This is a pretty open question.
If you’ve been shot or know someone who has, what was it like?
Where was the wound?
What type of weapon?
What was the situation?
I’m not planning on going out and shooting people or getting shot, but I’ve always wondered what it’s like.
I shot mswlf in the hand with a .32 auto. I was unloading it and the slide slipped forward. It only hurt when it was sutured. I was more worried about bleeding on Dad’s upholstry on the way to the emergency room than anything else. :rolleyes:
In High School a good friend was accidentally shot in the stomach by a .38 at close range. Shooter didn’t know it was loaded. :rolleyes: Ol’ Moon almost died and spent a full year out of school recovering but eventually did so completely.
I’ve been shot once and have shot a couple of people but they were all riccochets and I don’t think they really count. Sitting at the edge of a stock pond waiting for dove, I got hit broadside by a friend across the pond when he was shooting at a turtle. It stung like a *G%$@ and I jumped straight up in the air but the water had slowed it enough that it didn’t actually break the skin. Later, when he was bent over looking at a scorpion I fired a riccochet back at him. Water did slow it pretty good as we only had to pick one pellet out of his back with a pocketknife.
A couple of years ago a couple of idiots tried to pull a home invasion on our house in Colorado. I was able to wrestle the gun away from him and called the police. It made the paper the next day and as I was sitting out on the porch some guy walked up and wanted to know if I was the one in the paper. Turns out he was some self defense expert that trains police forces and he invited me out to the gun range to teach me some skills in case it ever happened again. We were using his .44 on some quick react drills where I’d shoot an iron plate several yards away. After my first shot he screams and grabs his arm. Part of the bullet had riccoche’d and hit him. He backed up and told me to shoot it again. The guy screams again and now he’s bleedin’ from the underarm. Turns out yet another idiot in town had been shooting the iron plates designed for pistols with a high powered rifle. My shots had unbelivable found the depression and bounced a fragment back. Sure hated to have to go tell my wife right after the trauma of the home invasion that I’d just shot the trainer guy.
My uncle is a state trooper in CT and I have heard his “getting shot” story a thousand times. He was hit in the chest - whilst wearing his vest - at close range with a .45 glok. He said it was like getting hit with a 20 pound sledge. KNocked the wind out of him and left a rib fractured. The muscular damage was the worse. He could not laugh, breath heavey, or raise his right hand for a month.
A guy sitting with his knee about six inches from mine shot himself through the upper thigh with a .357 magnum. This happened at a shooting range, in a “waiting room” seperate from the range itself. The “noise” I remember most was the dead silence as the 20-30 people (we were all there for a pistol league) in the room looked around to see who did it. The guy had his legs under a table when the discharge occurred and when he slid back there was an L shaped rip in the leg of his jeans and some raw meat showing with a little blood just starting to ooze out. I don’t think it really bled much, considering. The range authorities cleared the area and the next time I saw the shooter he was being wheeled on gurney to an ambulance. The bullet tore a divot out of the carpet, pierced a shooting bag full of supplies and dented a soda machine.
I was standing, feet shoulder-width apart, and my friend aimed a shot to go under me. It should have hit the ground between my feet and bounced up behind me, but instead it went into my right eye socket.
My friend manages several fast food resturants, and he was shot in a bungled robbery attempt. The shooter was hiding in his van, apparently planning to hold up my friend after he got in the driver’s seat. Unfortunately, my friend surprised him by opening the back of his van to toss in the coveted deposit.
The surprised robber shot my friend in the chest, grabbed the deposit and ran. My friend says he heard the shot, and felt like he was punched in the chest. “I think he shot me,” my friend thought. “No, if I were shot, it’d hurt. Oh wait, it does. A lot” At that point he passed out. He woke up two days later in the hospital. He ended up with a couple of broken ribs and a collapsed lung.
I’ve got paintball bruises as I type. We play every Saturday morning.
As a teenager my friend shot at a tree stump with a 20 gauge. I was right next to him and thwap! The plastic wad bounced back and hit me dead center of my forehead. Left a perfect circular mark and just broke the skin enough to ooze blood. Scared the shit out of us more than anything. He shoots the gun and I scream.
Another time we were screwing around with my BB gun. I thought I emptied it of all the BB’s. Remember the old Tylanol capsuals you could pull apart? We emptied a few and put ketchup in them trying to make fake blood squibs.
I was shot in the thigh, man oh man did that hurt more than it should have. I pulled down my pants to look and there was a little hole but no blood. Never told the parents or anything.
Two years later I had major reconstructive knee surgery. My leg atrophied quite a bit while I was in the cast. One day while I was sitting in the bathtub, (unable to stand to take a shower) I see something odd. There is the BB at the edge of the skin. I popped it like a zit and it fell out. To bad it rolled down the drain before I could catch it.
One of the dumbest things I’ve ever done was shot my BB gun straight up in the air while laying down on the ground.
I fired the shot, waiting a few seconds and nothing happened. I figured it had landed far away from me. Then it landed right on my stomach and knocked the wind out of me. It hurt like hell.
was in the Marine Corps in Vietnam, with Golf company of the 7th Marines and saw any number of people shot, about 8, IIRR, within arms reach.
Typically, if it’s in the chest or head they just grunt and go down. There’s generally a lot of twitching and some groaning and moaning, if they are not killed right off. A stomach wound usually nets you a screamer until shock and blood loss kick in. Arm and leg wounds are the worst to be around, though they’d be my choice if I was the shootee. There’s lots of pain and they stay conscious, usually.
Comparing my memories schrapnel wounds seem to hurt more (as a very general and often not applicable rule). There’s usually lots of them, they burn like hell (personal experience), they are often superficial enough so that shock doesn’t kick in, and they tend to look messier.