# Have you ever been shot? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 14, 2011, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-been-shot/567636 "2011-01-14T19:48:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-been-shot/567636/1 "2011-01-14T19:48:22Z")
Please describe what happened, and how you felt at that time. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-been-shot/567636/2 "2011-01-14T19:52:09Z")
I have been shot _at_ several times, but have dodged the bullet, so to speak. ---
**Author:** ![MikeG](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mikeg/32/4329_2.png) [@MikeG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeG)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-been-shot/567636/3 "2011-01-14T20:26:21Z")
Wrong place wrong time. Scar on my right shoulder. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-been-shot/567636/4 "2011-01-14T20:29:47Z")
> [@MikeG](#): > > Wrong place wrong time. Scar on my right shoulder. And what was your reaction when it happened? ---
**Author:** ![Labtrash](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/labtrash/32/528_2.png) [@Labtrash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Labtrash)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-been-shot/567636/5 "2011-01-14T20:53:44Z")
No, but last night a coworker’s wife was accidentally shot in a restaurant. I’ll ask her when she recovers. ---
**Author:** ![geneb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a88e4f/32.png) [@geneb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/geneb)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-been-shot/567636/6 "2011-01-14T21:00:16Z")
I’ve been shot at and had bullets ricochet so close I could feel them pass, but never hit. ---
**Author:** ![SeldomSeen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ba0ec/32.png) [@SeldomSeen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SeldomSeen)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-been-shot/567636/7 "2011-01-14T21:00:20Z")
This just barely qualifies but hey, if it works for [Harry Whittington](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Whittington) and Dick Cheney, it’s good enough for me… Teen years…pheasant hunting with my grandfather and a couple of cousins. Grandad pulled down on a big rooster just as I stepped out of a thicket into the line of fire. He should have observed the “blue sky” rule, which says “don’t fire at a bird until you can see sky underneath it”. On the other hand, If I’d stuck to our plan I’d have been well ahead of him (I’d stopped to take a leak, he had no reason to think I’d be where I was). Fortunately, we were a good distance apart, and birdshot pellets lose their velocity pretty fast. I got pretty well “peppered”, it stung like hell and scared me fit to wet my pants, but none of the pellets penetrated. My reaction? yelp, cuss, rub sore spots and continue hunting. No harm done. I’ve never liked Dick Cheney worth a damn, but I could never judge him too harshly re. his much-publicized hunting accident…knowing first-hand that sometimes sh\*t just happens. SS ETA…yes, he got the bird ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-been-shot/567636/8 "2011-01-14T21:06:46Z")
I have also been shot at and missed. Churchill once said there was “nothing quite so exhilarating.” I see his point, but “exhilarating” is not the word I would have chosen. ---
**Author:** ![ZPG\_Zealot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e47c2d/32.png) [@ZPG\_Zealot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZPG_Zealot)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-been-shot/567636/9 "2011-01-14T21:33:34Z")
Two bullets entered and exited my butt checks as a result of skirmish between Serbian and Muslim paramilitaries during the Serb/Bosnian conflict. The pain was incredible. I thought the lower half of my body had been severed. I thought I was dying (well, I would have died without medical attention) and was crying, telling my SO I loved him and asking him to tell other family members my good-byes up until the point that I was rendered unconscious. Afterwards it took weeks to recover though according to the doctor a lot of that was psychology (i.e., my injury wasn’t that bad, but my brain was telling me it was worse). ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-been-shot/567636/10 "2011-01-14T21:42:13Z")
> [@ZPG\_Zealot](#): > > Two bullets entered and exited my butt checks as a result of skirmish between Serbian and Muslim paramilitaries during the Serb/Bosnian conflict. The pain was incredible. I thought the lower half of my body had been severed. I thought I was dying (well, I would have died without medical attention) and was crying, telling my SO I loved him and asking him to tell other family members my good-byes up until the point that I was rendered unconscious. Afterwards it took weeks to recover though according to the doctor a lot of that was psychology (i.e., my injury wasn’t that bad, but my brain was telling me it was worse). Good grief - **Zealot** , that’s horrible. Are you from Bosnia, or were you just working there? ---
**Author:** ![ZPG\_Zealot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e47c2d/32.png) [@ZPG\_Zealot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZPG_Zealot)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-been-shot/567636/11 "2011-01-14T22:11:38Z")
> [@Mr.Excellent](#): > > Good grief - **Zealot** , that’s horrible. Are you from Bosnia, or were you just working there? My SO and some other members of my family and friends are from the former Yugoslavia. I’ve traveled and lived there on and off throughout my life. At the time, my husband and I were there helping family members immigrate which involved a lot of time, paperwork and bribes. ---
**Author:** ![Unintentionally\_Blank](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unintentionally_blank/32/5418_2.png) [@Unintentionally\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unintentionally_Blank)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-been-shot/567636/12 "2011-01-14T22:11:53Z")
I voted no, then remembered I’d been shot by a BB gun as a youth, hit VERY close to the duct ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-been-shot/567636/13 "2011-01-14T22:22:22Z")
Even with (soft) body armor, it hurts like a son of a bitch. And you wouldn’t believe the rainbow of colors that develop over the next couple of weeks, not to mention that it feels like there is a big multi-prong fishhook buried about two inches below the surface every time you cough. It still hurts just thinking about it twenty years later. I can’t imagine the pain of healing from a penetrating wound. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-been-shot/567636/14 "2011-01-14T22:56:58Z")
What is the point of the poll my Czar? Not much too add from those of us who answer no. ---
**Author:** ![FordTaurusSHO94](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f07891/32.png) [@FordTaurusSHO94](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FordTaurusSHO94)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-been-shot/567636/15 "2011-01-14T23:44:42Z")
I was shot at once, but he either aimed high or missed. I could hear it hit all around me, so I guess it was a shotgun. ---
**Author:** ![Moonlitherial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4bbf92/32.png) [@Moonlitherial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moonlitherial)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-been-shot/567636/16 "2011-01-14T23:46:50Z")
> [@Unintentionally\_Blank](#): > > I voted no, then remembered I’d been shot by a BB gun as a youth, hit VERY close to the duct I haven’t replied yet because of a situation like this. Do BB guns count? ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2011, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-been-shot/567636/17 "2011-01-14T23:55:13Z")
To those people who’ve been shot, please give us context. It’s difficult to make getting shot a non-interesting story. As for me: once, in Reno. The fucker only wanted to watch me die. ---
**Author:** ![Lasciel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e79b87/32.png) [@Lasciel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lasciel)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2011, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-been-shot/567636/18 "2011-01-15T00:24:15Z")
If BB guns count, when I was about 15, I was shot at a birthday party by my sociopathic little brother. He was standing underneath the deck we were all standing about on, and shot me in the ass from about 4 feet away. It hurt like a MF, but no-one believed me that he had actually shot me (the BBs had been locked up, but he had picked and re-locked the lock) and so I had to drop trou for my mother in the outside shower to prove that he really had. It turned out that he dumped a good number of them down the barrel so essentially he shot me with a BB shotgun spray. That revealed, everyone thought it was hysterical that he would be so precocious, and I got mad and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to beat his head in with the BB gun. I never did catch him, but I think a lot of the pain was subsumed by how mad I was. I do recall that it was quite painful to sit for a few weeks, and the bruise lasted over a month. ---
**Author:** ![MikeG](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mikeg/32/4329_2.png) [@MikeG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeG)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2011, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-been-shot/567636/19 "2011-01-15T01:48:41Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > And what was your reaction when it happened? OWW, FUCK !!! Pretty much verbatim 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![PlainJain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5daacb/32.png) [@PlainJain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlainJain)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2011, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-been-shot/567636/20 "2011-01-15T02:28:01Z")
Ricochet .22, upper thigh - stung greatly. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-been-shot/567636.md?page=2)