“Almost half of all Americans say they know someone who has been shot and about a quarter say they or someone in their family have been threatened by someone with a gun.” That’s the headline at courthousenews.com, reporting on the recently released Pew Research Center report.

Obviously, a lot of veterans amongst TTAG’s Armed Intelligentsia have been there, seen that, many times over. That counts.

For my part, Ex-Wife II threatened me with a GLOCK 30SF. (Go straight to divorce. Do not pass go.) As a kid, someone shot and killed my family doctor, leading to the creation of Handgun Control Inc. (later The Brady Campaign). And I saw the final moments of Everybody Loves Raymond star Sawyer Sweeten (above), who committed suicide in the house behind mine.

How about you? Do you know anyone who’s been shot? Do you know anyone who’s been threatened with a gun?

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

119 COMMENTS

  1. I may live a rather boring life, but I only know of one person…a friend of my parents when I was very young…murdered by his wife for the insurance money with a pistol. Outside of that, nobody either shot or threatened. I’m cool with that.

    • Lucky you.

      I’ve been shot at three times. Once by a couple of bored youths hunting with .22s(?) at a couple hundred yards. A second trime by a drugged up a-hole out in the sticks where it’s common to go shooting. And a third violating the rule about knowing what’s beyond the target.

      Even more maddening was minutes after the druggy, a kid with BB gun leveled it at my car from his hip while he was walking down the road with his dad. Reported the druggy incident to sheriff and learned the druggy was the son of a deputy so likely nothing would be done.

      • Personally knew a guy who committed suicide by gun (plus several more who used lots of other means who succeeded). Been shot at in attempted robbery, guy emptied a semi at me (all missed). At least two times had a rifle pointed at me (situational awareness everyday, everywhere). Also at least three times realized we were being set up to be run off road and/or blocked in secluded areas; used ‘vehicle language’ to indicate that it was not going to easy pickings and they vanished (that SA again). There’s more, but that covers the highlights. Travel a lot, had a couple of dangerous jobs.

  2. I know someone that committed suicide using a gun. Someone put a knife to my side and robbed me in my youth. Though that doesn’t count here.

  4. Had guns pointed at me. Had idiot in woods shooting over my head. Sooner or later my luck will run out, but at least I’ll have a chance to shoot back.

    • +1… me, friends, family, etc dealing with druggies, gang bangers, communists, cambodians, japanese, etc…. although the idiots in the woods shooting at me were Marines and there was no ill intent, just poorly directed supporting fires. Also, grandpa and grandma were in a Japanese concentration camp. Had some friends and family die but I’m unscratched so far.

  5. I knew a couple of folks that committed suicide by gun, but other than that I just know one person who has been shot. He had a negligent discharge at his kitchen table and shot both a finger and his thigh with a 25 ACP round. I was pretty ticked when I found out about it. It happen a couple of years ago and up until then I didn’t know anyone that had been accidentally shot. I’m 57 years old and been around guns most of my life.

    I also ride motorcycles. Guns aren’t dangerous, motorcycles are dangerous. I know far fewer riders than gun owners, and I know many that have been seriously injured and a few that were killed on a bike.

  6. My best friend was robbed at gun point about 10 years ago. He promptly went and got his CHL.

    • Forgot about another friend.

      He was out late one night with another friend. Stopped at a light. Another vehicle pulled up beside them and stuck a gun out the window. Friend B said “you ain’t gonna do nothing with that pea shooter”. They did.

      Round went through Friend A’s R arm, in at the deltiod, out through the tricep, hit Friend B’s upper chest, hit his heart and killed him.

  7. I don’t know anyone who was threatened. I do know a couple people that threatened to use one in lawful self defense by pointing a gun at a perp. I knew someone who committed suicide with a gun.

    • I was head of security at a nightclub for about 6 years, got shot at on five different occasions. Thank god these ghetto-fabulous kids all hold their guns sideways. Saw three people shot, two co-workers and later on a patron getting shot point-blank in the back.
      I also got stabbed in the back when some immigrants tried to rob me leaving a Metallica concert in ’89. I was young, it kinda sucked. Started carrying a knife with me everywhere including school after that. Then graduated to a gun in the latter part of high school.

  8. Yes. My former neighbor was shot while incapacitating a domestic abuser. Both survived but my neighbor was conscious when the police arrived, the bad bad guy was not.

  9. My sister got caught in the crossfire between two feuding families. A wide shot from one of the women involved sent a .38 special round through the front window of the video store in which my sister was working. It caught her in mid thigh. It left my sister with a star shaped scar and interesting story.

    • All those people you jammed up while you were on the job? You know, those folks who were enjoying their second amendment rights but were in violation of some man-created gun law.

  11. Wow. I find these numbers very hard to swallow. What was the purpose of such a survey? It has to be the left trying to make guns look bad again. Was the question “have you or anyone you know been threatened or killed with a knife? A baseball bat or shovel?”. Bad survey.

    • I call bullshit on this survey. There are ~75k non fatal shootings per year and ~25k fatal shootings per year, including suicides. The median age in the US is 38.5 years. So, during the median American’s lifetime, 3.85m were shot/murdered/committed suicide by firearm. The population of the US is 325m. For this survey to be accurate, 162m people all know the same 3.85m people. I understand there is a lot of fudge in these numbers, but you get the idea. Either this survey was poorly designed and poorly executed or respondents are outright lying.

  12. Yup. It didn’t change his goofy behavior though. Some people are just dumb and can’t put together cause and effect.

  13. Not too many veterans here, huh? I’ve been shot at and missed, and due to their own screwup, had cops (4) put me in their sights. The police apologized.

    Other friends? Yes, also Marines.

    • Yes, lots of veterans here. They just don’t all virtue signal. Well, except Instagram Taylor.

    • Lots of veterans here. Taking indirect fire (mortars and rockets); Fallujah flyovers where the badguy dumps an AK magazine from behind a wall with shots all going high; or Iraqi or ANA NDs at friendly troops are out of scope for this question. Most veterans since 9/11 deployed and most non-combat troops experienced the above 3 things but these items are not sufficient for a Combat Action Ribbon.

    • I’m a Vietnam Era Veteran, but did my Asian time in Korea where I was shot at one and only one time. In the DMZ, naturally. But that was 47 years ago and it wasn’t such a big deal. I was a moving target (driving a jeep) at very long range. I heard the round hit a nearby tree some seconds before I heard the distant *bang*.

  14. No, and as Robert Alexander above states, the purpose of this survey is to of course make guns and their owners look bad.

    Anyway, I call BS, we all know how flawed polls are and those commissioned by biased organizations are even worse. They probably only asked gangbangers……

    • Flawed or not, it shouldn’t be surprising that people are using guns in a country that is saturated with guns. It’s like flooding a country with cars and then being surprised and confused when people start driving to work. Of course people are going to use guns! They get the job done! But the presence of a tool does not necessarily equate to an increase in the activity for which it was made.

      FYI, I’m not challenging your point, just adding to it.

  15. I had a Syrian roommate in college that was tied to a chair and shot in the head over Christmas break in Beruit. I had a Lebanese friend who knew him and was in Beirut when it happened. He guessed it was a drug problem of some sort. Luckily he had paid the whole years rent in advance so I didn’t have to scramble to find another roommate.

    • A guy I went to HS with, knew well, ended up in the freezer of a Russian fishing trawler in the late ’80s. May have gone it at gunpoint.

  16. Nope. But I know someone who threatened someone else with a gun. Just the day before yesterday actually. A friend of mine (a woman) arrived at her suburb home to find an unmarked white corroded bumper-less truck parked in front of her home. She quietly entered her abode and spotted a figure in her back yard looking in her windows. She grabbed her handgun and went outside to confront him. I’m quite sure she was pointing her firearm at him during questioning. She said to me later that he was a pest control guy looking to see if anyone had moved in yet. He had a pest control shirt and a pest control clipboard that he was carrying around. It was 8:30pm (but still light out). She bought into it and let him go. I told her later – that was totally bogus. A pest control guy will put his brochure on the door and move on. He would never enter your back yard, snoop around, and look into your backyard windows of your home. He may be a pest control salesman, but is likely a part time burglar, and was scouting about to see what you had, likely to return later to clean you out. And if he got caught, he would play the “I’m a pest control guy” card. She gave his license plate info to one of her neighbors who is a cop. That was just the day before yesterday.

    • I take it back. My dad was threatened with a gun in his 20s (back in the early 70s). Some guys on drugs kidnapped him and his friend at gunpoint and they went on a joyride around the neighborhood randomly. After a few hours they let them go without shooting them. After that my dad purchased a firearm and understood it’s value (he was once an inner city liberal). Later he moved out in the countryside to get away from the weirdos in the city and lived a peaceful and rich life until he passed late last year. By the time he passed he was best described as a conservative libertarian (politically wise).

  17. Like RF, me. Crazy ex-wife…S&W .38. Only one of many reasons but probably the best she’s history and someone else’s problem.
    And a lot of VN vets….

  18. My first cousin shot himself in the hand with a .22 semi-auto…..he was trying to clean the gun when it discharged…he regained the full use of his hand only after months of painful rehabilitation……all I can say is “what a dumb ass”….this incident was totally preventable with a little common sense….there were other folks I knew over the years who died from self-inflicted gunshot wounds….most were co-workers and one was a former classmate……the former classmate was a murder-suicide where he killed a brother, sister, mom, dad and then shot himself…..it was big news in 1974 in the Chicago area.

  19. I’m a Marine Vietnam veteran and retired cop, so of course I’ve been shot at. Fortunately, they all missed. And I know a fair number of people who HAVE been shot. Each and every one of them said that it hurts. I’ll take their word for it. .

  20. Yes. I have been threatened while on a government paid tropical vacation in 1969-70, and several times throughout my law enforcement career. The first person I saw shot was my first day on the job. It was an accidental shooting. Went through a riot in 1968 where shots were fired resulting in two holes in the drivers door of my patrol car. Saw a lot of people get shot in Vietnam. Fortunately, they were mostly on the opposing team. A patrolman in Tacoma, WA. The dispatcher in the Kern County Sheriffs Office Mojave Sub-station.

    Otherwise, outside the line of duty, I’ve never been threatened or seen someone get shot.

  21. I know a couple of people who have been shot, but they are military and it was in Combat. I had a guy attempt to carjack me at a stoplight a few years back. My car doors automatically lock when the car is in drive, so when he came up along the blindside of my car and grabbed the door handle, the door didn’t open. I quickly turned my head to see a guy holding a gun up to my window, but there was enough light for me to see that it was a replica BB gun. Then “he” found himself looking through the glass at my “real” semi-auto and did the only smart thing he’d probably done in a long time…..he ran off like a Jackrabbit. Moral of the story…..don’t bring a BB gun to a gunfight where the intended victim has a “real gun”.

  22. Half say they know someone who’s been shot and quarter say they someone who has been threaten…?

    So, more known shot than merely threatened. I’m going to call BS just on its face value.

    • I “know” a thousand people. I know one who has been shot, and he’s a POS gang banger. I bet nearly everyone knows someone who has been shot. They may not be AWARE that they know someone who’s been shot.

    • Maybe you don’t live in a big city or near an inner city. Living near military bases where people know what firearms can do and have some discipline means they do not shoot without good reason. I have driven through L.A. at night after a concert or whatever and heard auto gun fire. I have seen idiots shooting up cars, appliances, whatever in the desert, firing off propane tanks, burning cars, etc. This is one reason Ca is so anti gun today. I knew people that had illegal auto weapons 30 years ago and played hard – I didn’t want any part of it. Now, it isn’t seen, even in the ‘hood, but I am sure some are still around.
      I have seen guys shot at parties and concerts. Alcohol and drugs do not go with firearms, but many people tried. Those idiots are out there, not quite as many percentage wise. I am glad that it seems that most of the guns are now held by more responsable people – hence the lower shooting rates.
      While I do not support the new laws and taxes on guns and ammo, I would welcome gun safety lessons in health and safety classes in high school(this course is mandatory and discusses safe sex, driving, drugs and alcohol – guns should be included).
      A savings on the gun tax could be given to those that have passed that class. Safe handling of firearms is important, even moreso for those that do not own and use these weapons.

  23. yes, me, been shot at I two occasions, and have had three other guns pulled on me, including the ex with my Mossberg 500, with the exception of the ex, all were before I was a proud gun owner. a freind of mine and I will occasionally lift our shirt at the other, but that’s just a friendly competition of who has the better piece on them, never draw on eachother, ever.

  25. My wife was threatened with a gun by a wannabe mugger who wanted her necklace. She yelled at him to kill her for it and called him all kinds of names and he ran off. My wife is spicier than pepper spray.
    Someone pulled a gun and flashed it at me in the left hand lane in LA at night on I-5. I pulled to the right lane and slowed down so they would pass me and they kept going.
    Had a family member get robbed in a taxi in Miami in the 80’s.

  26. I used to work at a convenience store and was robbed at gunpoint. This was over 20 years ago and the guy wore panty hose. The oddest thing of the encounter is I scared the shit out of him as he reached for door handle. I was at a desk behind the counter and either I saw something out of the corner of my eye or looked up wrong time. I saw him reach for door and he didn’t expect me to look up so he was startled and missed the first door grab.

  27. I know too many that have been shot. As a matter of fact after 68 years I cannot even begin to remember them all. As far as being threatened with one, its a way of life in the U.S. When I lived in East Europe I was never even threatened with a knife let alone a gun but that’s not the same as living in the U.S. Yes I know there are worst places to live especially in the some of the places “South of De Border” but that has a lot to do with the criminal element running the country in question or should I say countries in question.

    Since the ultimate crash of the economy after the Vietnam War the crime rate where I live at least has sky rocketed. Many of the old line family businesses that used to be “down town” some being in the families for over 100 years have all packed up and left for their own personal survival. Drive by shootings are the norm these days, people have almost gotten used to them. Mailmen are often shot accidentally in crossfires as well. And no this is not in a big city like Cleveland or Columbus but a much smaller city and still it is not safe to walk the streets in broad daylight.

    With more and more middle class people now being addicted to hard drugs its only a matter of time before the underworld dominates most city and state governments as I am sure we are well on our way to going the lawless way of some of the Central and South American Countries who are run by Drug Lords either directly or indirectly through graft and corruption.

    I am glad that in a few years I will no longer be around to witness the final decline and collapse of the “old America” as I knew it. The small town life where everyone knew each other and kids were raised by strict Mothers who were financially able to stay home and raise children properly and not just give the kid a key to get into the house by himself when he got home from school. A Nation that provided decent paying jobs so the husband made enough money to take care of both the wife and the children. Gone with the wind as the Greed Mongers that run our Nation shipped all the high paying jobs overseas and reduced the population to worker slaves working for minimum wage devoid of any retirement benefits or any civilized health care as all the other Industrialized Nations of the world have had for decades. When Reagan succeeded in destroying the Unions that prevented high tariffs from coming down, the industrialized jobs went overseas faster than a cat could scratch his ass and the decay of society began at a break neck pace.

    We now have people in the inner cities who have not held down any type of job for several generations, never mind a high paying industrial job as most of them at one time had. I can remember when it was safe to walk the streets of some of our very large cities because people had good jobs.

    Just as in Rome long ago the Government gave them “bread and circus” to keep them from overthrowing the government. Just as in ancient Rome the population refused to fight in the military as they were well aware the wars conducted by the rich only enhanced the wealth and power of the rich while leaving nothing to the worker slaves. If your going to rape a foreign country don’t expect loyal cannon fodder to support the next war when the proletariat get none of the spoils of the wars of rape, pillage and conquest.

    Just as in ancient Rome the Government cut off all meaningful immigration which is always the death knell of any civilized society for without immigrants a society stagnates both economically and culturally. The immigrant just as in ancient Rome becomes the “scapegoat” of all the problems in society whereas in reality he was actually the savior of it. The rapid rise of America’s prosperity was no accident of history rather it came about through the hard work and innovation of the immigrant population with many of the most outstanding technical, mechanical, medical and cultural achievements a blend of immigrant innovation and the indigenous culture.

    And the proletariat were as ignorant as the Germans were in the 1930’s when a carbon American copy of Hitler played the race card to get elected. Blame the immigrant, blame the refugee, blame the minorities for all of the problems of the society. It works like a charm every time on the unwashed, the bigoted and the prejudiced and the xenophobes. It worked for Hitler and it worked for Herr Trump. Strange he hates his own German origins, he even tried to lie at one time and claim he was Swedish.

    In the future we can expect more crime, more corruption , more wars, lower wages, health care only for the rich and less rights and complete gun bans as the ruling elite fears an armed populous and believes that only the upper elite should have access to firearms. All of Congress will make sure all this happens because after the shooting of the Republicans at the baseball practice you can be sure they are all re-thinking “the gun rights issue”, they are just not broadcasting it yet.

    • Dear Cisco Kid, you are not in the minority, and America is not the only place it is happening. The rich have a formula for getting and staying rich: Hire politicians to change laws to screw the workers and the poor. Send the jobs somewhere they work for even less. Privatize the profits, nationalize the debts. Just like the bank bailouts. Make the police revise the way they record crime so it looks like it’s going down. Trust me, every Western economy is going down the same path, with the same result: we truly are all fucked. Jesus has promised to come back soon. Let it be so.

      • Well, you’re correct about there being a formula for getting rich, but you’re brain dead in your stupid guess as to what it is. You study hard in school, choose a major in college which leads to a job which pays well (regardless of what it does to your standing as a rebel or a social justice warrior), then you spend less than what you earn, and don’t have children until you have saved enough to pay for their college. Learning how to whine that it is always somebody else’s fault is definitely *NOT* part of that formula. Neither are drugs.

  28. Knew both the shooter and the person shot. Oddly both idiots remained close friends after acknowledging they both were doing something stupid. They both claimed it was a gun cleaning accident, but I eventually got the true story out of one of them.

  29. Had a guy try to rob me at gun point. I kind of suspected he was up to something and was able to quickly evade him.

  30. Had a pistol pulled on me and my cousin once. I grabbed the barrel and took a .22lr to the hand. Left a hole but didn’t break any bones. Guy was in a coma afterwards. Been peppered with shot a few times which sucks.

  31. Once I was threatened by a cop with a 12 gauge shotgun, who misinterpreted my actions as felonious. I nearly messed my pants. The end of a shotgun looks way bigger when you are looking at the wrong end and there is a nervous cop behind the trigger.

    The other time I was working on my car in the parking lot behind a motel, after dark A resident on the third floor thought I was messing with his truck, yelled at me a few times and finally and fired a single round with a .22LR revolver. I heard a pop, but never heard the bullet go by, and the cops didn’t find any damage to buildings down range, after they hauled his sorry drunken ass away to jail. They did find a freshly fired gun and a hole in the window screen, which they carried away as evidence.

    In the first case, I was just glad to be out of there. In the second case, I was contemplating returning fire if he kept popping away at me, but I was really REALLY reluctant to start shooting at a hotel full of guests, especially since my sone was asleep in one of those third floor rooms close by.

    John Davies
    Spokane WA

  32. My dad shot himself in the foot while squirrel hunting. My uncle shot himself in the knee with a .32 special winchester, that was a spectacular mess. I was hit by a ricochet shooting with friends at an abandoned rock quarry. A family friend committed suicide while we were visiting her house. I had a gun pulled on me in a road rage incident. I think thats it.

  33. I was shot at by a gangsters coming home one night from an indoor soccer game. Short story, they fired 3 rounds of .25 acp at me which I found the next morning. Cops did jack and s&$@ about it. Had cousins held up by gangbangers as well. Denver used to be pretty rough. I also had uncles in Vietnam and numerous great uncles fighting in Europe and the pacific in the last big one.

    • Yeah, I’ve been shot at 3x in Denver, just being a white guy in the wrong part of town. It’s a lot calmer now, I’m comfortable anywhere.
      During the day, anyway.

  34. I was robbed at gun point back in the 70s when I was driving a tow truck.
    I knew as soon as I saw him I was in trouble.
    He was wearing a heavy coat and ski mast on a warm summer night.

    On the other hand.
    I’m pretty sure there is three black guys who still remember that white guy with a wife and child.
    Or maybe they just remembered the rifle.
    Kept my wife safe though.

  35. Discounting veterans during wartime I find these numbers hard to believe. In Iraq, yeah shot at daily but stateside nope, not once in 52 years.
    Some of you guys/gals must live in or work in some pretty crappy areas and Army bases aren’t in the nicest neighborhoods.

  36. Other than Vets, I don’t know of anyone who has been shot or shot at. I suppose I live a sheltered life. I’ve also never been threatened by gun either. Well, I had an alcoholic step father, but that doesn’t count.

  37. I assume this to mean in civilian life rather than during time in the service. So, yes and yes. Unfortunately.

  39. I was maybe 6 or 7, my step-father’s brother threatened to kill our family in a domestic dispute. He then showed up with a handgun. Held at bay by step-father and neighbor. Later I was 19 at a house party doing stupid things with stupid people at stupid times. The hosts older brother comes home and shoots up the front lawn to clear the party out. Military service was luckily uneventful. Could hear people shooting, but weren’t taking fire. Used my blowout kit on a gangbanger in shot in the butt last month on my lunch break. Celox ribbon worked better than expected.

  40. At first, I thought this was a ridiculous stat. Half of Americans know someone who was shot? Bullsh….. oh wait. Yeah, I know two people who have been shot. One guy I work with was shot in the chest negligently by a friend when he was a kid. A friend of mine was shot with bird shot while hunting.
    So half is reasonable. So what does it mean? Not a fucking thing. I know several hundred people at work. I have dozens of friends. I have multiple family members, hundreds of acquaintances and several people I know that I can’t remember.
    All in all, it isn’t unreasonable to know a thousand people. So for half of that to know someone shot, or threatened is statistically…
    What a fucking stupid question.

  41. I’ve known 2 people that were murdered. 2 that killed themselves. 1 by gun, the other by hanging.

    The last time I was shot at was in 1987. I’ve been shot at and I’ve shot back. Does not include military service.

    By far the most of the people that I’ve known that died before their time were victims of tobacco, alcohol or drugs. Sometimes all three.

  43. 1999 car jacked at gun point in Venezuela. First time to ever see the front of a barrel that didn’t involve cleaning one.

  44. Let’s see I had one friend shot dead while I was in the Army. I had one friend shot accidentally in the knee by another friend. I had another friend accidentally shot himself through the finger with an air rifle (do airguns count? What about BB guns because that raises my total significantly.) I had an ex-sister in law kill herself with a handgun. I had a neighbor fire a gun over my head as a child because he did not like where we were legally riding our bikes.

    Does it count if you are hit by a ricochet? What if it causes injury?

  45. 100% of Americans know someone who had cancer.
    I know someone who was struck by lightning…twice.
    My son, mother-in-law, grandmother and my wife’s uncle are diabetic.
    I know someone who was run over by a car while riding a bicycle…wait, that was me.

    Well none of this involved a gun so it doesn’t matter. Because GUNS!

  46. Nearly all my male relatives WW1 & 2 Australian army veterans. At least six of them badly wounded.

    Myself- Pre army two accidental shootings by people being too casual with “unloaded” gun including one fatal.

    15 years Australian Army including time doing operations with US and British army.

    Post army one more fatal with “unloaded” .40 by friend who was drunk and died in front of his three under 10 children. Plus three suicides.

    Numerous threats when I was working as fraud investigator for a few years.

    I’m still pro gun and an active shooter but do wish people didn’t mix alcohol with firearms.

  47. Yes. Several. But I did grow up in Flint, MI. On two occasions I had friends who drove away from armed car jacking attempts. On a third occasion my sister-in-law had been shopping and drew the attention of a group of young men who got in their car and followed her into her driveway where my mother-in-law chased them off with her revolver. Another acquaintance of mine was shot by his wife when he walked in on her romantically entangled with another man. He divorced her shortly afterward.

  48. Back in the late 70s, my father and us boys were up in the hills of the local national forest gathering rock for a building project. Yeah, I’m pretty sure that was illegal. We were crossing a shallow creek when we came upon a camp full of white trash having one hell of a party (as a bona fide redneck I can make the “white trash” distinction). A fire plug of a man step in front of the truck as we were in the middle of the creek, pulled a big old gun out of his pants, pointed it at us and started yelling at us to turn around. Of course we couldn’t turn around.
    My dad paused for a moment and then opened the door and stepped out into the creek. I watched as he waded across, unarmed, straight up to the guy. I remember thinking he was either crazy or stupid or both. Fireplug guy was clearly high and putting on a show for his crew. Dad just walked straight up to him talking the whole time.
    When things looked their worst, someone yelled my dads name from amongst the party crowd. Out stepped an older version of fireplug guy. He walks up to the dude with the gun, pops him across the face and takes the gun. Dad and older fireplug guy shook hands and talked for a while. Turns out, that they had run liquor together in their younger days. When I asked dad what the older fellow had said, he told that he’d said “you should get your kids out of here.” We headed to another spot.
    For a long time I couldn’t understand what was going through my fathers head. Now, with kids of my own I think I understand. He was in tight spot without any good choices. He decided to put himself between the danger and his kids and to close the distance.
    I’m about the same age he was then, and I can say that you reach a point in life where dying for what you love is not an undesirable thing. Dad’s about 84 – he would have a very hard time crossing that creek – still, I think that the only thing he’s afraid of is dying in bed.

    • From one redneck to another, helluva story and thank you for sharing it. My ol’ man was a tough bird, too, Korean War vet, Depression-era sharecropper family, veteran of many fistfights (which I heard about from his peers, rarely from him) and probably much worse, bass-catchin’ fool, and passed on to me a love of the outdoors and much woods wisdom. Sadly, he did die in bed (emphysema, Lucky Strikes), and I miss him dearly, you made me think of him.

  50. My wife’s stepfather took a gun from her mother and shot and she bled out after he killed himself. She came out of her room 6 hours later wanting food(she was told to stay in her roomm but got hungry enough to come out) and found them, she was 11. The lawyers took everything from her and her marine brother.
    I did not have guns around when we got married, so we never discussed them. After I decided sobriety was better, I asked her about getting one for protection in our business. She said that she had always wanted one, but never wanted to ask me because I didn’t seem interested.
    We got a handgun, went and took some safety lessons, she is a great shot. She is just fine with it, even after all the tragedy in her life. She learned to get over it a long time ago and we now have more than a few guns. She feels much safer now, even when I am not around. She was scared at home at night when I worked, so I quit shift work when I should have got her a gun and training for protection – I never guessed that she would be okay with it.
    I needed tires for my truck and was going to sell one or two to pay for it. She said “NO!” and we found money for the tires – she said, “you only sell firearms to buy other firearms.” Dayum, I have a great wife.

  51. I’m a FF in NY ( not in NYC) I know a few FF who were shot, three on my Dept. one before he got hired, two after. One was shot after dropping his Mom off at her apartment ( mistaken ID) the other was also a vollenteer FF in Webster NY and was one of four FF ambushed , he took a .223 in the leg. One other was wounded and two killed In that attack, although I only knew the one .

    I know three guys that took birdshot in hunting mishaps , in two seperate incidents .

    Any FF that comes on the dept and went to a city school knows many who have been shot . I’ve seen more then one watch the news or read the paper and say, ” oh I know/ knew him .”

  52. My friends father was hit by a 30-06 while deer hunting in the early 80s. The guy fired into brush assuming it was a deer….it wasn’t. My friends father did two tours in Vietnam, was never shot. Deer hunting in upstate NY, he gets shot.

    I lived in washington dc (N.E. DC to be precise, not a place for anyone to live in 2005) Everyone I lived with had been held up at gunpoint at least once, two of them twice. We had 5 people in the house including myself. In fairness in 2005 this is pre heller, so every handgun was an illegal handgun from 1976-2010 automatically. We were all college students and a lot of these crimes were at night, but several were during daylight. DC was cowboys and indians and we didn’t have any guns. Thinking of it a kid in my class from Pittsburgh was shot by locals outside of a house party because they were told they couldn’t go in. All of this in NE DC. If you make it to North capitol street you can clearly see the dome of the capitol, and hear gunfire.

  53. I’ve been shot at to no ill effect, which was nice. And my boyhood best friend shot and killed his father, who was on the process of beating my buddy’s mom. No charges were filed, but how does someone live with that?

  54. Yep. Me. On both counts (shot at and threatened. Two different and unrelated events). And I am a surgeon, not a drug dealer. And I don’t go out at night.

  55. My brother in law and his wife were in a Bueno Aires pharmacist getting cold meds when 3 masked robbers came in and hearded everyone in the store into the back room area. They took all jewelry, cash and cellphones…no one was hurt but everyone thought it could have been worse…

  56. My first real girlfriend in highschool got abducted & murdered after she came back from college out-of-state to visit fam/friends. She went missing for a month, when found they couldn’t tell in which order she’d been beaten, strangled, stabbed, and shot. It took ten years before a guy I also went to school with confessed as part of a plea deal for a different crime…. although he was already in prison for 15-20.

    Another close highschool friend “committed suicide” with a shotgun in a large field behind his house, and was found two years later by a Golden playing fetch. But no shotgun was ever found.

    Besides that, have seen a couple gunfights erupt in my immediate AO; first in Saginaw, then Detroit. But escaping those places didn’t help much, just in Iraq they have RPGs. Caught an AK ricochet in the bottom of my front plate once while on the 50; we didn’t have fancy M1114s back then, I just sat on an A3 deuce bucket seat in hillbilly 3-sided armox steel box, bolted into the bed of a 998 soft-top.

  57. I was drawing a blank, but after reading RC and unknown’s comments, I remembered that my sister in law’s little sister killed her husband in the 1970s, one of my dad’s friends killed himself ten years ago, and one of my HS classmates killed himself last year…

    • Oh, and a friend of my college roommate’s was carjacked at gunpoint in the 1980s, it cost him a clapped out (back in high school it could do 0-60 in 50 seconds with four kids inside) VW Beetle.

  58. About 8 years ago I was sleeping in my house during my lunch break (lived across the street from work) and woke up because I heard 2 people talking. I was half asleep so I figured they had to be outside. Walked out of my bedroom to see a guy standing in the hall not 5 feet from me with my 2 bass guitars in his hands. I got mad, and he ran like a monster was chasing him. I heard his partner in the living room start running too, so I chased them out the front door but stopped at the top step because I didn’t want to go into a 2v1 fight. As I was yelling at them I realized the driver was yelling “pistola, pistola”. My first thought was “I don’t have a gun.” Then I noticed the passenger (the guy in the hallway) was hanging a handgun out the window. So, I flipped them off, yelled “fuck you!”, walked back inside and slammed the door behind me. Never been so mad in my life. After that is when I really changed my perspective on personal protection.

    Oh, and my great grandpa commited suicide with a gun, but that was before i was born. Also my wife’s grandfather was a WWII vet and was shot at, and I have 1 cousin who was shot at while deployed in afghanistan.

  59. I learned to hunt on public land so consequently I’ve been shot at quite a bit, in excess of 12 times over the years. I have also known a number of people who have shot themselves, one as recently as last fall. Although I must be somewhat unique statistically at least in that regard. When I was an independent oilman I shared a house with 4 other people all of whom eventually killed themselves, one in front of a room full of associates in what is now my partner’s house. Of the other 3 I believe the young lady was actually murdered given the circumstances, ie a single contact gunshot wound to the chest when alone with another individual in a remote location.

  60. My recollections are pitiful by comparison. Twice shot at by an air rifle, once up in hills above our neighborhood, and again sitting reading peacefully when I heard a Ting against the window. It was the boy over the road holding a rifle towards me. It had been him up in the hills as well. The men in white coats took him away. Later in my government job, I interviewed shady characters in various places including gang headquarters. Once I asked the cops about one guy I had recently been to visit, and the cops told me he was raided the day after I was there, and they had found numerous illegal weapons including machine guns and grenades. Only one time I was held at gunpoint, by an old guy nearly blind in a caravan. I just asked the questions, and he lowered the gun after I had finished. No real problem. Far more dangerous were the semi-naked women I was often called upon to visit. They put my career in jeopardy. Such temptations.

  61. My aunt, shot, and my uncle and my cousin, threatened, all in the gun control heaven known as Brazil. They have every law an anti could want and more, and yet, somehow, my aunt was still robbed and shot coming out of the bank one day. She survived and recovered, thankfully. In my cousin’s case, some guy who had a grudge against him came to the house looking for him. Fortunately, my uncle has been a gun owner for a long time himself, and I guess the guy didn’t like the idea of armed opposition.

    • I’ve been shot at once, held at gunpoint by a police officer at least once. (I say that counts. I felt threatened.)

      I’ve also been threatened/stabbed by a knife and attacked by a guy with a baseball bat. And I’ve known a LOT of guys who were very capable of injuring/killing with their bare hands. Truthfully, the few times I really thought someone might kill me, no weapons were involved.

      I was pretty dumb in high school….

  63. Two kids I knew in high school committed suicide — one with a .357, another with a shotgun (it was his mom that found him…can’t even imagine how horrible that would be).

    And the police pointed guns at me once when they thought my window washing crew was robbing a building. We had keys cause we needed to be in at 5 am before the sun hit the windows, but the sup’t forgot to turn the silent alarms off. Easily cleared up, as it was obvious that the guys with squeegees and buckets weren’t there to rob or vandalize, but it did elevate the heart rate a bit.

  64. My friend blew off his toe with a shotgun Goose hunting and I’ve been threatened twice via shotgun and one of those times a round was discharged over my head. Not ONE DAMN SECOND have I thought gun control would be a good idea and I never will. Viva La 2nd Amendment!!!

  65. After a military career, yes, quite a few. The number of bullet wounds I’ve encountered makes me really careful around guns.

  66. brought a girl to the family summer cottage late night once. the bike must have awoken the neighbor, who leveled his shotty at me from his bedroom window. i said, “it’s [me], mr. rawlings.” he laughed and admonished me for accessing my own property. damn good neighbor. after he moved we got ransacked twice, once by local teens and once by ‘coons, both times over the winter.

  67. I have lied to every pinhead progtard “research” survey monkey that I’ve ever actually talked to. Would ANYONE answer a gun related survey truthfully?? I thought not.

  68. Had a childhood friend commit suicide with a rifle in his parents garage..

    Had a female classmate that I had known since elementary school who was shot and killed at age 22 near Lake Como ( black ghetto ) in Fort Worth, Tx.

    Lastly a lesbian co-worker who shot herself through the roof of her mouth with a .357 magnum back in 1998.

    Incidentally, she and I had actually discussed the topic of suicide before and she said suicide ran in her family. Her last name was Adkisson which is the actual surname of the wrestling family once known as “Von Erich”. Three sons committed suicide.

    I am only guessing but:

    A) living in North Texas
    B) being named Adkisson
    C) “suicide runs in my family”
    D) actually committing suicide

    Leads me to suspect a strong familial link.

  70. Big city surveys (convenient sampling) show a much more violent state than whole-country or Fly-over country. Stats with no info on sampling are so much BS.

  71. Back in NYC in 1990. My best friend was murdered. Killed with a 25 caliber Zinc POS gun. The killer was caught but never went to trial. The only witness being a hooker drug addict. She wasnt considered reliable enough. The murderer did 90 days at Rikers, That was a long as they could hold the dirt bag. It was because of Bobbys death. I left NYC and got myself a full carry permit for NY State and NYC. I got the city endorsement because I still had to conduct business at the time in NYC. Money and connections is the only way NYC will issue a carry permit. That and $325 every 2 years.
    My connection was a NY State Supreme Court judge I knew at the time. Heck he even signed my permit. Not some lowly Family Court judge. Whom you usually practically have to bribe at the interview to get a carry permit. Or lie like a rug.
    Without his letter. Id have never gotten the NYC endorsement.

  72. I thought a few times, in places that I had to go, that “I’ve been shot at and missed and shit at and hit”.

  73. Plenty of times and plenty of my friends have been threatened. Once by a negligent discharge by my uncle with a Mossberg 500 (demonstrating the safety ironically), once by an asshat boyfriend of of my fiance’s roommate. Then most of my friend where I live at now live “colorful” lives and some have been shot, many threatened. My France’s sisters house just got shot up by some psycho. Gotta love Everett Washington…

  74. I’ve never been shot at or had to shot someone. Same for my family. And I hope I never have to.

  75. Yes. Shit happens some times sorry.
    This is why I carry, live in the middle of nowhere and keep a couple dogs around.

  76. Yes, yes, and yes.

    I haven’t the time or inclination to detail all the incidents.

  77. Knew a kid who was shoot by an “active shooter” in Arvada CO back in 07. He was lucky to survive.

  78. Yes. Uncle made a half inch hole in his upper arm in a hunting accident (muzzleloader).

    High school friend opted out at age 19 or 20 (12 gauge).

    Family friend has had a stump for a right hand for 40+ years (another hunting accident – shotgun this time ).

  79. Wife’s cousin blew his hand off, removed an eye and added a plate to his skull in a homemade fireworks accident.

  80. The only shootings I have witnessed in my 70 years on this earth are the ones staged by gun hating Hollywood types. Hope my good luck continues but I carry just in case.

  81. Almost got shot in the leg by a .30-06 ND point blank at the gun store once. Was just up at the counter paying for some ammo when fuckhead comes in looking to sell his rifle, takes it out of the case and BLAMMO!….. round in the floor about 2 feet beyond me. Had I been standing a couple steps back it would have hit me in the shin.

    He turns ghost white exclaiming that he checked it (bolt gun w/ internal magazine) and when he cycled the bolt and an empty case flies out I screamed at him “apparently fucking not!” and walked out of the store.

  82. My brother blew the palm of his hand off with a glock 19 while sleeping with his gun in hand.
    My cousin got murdered, shot in his head pointblank in a car, during a drug deal gone bad.
    I beat up my cousins abusive boyfriend for physically abusing her. Later on in the night he came back, did a drive by as i sat on porch. Then he got out, was 20 ft from me, said “ill f…ing kill u”, aimed the gun at me, shot 3 times. Missed and hit my friends’ moms car. The police pulled up as he held the gun. He ended up doing 4 yrs in prison. My cousin stayed with him. Made it very awkward at family parties, lol.

  83. Outside of my former work, no.

    But I also try to avoid stupid places, stupid people and stupid times.

  84. Neighbor boy shot his dad in the head while Dad was beating up his mother, again. Dad lived, son went in the army. Later he and my brother were both killed in combat in Vietnam, along with one of my high school classmates. I was shot at probably 3 times a week during my year, worked out better for me than most of the shooters, since I shot back by calling my friends to bring their 500 lb bombs and 750 lb cans of napalm. My next door neighbor later, who shared my job in Vietnam, got to be good friends before his sons were born. Later reestablished friendship in time for his 3rd son, a chronic drug abuser, to again demand to be enrolled in recovery program for another $10,000 of mom and dad’s retirement money, sent mom out of the house and then shot son and himself to death. Wife’s aunt and uncle, really wonderful folks, adopted 2 girls, 20 years later, one girl’s estranged husband murdered them and then offed himself. I guess that’s a bunch, but it’s been a long life.

  85. Three that I know of. I have a good friend who was mugged at gunpoint several years ago while with out his wife, and to this day they both remain virulently anti-gun because of it.

    An uncle who was pistol-whipped so hard ~24 years ago that the brain damage completely changed his personality and forced him to switch fields from computer science to mechanic work because he lost his ability and memories of how to work with computers and had to fall back on his lifetime of tinkering to make ends meet.

    And my stepfather is missing sections of two different fingers on one of his hands, which were shot off in a firefight. But that happened while he was on the job, so it wasn’t a random assault like the previous two.

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