People I know who have died by being shot

[effengee]

Perhaps that isn't the best way to title this post....
This is a long time coming, and I just need to get this off my chest, so please bear with me...

Throughout my years upon this earth, I have known more people than I want to count who died because of a gunshot. Recently, two people died that way in my neck of the woods. A guy who was the same age as me, attended the rival high school, and who shared many of the same friends as me. We had our differences, and weren't close, but in the area where I'm from, everybody knows everybody. I'm distantly related by marriage to the other guy.
I lost another good friend a few years back over a dispute about rent money that ended with him being shot dead.
Many years ago, a close family friend took his own life because of a break-up with his girl. There's still more, but as I said, I don't want to count...

How has this affected my stance on firearms?
Believe me when I say, not one little bit.
I could never be the person who would stand up and say something like:
"Look at these innocent victims of these evil firearms."

One could argue that these people would still be here were it not for guns, and one could just as easily argue that, given the circumstances of some of these incidents, the people would have died some other way...

It really makes me mad that every time another gun-related thing happens, somebody tries to make it out like it's the fault of the firearm.

"If only there were stricter firearm laws/less access to firearms/bans of certain types of firearms/restriction of ownership then these things wouldn't happen."

Well, I'm here to say this:
"It's not the firearm that must bear the blame for how it is used, it's the person squeezing the trigger."

Respectfully,
Effengee

 

[flatlander937]

Only person I know of was a service attendant/lot boy at a dealership I used to work at... I didn't know the kid real well, he was very quiet but nice and smiled a lot and we exchanged "hellos" when passing, and talked about cars on our lunch break occasionally(he had a pretty clean looking 240SX that was factory stock and looked showroom new).

His girlfriend broke up with him and he evidently went home and shot himself... I don't know with what or how he got it.


I was not pro or anti-gun at the time or any time after that up until in recent months when a friend took me shooting.

FWIW I think if he didn't have a gun, he probably would have done something else stupid like jumping off a bridge or running his car in a garage for CO poisoning, or slit his wrists with a knife or something.


The kid had problems... plain and simple. If somebody knew and could have talked to him about it... then things would have been different.


IMO firearms are not the cause in the slightest... firearms are portrayed in the media as being "death machines" and crap... so I could see how it might be one of the first "ideas" for one if they decide to do something as morbid as end their own life, or that of another... you don't think of a hammer as a murder weapon since you don't associate it with killing someone... but statistics have shown that it DOES happen regardless.


Murder, rape, stealing, car-jacking, meth and cocaine are illegal... surely nobody does that since there is a law against it right?


I find it ironic that a LARGE amount of the people who argue that guns take lives... want to legalize marijuana.


Thinking out loud, take it FWIW... sorry if I got a bit off topic.

 

[JellyJar]

You say you live in Vermont. Vermont is perhaps the most gun friendly state in the nation and consistently over the years has enjoyed one of the lowest per capita rates of murder as well.

Were all these deaths murders, accidents, suicides or what?

I have had relatives who committed suicide with firearms but that has not affected my views at all. They could just have easily killed themselves some other way. Suicide with firearms is just not relevant to the issue of RKBA.

 

[Marlin60Man]

I've known quite a few people to die from gunshots. Quite a few self-inflicted, not really a lot of accidentals. Come to think of it, I can't really think of anyone I know personally that has died of an accidental discharge. Have known lots of people murdered ( gang violence, jealous boyfriends, etc.) , my grandfather killed himself with his .38, etc.

I never really look at guns as if they shouldn't be owned by everyday people, but I do think sometimes that it's too easy for a criminal to get ahold of them. I have mixed feelings about it... On the one hand, I wouldn't want to have to register my rifle or something, and would like to be able to buy one used since it's my right. On the other hand there's the fact that this is the way quite a lot of people who shouldn't have firearms get them and I'm sure a few of the people I know who have been killed were effected by that.

At the end of the day I think the ultimate reality is that if it weren't for guns, people would still kill themselves and others in great numbers in some other way, and I think it's too important for people to be able to own guns. Not to mention that I don't think gun control is or ever will be effective.

 

[shiftyer1]

I too have known several people that shot themselves and a few that were shot by others. The simple fact of the matter is that if we make guns go away people will kill each other with baseball bats and other things. If I had a choice I think i'd rather be shot than beat to death.

Theres many that have been on this earth longer than my 34 years but in all my years I have never seen a gun just jump up and go to shooting all by itself.

 

[mgmorden]

I have a great-uncle who shot/killed himself (suicide). One of my mothers cousins was also fatally shot (one of those "unloaded gun" incidents).

Though I didn't personally know her (she died as a child), I also had another great-aunt who was fatally shot in another accident.

Non-fatal:

My father was shot in a hunting accident (three 00 buckshot through the shoulder). Lots of blood loss and it was close there for a while, but he pulled through.

My uncle was shot in the leg with a small .22 single action revolver. It was in a holster and the hammer caught on the steering wheel as he got out of the vehicle and it dropped hard enough to set off the round. No serious injury - just as graze.

One of my dad's cousins also was hit by a riccochet buckshot while hunting. He was hospitalized but never was in critical condition.

When I was a kid one of my neighbor's boyfriends was also shot by her estranged husband several times with a .22 in the head. He lived, but has serious brain damage now.

Realistically though guns are a dangerous tool and I live in a rural area where virtually everyone owns them and most people hunt quite a bit. Its to be expected that with that much saturation there will be some accidents.

 

[TwoWheelFiend]

Hey fellow Vermonter. I heard about that incident. Was it the two guys hunting?

 

[LJ-MosinFreak-Buck]

I lost a good buddy back in 2007. He was going to visit his girlfriend in North Omaha. Well, someone wanted his money more than he did, and, through speculation of the police, they through him down face first in the pavement took his wallet and shot him in the back of the head.

I will never blame the firearm... Only the thug behind the trigger.

 

[FIVETWOSEVEN]

You say you live in Vermont. Vermont is perhaps the most gun friendly state in the nation and consistently over the years has enjoyed one of the lowest per capita rates of murder as well.

New Hampshire is safer statistically.

 

[effengee]

@FIVETWOSEVEN, statistically speaking, it's possible to dangle an elephant from a dandelion

@jellyjar, if you read my post carefully, you'll understand how these deaths happened...

@TwoWheelFiend, Yup, it was those two... Also, Where in VT are ya from???

 

[TwoWheelFiend]

Central, Duxbury if you know where that is. Close to Waterybury and Stowe

 

[effengee]

Yup, been to all three of those towns... Good to see there's other 802's on here.

 

[mrseffengee]

JellyJar...

When someone writes something... they hope that it's read in it's entirety. Knowing effengee... he does NOT blame firearms for ANY incidents. We BOTH understand that it is the person behind the gun that kills.

We've lost good people, good friends in the last 5 years. Not all of them have been gun related but a few of them have. It doesn't mean that we blame the guns... it just means that we understand the hurt of losing loved ones and STILL believe in the right to KEEP and Bear arms, to hunt, to defend and to enjoy our lives with our guns.

This is not meant to be rude in any way... it was just to clear up some misunderstanding.

Sincerely,
Mrs. Effengee

 

[paintballdude902]

death and murder are both facts of life. ive had friends commit suicide, including a marine friend that had just returned from afghanistan. had a friend die in a ND, another one die in a mistaken ID drive by.

i'll be the first to say it guns are dangerous, but not nearly as dangerous as the people holding them.

 

[MyGreenGuns]

Shortly after highschool I lost a friend I had known since kindergarden. (My very first friend.) This is a guy who trained seeing eye dogs for the blind, mentored kids in cub scouts, and helped at various charities. This is the kind of guy who would give you the shirt off his back, his last $5, or any help you needed. He was a much better human being than me.

The investigators say he pulled over for a car on the side of the road, most likely to offer a ride. The shooter shot him from the passenger seat of his own truck, only his wallet was missing.

This was before I was a firearms fanatic, now that I think about it; It may have been before I had even shot a gun. I never did blame the gun. I knew it was just a tool.
I hated people for years afterwords. His murder made me cold inside. The worst of our society had snuffed the life of the best of our society.

I regularly drive the road he was murdered on and have seen cars stopped several times. Part of me wanted to run them over, on the assumption they might have been the culprit. Until more recently I never stopped to offer my help.

It occured to me one dark rainy night as I drove that road:
(Had he survived,) He wouldnt have become bitter about being robbed. It wouldnt have stopped him from helping the next time a fellow human needed his assistance. He believed that MOST people were good.

I'll end this here. I'm starting to rant. I just miss my friend.

 

[MedWheeler]

I've known, albeit only casually, one cop shot to death, and I also knew a kid in high school (again, only casually) that was actually killed with a BB gun. Neither was an accident, though death was probably not the intent in the latter case.

 

[CaliCoastie]

one of my uncles almost lost his arm/died in a duck hunting accident, and one of the guys i was in highschool died from a hunting accident(found someone on public land and they decided to hunt together, jumped a deer the other guy took a shot missed, friend took a shot hit it. while walking over my friend took the lead, the other guy stumbled and discharged his rifle, caught my friend in the upper inner thigh and suposeldy he lived for a few hours later), I do still hunt but... it all comes back on the person. One of the guys i knew and worked with commited suicicde with gun. Everyone who hunts should know that its inheartly dangerous, but hey so is driving.

 

[Jeff F]

My best friends brother did himself by sticking a 30-30 in his mouth and pulling the trigger in his bedroom. Never knew the reason.

 

[TwoWheelFiend]

Not many but theres a few of us here!

 

[fallout mike]

5 of my friends, including my 2 best friends in the world, died at the hands of drunk drivers. I still drive my cars and truck. We will all die one way or another. Before guns people killed each other with rocks, sticks, arrows, swords, & knives. Before cars people got crushed, maimed and trampled by horses.

 

[mortablunt]

I feel fortunate that I haven't yet witnessed much in the way of guns turned upon people. My former roommate had an off-campus "friend" who I met very briefly once. I found out the "friend" was murdered, supposedly execution style. I haven't seen too much else in gun violence or gun suicides or gun accidents.

 

[Marlin60Man]

My grandfather Kenneth killed himself with his .38
My dad's friend Doug was shot to death in Detroit after meeting a woman online
Uncle Jim was shot to death in a bar fight
My friend Jose was shot in a drive-by
Joel was also shot in a drive-by
Kevin got executed in a drug-deal gone bad
David was shot on the side of the street... No one ever figured out why
My friend Janis and her boyfriend were shot to death by her ex while sleeping in bed
Neighbor at a time had his 18 month old daughter shot in another drive-by

Then there's my friend... He's had cousins die in hunting accidents, murders, police shoot-outs ( collateral damage )...

My father was also a reformed drug addict and I knew quite a few people from Alcoholics Anonymous who lost good friends to gun violence, and even lost good segments of their own lives in jail to gun violence they committed.

Even despite all that I don't feel like it makes any sense to blame the gun. I suppose if a person has seen one or two incidents, it makes it feel like, "Oh, well, if it wasn't for these guns, everything would be fine and dandy," but that's just not the case. It's a crazy world we live in... I know quite a few friends that were stabbed or burned to death too, but I still think we ought to have pocket knives and matches. You just can't look at something like this, look at the tool that was used and say, "Oh, yeah, if it weren't for this, these violently natured people never would have done what they did."

The way I see it, if you see enough of it, you realize that guns or any tool of violence has very little to do with the motivation or facilitation of violence. If it weren't for the gun, it would be the knife, if not the knife a sharp stick, if not a sharp stick a club, if not a club one's fists. It just turns out the firearm is one of the most effective tools of violence we've created.

Not to change the subject, but that is all subject to change. You know how people are robbing others here now? They go steal a big SUV, and then ram it into the smallest car they can find. Then they just go up and drag the person out and take their things. Just goes to show that anything can become a tool of violence.

 

[Stophel]

Wow, I personally don't know ANYONE who has been shot...

 

[Jonah71]

My Mother was shot and killed after being shot 5 times with a gun that was not a registered or legal firearm. Had she or my sister been allowed to legally carry a firearm she might have still been with us today. Gun laws did nothing to prevent her murder. In fact, the law made it impossible for her to even make an attempt defend herself without breaking the law at the time. And she was quite capable of effectively using a handgun. If she hadn't been such a "law abiding citizen" she would have at least had a chance.

 

[Bobson]

Only person I've ever known to be killed with a gun killed himself.

A classmate of mine allegedly built a gun with plans he found on the net, back in 2002, over the summer vacation between our junior and senior years in high school. Evidently, he was on some prescription medication for severe acne, and a side-effect was depression.

He was well-known for being one of the smartest kids in the school, and I knew him since 4th grade. IDK for certain if he really built the gun himself, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if it were true. It was a super sad situation in our small town either way.