nurses since he was a wife beater) got a couple dozen shot pellets dug from his body by gleeful ER nurses.
Same night, on the same street.
Older brother (white, small town male) of a guy I went to school with caught a known, convicted rapist (white, small town male) that I had gone to school with crawling in his bedroom window. Shot him dead, no charges filed.
Oh, and Dog the Bounty Hunter was involved with (he didn’t pull the trigger, just an accessory to murder) a black drug dealer in my hometown back when I was in junior high.
A former co-worker was shot by her son in law. He shot and killed his two children (while they were in bed, asleep), shot his wife and mother in law, and then shot and killed himself. IIRC, the daughter had been going to ask/had asked for a divorce, which was why her mother was there - she was afraid he was going to get violent. She and her daughter were Hispanic, the son in law Middle Eastern, I believe. They were upper middle class and lived in a gated community. It was a huge news story when it happened.
I knew a couple of girls that had been shot when I was a teenager living in a group home. They were white, Hispanic, and black; poor, urban, gang related.
ETA: I forgot the neighbors. White, rural - the husband shot and killed his soon to be ex-wife and her boyfriend, then killed himself.
I worked with a guy who accidentally shot his calf off. He had stood his gun on its butt while it was loaded and it fell over and discharged. His lower leg looks like a broomstick wrapped in bacon.
When I was in college, my roommate’s brother was shot in the chest by his wife when he came home drunk. She had locked him out, so he came in through the window. She said, “I didn’t shoot Jimmy, I shot the devil in him.” He lived, and refused to press charges. Eventually they ended up together again. Trust me, they deserved each other.
A friend’s dad (65 year old white guy) shot off his own toe when the deer rifle he had resting on his boot went off.
Another white guy I know was shot point blank in the face during small game season. He was working his way through thick brush, and as he emerged…BOOM. He remained conscious and could hear (but not see) a kid and his dad fighting over what to do. The kid wanted to get help. His dad said no way, the kid would go to jail. The guy lost consciousness, then recovered later in the day. He was (and remains) blind. He staggered through the woods with his hands in front of him, moving toward the sound of farm machinery. The shooter was never caught.
I have dealt with many of my customers that have been shot at some point. I won’t count them. I know one cop who was shot. He is a big city cop and was working undercover. He got shot by someone who thought he was someone else. Not because he was a cop but he was working at the time (for purposes of the OP black, male, urban).
I saw this earlier in the thread that a cop said he never had to pull his gun in thirty years. I’ve heard that many times. It’s just not true unless the guy worked behind a desk for thirty years. Never pulling out your gun with the immediate expectation to use it I can see. Sometimes it is necessary to pull out your gun. Clearing a building where a suspect may still be hiding. A felony motor vehicle stop where you have to cover another officer because of the danger and uncertainty of the situation. Many other situations I can think of. I have had my gun out many times. I have never come close to pulling the trigger or needing to. Many times it is out and down by my side. Almost all the time my finger is well away from the trigger. But sometimes it is necessary. It may be weeks or even months in between occurances but it does happen. It’s part of the job.
My dad was shot a few times by a woman he was having an affair with. Luckily he was only hit in the extremities. The same woman ended up killing her husband and then herself.
Not likely since I’m the world’s biggest wimp. I require anesthesia just to have my teeth cleaned.
My cousin was shot and killed by his best friend. Details are sketchy, but reportedly, they were both heavily into drugs. White, rural, Southern, middle-class.
My dad had a shocking near-miss while fiddling around with one of his handguns in a motel room. He thought it was unloaded. He pointed the gun at my sister and pulled the trigger. The bullet came within inches of hitting my sister in the head. Naturally, he and his shooting buddies thought it was hilarious. (Turns out a lot of gun nuts who claim to be safety-conscious do not really take it all that seriously.) I include this because it was only dumb luck that saved my sister from actually being shot. White, upper-middle class, from the Midwest.
Unfrikkinbelivable. As bothersome as all these stories are, a parent demonstrating to his child an unwillingness to render aid when they’re responsible for an accident just leaves me aghast. There’s several real wtf’s here.
My friend was from a small suburb and her dad really said that he never pulled it. He was a cop from ’45 to ’75. He did admit to having to rest his hand on the gun with some unruly traffic stops or when walking up to a rowdy group outside a bar, but he never had to get it out of the holster. Towards the end of his career he was behind a desk. He joked that he was like Barney Fife except he was allowed to keep the bullets in the gun and not in his pocket.
I am aghast at vetbridge’s story, but see Lieu has already posted the requisite dropped-jaw reaction. But this – this story posted by QN – is horrifying as well – a dad nearly kills his own daughter and “naturally” finds it hilarious??? WTF x100
My story – a co-worker and friend, now a naturalized American citizen, was born and raised in Beruit, Lebanon. She has several slugs in her arm and back, received when she was attempting to sprint to her high-school classes during a cease-fire. :rolleyes: She said it didn’t take her long to realize her home country had nothing to offer her, and she worked her ass off to get into a US college, and make her home here.
EDIT – Do you all realize that there just was a school shooting in Cleveland?