Have you ever looked upon the business-end of a loaded gun?
I did. It almost ended up as one of those childhood tragedies. When I was about 10 or 12, I was spending the night at my friend’s house. He wanted to show me his parents’ gun, so he climbed a chair, got it off the fridge and pointed it at me. I told my parents about it when I got home, and describing their reaction as “apoplectic” would be an understatement.
In college, some guys in my fraternity were hassling some guy outside of a bar. I just happen to be standing around. The next thing I know the guy has pulled out a .45 and is pointing it at everyone around. Everyone runs to get of range. Shortly thereafter, the cops arrive and arrest him.
Many. I was fortunately not the bank safecracker all those nice county sheriff’s deputies thought I was. I was just the guy who had to go home and change his skivvies. 
Yes and they pulled the trigger a few times. I was walking alone some railroad tracks out in the boonies to a friend’s house. I heard a shot, which wasn’t unusual at all in that part of Kentucky, and then the bullet hitting about 10 feet from me which was rather unusual. While I was running to the other side of the track for some cover, another bullet hit about 15 feet away. I was very visible so this wasn’t some accident. I couldn’t see who was shooting at me as there was a lot of woods and hills. Plus I was more interested in running away. I wrote it off as someone just messing with me and never even called the cops.
I spent 24 years in the military, but never got shot at!
Is there a way to tell if it’s loaded, other than the obvious retrospective one?
Apparently, although I didn’t know it until I was hit by a projectile behind the ear. Since I’m not dead, or even permanently damaged, we assume it was a pellet or BB gun. Stung like a bitch, though.
As a teenager, a friend of my dad stopped over with his teenage son wanting to hunt small game (pheasant and rabbit). I wasn’t really into hunting, but my dad wasn’t home so I took them out.
Walking along a brushy hillside, a pheasant flushed and flew uphill, right over my head. The kid didn’t pull the trigger but he was tracking the bird. Scared the ever-loving shit outa me. I screamed, “NOOOOOO!”
What was even worse was the beating his dad gave him.
Four times.
Twice by police officers. That wasn’t so frightening, because I wasn’t doing anything that would give them reason to shoot me, and I believed that this was clear to them.
Twice in the course of armed robberies. Those were much more frightening.
A few. The most at one time was by six police officers, 3 revolvers and 3 shotguns.
At the prospect park subway station in NYC. The drug using motherfucker pointed it at me and demanded the quick dinner I sat there eating after one train pulled into the station and dumped us out because of a malfunction. I was in my early twenties at the time. I still get the occasional flashback even today. I ran upstairs where the police spent about five minutes pretending to take me seriously. I hope the useless piece of human garbage who aimed a gun at me and wanted to kill me for my serving of cold Chinese food is dead and in hell right now.
I was 19, working in the Sears catalog department. We got robbed (the only time that happened at that store during my 11 years there, though we did suffer two big burglaries and any number of no-sale register thefts) and I had a shotgun pointed at my face. Technically I don’t KNOW that the shotgun was loaded, and I’m happier that way.
Between that and an incident that same year on Beale Street that year, I learned something about myself I would not have guessed. I am much more frightened of knives than guns. That is, my fear of guns is mostly an intellectual caution; it doesn’t trip anything primal. My fear of knives run sdeeper.
Several times. I’ve been shot at too.
Yes. More than twenty years ago and I can still remember every detail. I can’t tell you who was president then or what city I was living in but I remember that revolver.
I had an MP shove his .45 into my gut. I was also an MP at the time and we were standing around the cop shop after our shift was over, iirc. I’m still not sure why he did it.
For some reason, a guy that already had the cops after him picked me up hitch-hiking. I can’t imagine why. Shortly thereafter, we were in a high speed chase down 101. He got trapped in a farmyard, and we were all on the ground at gunpoint.
Fortunately, I’d been stuck at that onramp for a long time, and plenty of the local cops had seen me, so they let me go. They were just as bewildered as I was about why he stopped for me.
1 armed robbery in a fast food restauraunt, 2 armed robberies in bars, 1 armed robbery in a parking lot late at night with my wife, once by a drug addict in a bar accusing me of being a narc, a couple of times by police. The drug addict scared me the most, I felt he was going to shoot and I was worried if I went for the gun he might shoot an innocent bystander. He was loaded out of his mind and his reflexes were slow so I I did manage to grab the gun and no one got hurt.
I’ve never actually seen an unholstered handgun. I’ve seen long guns (shotguns? rifles? I don’t know the difference) hanging on walls as decoration, but never in use. So no, no one has ever pointed a gun at me. I can’t even wrap my mind around the concept.
Business got robbed once, i assume their guns were loaded.
Other than in a war (oops, sorry, “police action”) zone:
Once in a bodega in Guatemala when some locals at the next table got into an argument. Guy pulls a semi-auto out of his boot and starts pointing it at everybody. My friend and I jumped up to get the hell out of there and the guy swings around and points it at me. Very scary.
Kid with a BB gun.
Water pistols.
Briefly muzzle-swept by a novice friend while shooting.
Voted “yes” on this technicality.