Has anyone been shot?

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Twice to the stomach in Vietnam. Felt like getting hit with a red hot hammer. DID NOT KNOCK ME OFF MY FEET.Other than that I really can't recommend it.

Kevin
 
Not my forum to moderate folks but - let's keep it clean;). Riské is fine but no further.

I cannot see why so much fuss about the question - only people who are prepared to talk about it will - those who prefer not to will not. Hardly see any need for offence being taken to a curiosity question.

Fortunately most of us have not been shot and hopefully will not either - but there is a natural curiosity for most which I can understand. I have a medical background and know a bit more than some re the damage aspects - and it is not something I would wish to experience I have to say!
 
Way back when I was a paramedic in my 20s i was working on new years eve. my partner and i got a call at a particularly nasty housing project shortly before midnite. the call was an elderly lady having a heart attack. as we were loading her up mid nite struck and all the local hooligans started shooting. this is not uncommon at the 4th and new years so we assumed that we wernt being shot at. well im sitting in the back of my BRAND NEW ambulance, putting O2 on the patient, hooking up the heart monitor etc. when i notice that the little plastic doors that cover the bins on the opposite wall from me are falling off. "thats odd" i thought, ( if any of you have ever seen the movie the jerk with steve martin, "These oil cans are defective!" ) yes go ahead and call me dense, i didnt figure out we were being shot at until one of the rounds creased my noggin and shot the hat right off my head. I floped down on the floor , trying my best to become one with it and yelled at my partner to "PLEASE get us the @#$% out of here someone is shooting US!" we went approx 2 miles in reverse running lights and sirens. when we got to the Gradys i found out that the heel of my left boot had been shot thru too. it didnt hit me but the force of it made my heel black and blue and sore as a toothache for about three weeks. the round that hit my head actually hit the button on top of my cap and was just a scratch,it certainly got my attention though. The REALLY funny part is we got wrote up for not parking our ambulance in a "safe" manner.:fire:
 
Edited for tastless off topic comment.........Jeff
 
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grimjaw said:
sacp81170a, I don't mean to make light of your experience, but the mental image of this made me laugh and laugh. :) Glad you made it, AR isn't the same without grizzled veterans. Keep safe.

Hey, I wasn't about to complain. There's times when you'll cuss the buttons on your shirt 'cause they keep you from gettin' closer to the ground. At least I'm around to laugh about it. :D
 
Sewerman said:
well im sitting in the back of my BRAND NEW ambulance, putting O2 on the patient, hooking up the heart monitor etc. when i notice that the little plastic doors that cover the bins on the opposite wall from me are falling off. "thats odd" i thought, ( if any of you have ever seen the movie the jerk with steve martin, "These oil cans are defective!" ) yes go ahead and call me dense, i didnt figure out we were being shot at until one of the rounds creased my noggin and shot the hat right off my head. I floped down on the floor , trying my best to become one with it and yelled at my partner to "PLEASE get us the @#$% out of here someone is shooting US!" we went approx 2 miles in reverse running lights and sirens. when we got to the Gradys i found out that the heel of my left boot had been shot thru too. it didnt hit me but the force of it made my heel black and blue and sore as a toothache for about three weeks. the round that hit my head actually hit the button on top of my cap and was just a scratch,it certainly got my attention though. The REALLY funny part is we got wrote up for not parking our ambulance in a "safe" manner.:fire:

LOL! That reminds me the first time that I ever had rounds coming my way. My partner and I were sitting in our patrol vehicle when we started hearing this "pop, pop, pop-pop". It took us a few seconds to associate that sound with what sounded like someone hitting the aircraft we were guarding with rocks, kind of a "clunk, clunk, clunk-clunk" sound. It was pretty comical as we looked at each other with a "what the hell" expression and both realized at the same time that THOSE WERE INCOMING ROUNDS! A John Wayne episode it was not. We unassed the vehicle pronto and took cover, called it in to CSC and my partner(I will save him the embarassment of giving his name in a public forum) kicked my boot and said, "Cover me." I said, "What?" He repeated, "Cover me, I gotta go back to the truck." "Why?" "I forgot my weapon."

This brings up another question, since I've heard lots of similar stories. How long has it taken anyone to realize that they're being shot at the first time? A lot of guys I've talked to relate the same thing you and I have both experienced. It takes a little bit of time for your mind to wrap itself around the fact that someone is shooting at you. After the first time, it's not such a shock, but it seems to me like a critical piece of information to assimilate, one that would be difficult to replicate in training. Any thoughts?
 
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I have never been shot. But I don't think it's possible to establish a model for what it feels like to get shot. People vary greatly in how they feel pain and how they react to it. Adrenalin also figures into the mix.

Jeff
 
purple hearts

3 Dec '68: After three 12.7 mm began to rake us I became quickly prone. John Wayne would have wasted his breath yelling take cover.

Some of the men with me frantically began to scrape shallow trenches in the rocky clay soil, and I piled in on top of the third man. There was a new and unassigned man laying to my front and he was taking still pictures of this all -yes, I thought at the moment, this is incredible. I noticed an awful face occuring on this man as he looked me in the face, and almost simultaneously I realized why. Rounds began to kick up the dirt to my front at about six feet distance. There was a very slight hump in the ground there too. I screamed at the two men below me to let out their breath! I needed to get lower.
Then I saw in an instant the round hit a rock, and whump, it struck my neck.
Frightening. I felt for it and stuck my little left finger in the hole and could feel the end of what was a 7.62 round. The rock had dissapated just enough energy to keep the round from puncturing my artery, but then I became anxious that the jagged metal might cut into it as I moved. My fear was lost immediately by more shooting at me, next my collar was nipped, and I felt it.

I was forced off of that slit trench and ended up behind my computer sergeant's feet who was also crawling away. Then again crack, crack; yes you guys who have never experienced the other end of an AK or SKS, those firearms have their own distinctive sound, that experience imbeds in your memory. Sgt. Steadman, of FL, (he survived), if you're out there, was struck in the feet by rounds aimed at my head. I was an officer, and being hunted, it turns out from the tree tops. I only saw the leaves flap from the pressure wave, but some of my men returned fire to the trees and hours later the few who did survive cut down the enemy who had been tied up in there.

Later, in that long, and horrible battle, I had just turned around to prepare the last mortar rounds we had for firing in support of the men only 25 m to our front, when I felt the flash of heat and concussion wave strike me so forcefully that I was tumbled over in a summersault to my front; I had been kneeling at about four feet away from our 81 mm mortar tube which was hit by an RPG rocket round. The enemy were very good shots with those things.
(Miraculously, every one of my men had dropped away from the tube until the rounds were ready again _the tube was a beacon for small arms fire -even pinging off of it while my brave gunner Sgt. Charles White of Baltimore
cranked that handle for corrections; and none of those brave men were killed!
End of our fire mission. We had used all but a few of the round we were humping anyway. That mortar tube, tripod, and base plate were all hurled right over my head.

I took a piece of hot -hot! shrapnel in my back at that one. And it lodged in my rib, not penetrating the pleura. The airtight membrane that seals the lungs. I knews this right away too, since I was not gasping or laboring to breathe.

It was a long, and costly battle that day, and those others -wounded, but not killed fought on to live. Myself, I was so frightened, that unless I was killed outright, I intended to survive. The wounding was -Oh no! frightening, but forgotten by the fear of; I'm still alive, and they're still trying to kill us.
(Account of this battle at .military.com/Content/MoreContent1/?file=vn-noderos The author is Steve Banko III: recipient of two silver stars; some reguard as beyond the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Been through many battles in the Cavalry before that; that is all we did was ride time and again into "red" landing zones, but this battle was the worst by far.

Only saw flickers of the face of the enemy much of the time, except when we suprized them, like once walking up a jungle trail and five m away they sat on top of their bunker eating their lunch of rice balls wrapped in bananna leaves.

Have more emotional scars than ones on my body.

If you should ever suffer wounding, fight until you are unable. Remember your first aid training -it's invaluable, and ...use your sights -one shot at a time.
 
incredible indeed

stories like this make me feel strangely oxymoronic - pro-gun, anti-war.

then again, i believe someone said that - and i paraphrase - were war pleasant, we would grow too fond of it....

the mere idea that someone is shooting at me would make me pucker up to no end and look for small dark places to crawl into.
 
thanks for the response

"Silverlance and others:" That strange and conflicting feeling is known to me.
I fully know the destructive power of firearms and the morbidity of their use.
However, it is just as said often; it is whose hands they are in. For good or for bad. If the bad people have them, then you need to have them for yourself and yours too.

I still enjoy firearms and shooting. The sport of it, and the security of being armed myself, but I no longer have the thrill of them being "cool."
When I view all the AK enthusiasm at the range, the wows and grinning, I never say anything, but I hate those guns. I know, it's irrational, but one of my scars.

The men currently in Iraq know full well that there is not glamour there, and the young enthusiastic men headed there; may God keep them, will learn.
 
you've said some very sobering things

and I'll be mulling over them for some time to come. my guns don't seem as cool today, either; as the years have gone by i have also come to recognize a lot of military enthusiasm as being more that slightly distasteful to those who have shot at or been shot at.

these days, my respect for defensive guns has changed from that of a deeply impressed adolescent to that of an adult - these are serious tools, like power saws and bulldozers, made for a specific purpose - the eradication of other humans.
 
Reading this thread caused me to think about how fragile and still so very durable the human body is. Really is amazing. Just thought Id share. Thanks for the stories.
 
You can be 99% healthy and 1% dead and it's that 1%, that seemingly
tiny thing, that kills. Other times it's amazing how someone can be
literally torn apart and still be alive. Much of the time it makes no sense.
 
Don;'t remember who mentioned that I was not safe to be around, guess it got eaten in the edit for tastelessness. (which was a good edit, sometimes ya get out there).
Anywho, it would be easy to get the idea that dangerous things happen around me but probably not as often as you might think. My life is very peacefull now, but over the course of 26 years I accumulated 41 months of hostile fire or hazard incentive pay from Uncle Sugar. Given the amount of exposure, I was actually very fortunate and my kids all thought I was a lucky guy to travel with.

Sam
 
Myself I never have been *knock on wood* I do know 3 people who have been, all of them were hit with .22

I know a girl who her brother shot her in the behind when the family was target shooting.

A guy who said he got shot once in each leg.

but the only person who really talked a lot about it ... (I remember this from sitting in English class in high school), some kid accidentally shot himself in the chest and he said it burned a lot, said it felt like his chest was on fire or something. He said he was running around the livingroom screaming because it hurt a lot. He was back at school pretty quick after the incident, he was showing people the wound... I opted to not look. His story was much more interesting than Shakespeare :eek:
 
Yup

In the back, right shoulder blade(stopped the bullet), with a .25 caliber, back when I was young and stupid, and hung out in some pretty disreputable bars...Was trying to leave, as I'd gotten into an argument with this idiot (over what I don't recall, but it was probably pretty stupid)...He followed me outside trying to continue argument...Now this guy weighed about 110 lbs. (I went about 210, and was in great shape as I had been training martial arts for about 4 years)...I got in his face one last time (I think I asked him how he was gonna eat lunch tomorrow without his arms...one of my favorite lines), and turned to walk away... I'd just turned when I heard the pop, and felt a burning sensation on my back...

Now folks, I have an interesting reaction to pain...It just makes me angry...REALLY angry...Sobered up INSTANTLY (Yeah, I'd had a few), and I spun on the guy, who's now got the "deer in headlights" look on his face, even though he's still got his little pea-shooter aimed at me(I guess he figured I'd be on the ground with that first shot)...Stepped into him, grabbing his right hand, and twisting that sucker into a position that the human arm is not supposed to be in...Don't remember much after that, other than when everything returned to normal speed he was on the ground (and not lookin' too good) and I was still upright.

First ambulance took him away, cops showed at same time asked me a few questions, and then questioned witnesses (all of whom were my buds), then they took me away. I wasn't even bleeding all that bad, and it didn't really hurt, although my adrenalin level was still over the top...Hurt some for a few days after, but not nearly as bad some other injuries I've suffered...

No charges filed (although it was a near thing), as he was carrying illegally, and it was clearly self defence, although they DID think I used a bit more force than necessary (They said he might walk again someday, but he was gonna look funny for the rest of his life...at least without lots of plastic surgery)...
 
I've never been shot but was there when a friend was.

South side of San Antonio, TX in 1968. Three white guys (me and two buds) in a bar playing pool for money with some guys of the Hispanic persuasion.

We were winning - big time - and the losers took none too kindly to that. They wanted their money back and weren't polite when making the request. One of them pulled a small revolver and shot Buddha (that was his nickname for a reason) in the belly. 3 pool cues lashed out from our side and disarmed the revolver guy (I wonder to this day if his wrist could have been repaired) and we unassed the joint pretty quickly.

When we got home we took a look at Buddha's belly. Small .22 entrance wound. Buddha wasn't feeling too badly but it was starting to hurt a bit. Dennis, Buddha's brother got some iodine and a pair of tweazers and dug around in the fat. Pulled out a .22 bullet, barely deformed. Probably a .22 short cartridge. Flooded the wound with iodine and taped gauze over it.

A week later Buddha was as good as new.
 
I would like to thank everyone who replied and state I understand why some
would not want to. The reason for the detail (what, where, & how it felt)
stems from my medical training and because I believe it could be valuable
information to have. I do apologize if I offended anyone as that was not my
intent.

I also appreciate the recounts referring to the ricochet incidents as that is
just another example that we must always be aware of what is going on
around us.

The mental aspect of recognizing just what is happening at the time is
something I personally had not thought about.

Once again thanks to all.
 
Have been shot at but never hit but I have taken riccochets as mentioned, including 44mag out of a rifle in the chest and I can tell you it does not do you any good. Little penetration but it felt like getting punched pretty hard.

Have met many people who have been shot but mostly with small handgun calibers. The larger caliber guys tend to die or come close to it in the one 45acp guy I met. 22 and 9mm guys claim it didn't hurt much but I don't know if they were just trying to be macho.

Long gun gunshot wound victims I met usually involved birdshot but in two cases I know or met, one shotgun, one mini 14, both came real close to dying from blood loss.

Have met few stab victims but one I knew got it in the stomach and came real close to dying. Changed his attitude a good bit.
 
Was captain on a union picket line back in the 60s, strike was a violent one. a scab tried to cross the line and we stopped him. Evidently he went to his car and returned with a pistol, walked up to me and shot me in the right side of my chest.
It knocked me off my feet, and collasped my lung so I could not easily get my breath. I stood up and was so confused could not under stand what had happened. By that time I was in a car and on my way to the hospital. Just about died, but after a long operation I made it.
To this day I could not tell what cal the gun was.
And I never heard what the shooter got from the law. Probably nothing.
I do not recomeand getting shot.
 
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