how it feels to get shot

June 4, 2004 10:32 PM

How it feels to get shot. [via waxy] Each year, roughly 55,000 Americans survive firearm injuries. "People don't even get knocked backward when they get shot.. Unless hit in the head or the spine, the most common [immediate] reaction to getting shot is no reaction at all."
posted by stbalbach (43 comments total)

>"I guess someone was listening," Robbins says.

I love these little comments. Yes, it's very lucky you got shot ten times. That god of yours, always looking out.
posted by skallas at 11:30 PM on June 4, 2004

Whoa skallas, you might piss off the people who need crutches.
posted by Keyser Soze at 12:05 AM on June 5, 2004

what an intriguing article. if only the writing in my local paper were as thoughtful.
posted by kjh at 12:50 AM on June 5, 2004

'Tis but a flesh wound!
posted by loquacious at 3:19 AM on June 5, 2004

Thanks for posting this stbalbach. It hurt to read, but it seems to me that having as much people as possible really looking at and feeling what violence feels like for the victim is an essential factor in ending it.

And by the way, whatever helps a victim survive and heal is a Very Good Thing. Even if it makes skallas feel uncomfortable.
posted by disso at 3:26 AM on June 5, 2004

Ok, I know this is about to start a religion versus atheist war, so I want to explain my perspective on the whole matter (you know, as I am full of shit).

When Skallas made that comment, he is describing primarily that A: There is no God and B: It seems people who believe in a God will take any situation and conform the outcome to their beliefs. This is TRUE or FALSE. The eternal question.

When disso says "whatever helps a victim survive and heal is a Very Good Thing." He (she) is probably explaining that faith "can" promote ones health; that believing something is waiting for you after something terrible that happened is comforting and "can" make the situation less destructive, psychologically. This is generally TRUE, though can be argued naive. (again, subjective)

But to argue that there is or is not a God, even on an educated forum discussion, will leave both sides sore at the other for various subjective reasons. I ask that we lay off any more snarks on this thread.
posted by Keyser Soze at 4:10 AM on June 5, 2004

I got shot. Didn't hurt a bit. Just a big scar. No big deal.
posted by y6y6y6 at 4:12 AM on June 5, 2004

What a strange, terrifying country you people live in. Honestly, I think we ought to build a mile-high wall around the place just to keep you psycho bastards penned in!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:20 AM on June 5, 2004

Um, I think skallas was just making a small joke. Just because it's at the expense of theists doesn't mean it's there to spark a major religious debate.
posted by Freaky at 4:20 AM on June 5, 2004

"What a strange, terrifying country you people live in."

That's not a bug. It's a feature.
posted by y6y6y6 at 4:36 AM on June 5, 2004

Don't worry, stavros. We'll be bringing our guns to Korea soon enough.
posted by bingo at 8:52 AM on June 5, 2004

This is totally true, I got shot at in my neighborhood and didn't know I was hit until I got home, took off my jacket trying to figure out why there was a hole in it, and saw all the blood.
posted by milovoo at 8:56 AM on June 5, 2004

Yeesh - didn't think so many MeFites had been shot...
posted by jalexei at 9:10 AM on June 5, 2004

For more on what it feels like to get shot (including Mike Robbins speaking for himself, natch), try this This American Life episode, done in their (usual) inimitable style.
posted by hoboynow at 9:11 AM on June 5, 2004

(um, warning, Real Audio).
posted by hoboynow at 9:11 AM on June 5, 2004

I got shot with a BB gun once and it hurt like hell!
posted by mcsweetie at 9:15 AM on June 5, 2004

I got shot with a water pistol once and it was very embarrassing.
posted by ZachsMind at 9:30 AM on June 5, 2004

I have never been shot, but I have witnessed shootings before. Its pretty amazing how a clean shot to the forehead sprays blood all over a window, almost like a watermelon.

(Bar owner down the street started waiving a gun around... police showed up, bartender walked out and pointed at cop. Sniper took the only shot fired.)
posted by Keyser Soze at 9:42 AM on June 5, 2004

What a strange, terrifying country you people live in. Honestly, I think we ought to build a mile-high wall around the place just to keep you psycho bastards penned in!
posted by clavdivs at 10:15 AM on June 5, 2004

Yeesh - didn't think so many MeFites had been shot...

Some are probably thinking of a few MeFites that should be shot...

Yours truly excepted, of course... heh.
posted by bwg at 10:25 AM on June 5, 2004

"ouch... I been shot!" [/Buckwheat]
posted by scody at 10:27 AM on June 5, 2004

I remember reading about a school shooting here in Detroit (big surprise, eh?)...one victim said she didn't know she'd been shot until she went to the restroom and took down her pants to sit on the toilet - she saw blood on her clothing and then noticed the hole in her hip.
posted by Oriole Adams at 10:39 AM on June 5, 2004

From just this morning: Most Minnesota Gun Deaths Are Self-Inflicted.
posted by gimonca at 10:45 AM on June 5, 2004

I've never seen anyone shot, never been shot, and never even been in a situation where someone might end up getting shot.

I like Canada.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:05 AM on June 5, 2004

Even more interesting are the *four times as many* people who are injured or killed with edged weapons than guns, each year on average, in the US.

Their injuries, slicing across multiple capillaries, are very difficult to treat, accounting for a much higher mortality rate.

Granted, they don't have that unnerving loud noise, but the only people who don't feel as nervous when somebody waves a knife around, as when someone waves a gun around, are those that don't appreciate knives enough.

Just a little nick could be the end of you.
posted by kablam at 11:31 AM on June 5, 2004

If being shot does not hurt, then I might have to rethink my plan to shoot all of the people I don't like. What is the point if they won't even know I shot them? Damn. Oh, what if I use a bow and arrow? I bet that would hurt!
posted by bargle at 11:39 AM on June 5, 2004

I've never seen anyone shot, never been shot, and never even been in a situation where someone might end up getting shot.

Same here. I like the United States!
posted by kindall at 11:44 AM on June 5, 2004

Keyser and Freaky: I'm not a theist either, and didn't intend to be snarky, nor to spark a religious debate, which thankfully hasn't happened.
I was objecting to the fact that the first comment in a thread about a major societal problem happened to be an off-topic snark.
I don't see how my inference that this was caused by a feeling of uncomfort on skallas' part might of itself be construed as snarky.
posted by disso at 11:59 AM on June 5, 2004

Even more interesting are the *four times as many* people who are injured or killed with edged weapons than guns, each year on average, in the US.

Does this include self-inflicted accidental injuries?
posted by Armitage Shanks at 12:36 PM on June 5, 2004

disso, chill, it was just a humorous observation.

"Thank god only 3 out of 4 of my children were killed in the accident!"

I see this all too often its just funny at this point.
posted by skallas at 12:45 PM on June 5, 2004

There's so much mythology around guns and gunshots. "People don't get thrown backward", indeed: Think of the physics of it for just a second, and it becomes amazing that anyone would think they should.

It's true, we do live in a frightening country in many ways, not least because we expend such effort and psychic energy to glorify this killing device and mythologize its properties. Bizarro physics like big men getting blown backward several feet by a hit from a shotgun. Mythic properties like the "stopping power" of bullets. Mystic faith in ideas like home defense weapons to save lives.

I've had many a debate with pistol owners about the concept of "stopping power." (Curiously, the subject never seems to come up with people who shoot deer with high-powered hunting rifles...) They want to believe in the concept of instant stopping power; they say things like "if you get hit with a .45, you will go down." I actually had a guy in an online forum tell me that a close range impact from a .45 ACP round to a kevlar vest would likely cause death from hydrostatic shock -- claimed to have been told that by an expert.

That's when I knew the guy was a pathological liar.

It seems that the more you invoke physics or quote from actual accounts (for example, a famous one from an old Army study tells of a Hong Kong "Riot Squad" soldier putting six .45 ACP rounds into a robber, and then having to beat him senseless with the pistol to stop him), the more adamant the defenders of the gun become. "Have you ever fired a gun?" they ask. "Have you ever actually fired a pistol? Then how can you know?"

So: My experience of firing a gun would change basic physics? My experience of firing a gun would mean that all the first person accounts of behavior after gunshot wounds are mistaken, and the movies and the cheap novels are right?

I'll stick with the physics and the science and the first person accounts. At least if we lay bare the real way these things work, we have a shot at understanding the real reasons people love them.
posted by lodurr at 12:45 PM on June 5, 2004

They really should have talked about hydrostatic shock. They kind of hinted toward it with their "wave" comment, but HS is what usually kills people when hit by powerful weapons.

Hydrostatic shock is the effect commonly believed to be caused by a high velocity object entering a body, such as a bullet fired from a weapon.

The shock is described in the following way—the object will cause ordinary damage by the actual penetration, but also pass a shock wave in the surrounding tissue due to the energy of the slowing object being passed into the largely liquid material of the body (65%+). The shock wave, or sometimes competing shockwaves from multiple impacts, are believed to cause greater damage than the object itself, sometimes enough to rupture internal organs and fracture bone. Especially large objects are believed to cause hydrostatic shock by the closure of the cavity created by the object's passage.

Interesting, according to this site there seems to be a lot of controversy regarding the existance of HS.
posted by skallas at 12:50 PM on June 5, 2004

Sure skallas, I didn't mean it as picking on you. I do see your point, even while I also think that comment was beside the, um, point. I wouldn't start praying to the Virgin Mary either if I just got shot 13 times, but from the guy's story it looked to me like it helped him survive at that particular moment. Just saying that as far as I'm concerned that's nothing to be sneezed at.
posted by disso at 1:14 PM on June 5, 2004

Some of you are missing the point, namely stav. What's crazy about the US is how we've fetishized firearms and mythologized them. It's not necessarily so crazy that they're legal...because they're not as dangerous as people imagine them to be. Yeah, they're very dangerous. But, no, they don't hurt and kill people as instantaneously as they do in the movies. Far from it.

A good example of how these misconceptions can distort public policy is the Amadou Diallo case where the chief piece of information everyone remembered was that he was shot 41 times by the NYC police. The thing is, though, is that if you are going to shoot someone and want to to stop them, you can't shoot them once. They keep coming. As we see from this article, often they don't even know they've been shot. But movies would have us believe that a single shot even to an extremity will knock a person down and instantly incapacitate them.

On the gun-control side of the fence, this view of guns puts them in the realm of mystical things to be feared. On the gun-rights side of the fence, this view of guns vastly overstates how useful they really are for, say, "home defense". How many people have shot an intruder and then been surprised to find the person running over to them, taking the gun away, and shooting them with it? Lots. If you want to stop someone, aim for the head, as G Liddy famously advised. Unfortunatly, the head is not a very big target and the average handgun owner who keeps one in the home for defense is not that good of a shot.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 12:09 AM on June 6, 2004

Are you people saying that acclaimed rap superstar 50 Cent is is a wuss?! He will put a hydrostatic wave in your ass!
posted by Stan Chin at 1:43 AM on June 6, 2004

I've never been shot, but (and you'll be disappointed if you're expecting a tough-guy story) back in sixth grade I fell on my knee while chasing my dog and I walked around for 5 minutes or so before I felt something damp on my ankle -- I had ripped a 2-inch C-shaped gash in my knee and my jeans were soaked with blood down to my shoe. This cut was so bad that I could see my kneecap and a bunch of little yellow globs of what I guess was fat. You'd think one would feel that sort of thing right away.

Thankfully in addition to the shock I think a lot of the nerves that would have caused me pain were severed by the cut (the area inside the "C" is numb to this day). It did smart when they poured iodine in the wound before stitching me up, though.
posted by boredomjockey at 1:46 AM on June 6, 2004

Off topic about feeling the bullet or not, but regarding gun violence in the U.S.: basically, this is why I left. Within the space of three years, one person was murdered in a hold-up on my street; in fact, right next door to my building. In the same year there were drunks shooting at each other in the street directly in front of my apartment. Next apartment - another murder by shooting two blocks away; our favorite restaurant, three blocks away, being held up at 11 p.m. by multiple guys with automatic weapons, and then months later, the same restaurant being robbed early morning when only the staff was there. They killed everybody and piled them all in the walk-in refrigerator - one person managed to survive and identify the killers. I won't go on with other scary stuff - this is enough to give you the general idea. We would even leave town for New Year's Eve, because the number of people shooting guns up in the air meant that at least one person (if not many) were hospitalized or killed from the bullets inevitably making the trip back down.

And this was not even in a bad-side-of-town environment, but in the very heart of a very popular tourist area. I used to think about physical danger every single day, and I had a mini-epiphany one Christmas when I was trying to decide what to get my husband as a gift. There was a nice leather jacket on sale that I really liked, but decided not to buy for him because I was afraid someone would rob and kill him to get it.

I threw away my career, it's been years since I've seen my friends and family, and, assuming I had survived, I would be making lots of money now instead of wondering if we can even pay the phone bill, but the relief of not having to think about this every single day is enormous. I don't think I could do it again.

I love the U.S., but having lived both in a gun-loving society and a country where casual ownership of guns is unheard of, I have to say that there is a huge difference, and the whole American pop-cult-gun-fetish thing is just insane.
posted by taz at 2:49 AM on June 6, 2004

taz; I've also lived in a couple of countries that lack a gun culture and I can thoroughly recommend it. But to be balanced, when I was in Australia years ago, there was a somewhat large percentage of certain people carrying knives, altough I believe that has now been made illegal.

However, I believe the bigger problem is the American culture of ego and aggression. This is a more fundamental problem than the wide availability of weapons.
posted by Meridian at 3:49 AM on June 6, 2004

Surely you're right, Meridien, but the two seem to be coming from the same source, and the combination becomes seriously, homicidally sociopathic. This bizarre condition is fed and nurtured by the entertainment industry, which also hungrily gnaws on the carcasses of the dead for inspiration, and then ports it out to the rest of world. Nice.
posted by taz at 4:08 AM on June 6, 2004

Some of you are missing the point, namely stav.

You say I'm missing the point (while apparently missing the fact that I was indulging in a jocular quip, rather than actually trying to make a point), and then go on to bloviate out of your ass like this :

What's crazy about the US is how we've fetishized firearms and mythologized them. It's not necessarily so crazy that they're legal...because they're not as dangerous as people imagine them to be. Yeah, they're very dangerous. But, no, they don't hurt and kill people as instantaneously as they do in the movies. Far from it.

Give me a break, and give me a shovel. Who's with me on the wall-building team?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:33 AM on June 6, 2004

Stav, I didn't express myself very well. Keep in mind that I quite strongly favor gun-control and think that the NRA types are more than a bit nuts. But my point was that what guns actually do to people is vastly overstated in the popular imagination, particuarly in regard a) self-defense (because there are a whole bunch of other weapons that will instantly incapacitate an attacker); and b) their supposed instant lethality as it relates to the idea that they're really, really qualitatively distinct weapons and quite awful. I was trying to point out that it's revealing that the first mythologizing plays to the pro-gun crowd's sentiments, the second to the anti-gun crowd's sentiments. I think that most people make guns out to be more than they really are. There is a visceral, non-rational reaction to them.

And what I meant about missing the point is that the article is all about how guns don't have the effect on people that we think they do.

I do think this is important on both sides of the gun-control fence. I worry a lot about how many people, as I said above, find out that their gun doesn't save them from an intruder or attacker (because it doesn't really slow them down, unless shot in the head or heart). I worry also about things like the Diallo case where it very well may not be the case that the police firing 41 shots into a person is excessive and brutal. It may, in fact, be prudent. Whether or not they should be firing the shots in the first place (and I don't think in this case they should have) is another question. But the 41 shots completely dominated the discourse on that matter.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:09 AM on June 6, 2004

My two cents:

Part I: One summer night in 1997, I was whiling away the last few hours of my short stint staying at my cousin's Chelsea second-floor apartment between semesters at NYU, surfing the Web as I was wont to do, when I heard several loud popping noises out on the street, like firecrackers but somehow more serious-sounding.

I thought to myself, is that what I think it is? Should I go out and investigate? I looked out the window and saw someone throwing a handgun-sized object onto the ground and running off. So I spent several long minutes, thinking about what to do, wondering if I should risk getting involved, before I decided that the stand-up thing to do was to go out and see what happened. By this time, at least 15 minutes had passed since the shots were fired, so the danger of being caught in any crossfire seemed relatively low.

There were already some cops a little further up the block, so I went over to them and told them what I'd seen. It turns out that I'm a crappy witness - I only recalled three or four shots being fired, but the cops had already recovered nine shells. Also, someone had apparently already come back and recovered the weapon by the time the cops got there. Also, I was leaving New York two days after that night, so I wouldn't even be around to testify, but since I was such a crappy witness - other people who were there had seen more and more accurately - I guess it all worked out in the end. Except for whoever got shot - because I was too prudent/freaked out to run out onto the street right away, the victim had already been taken away by the time I stepped outside, and all that was left was a bloodstain on the pavement.

Part II: It's eerie how many men I've met in the last six months in Buffalo who have killed people. Three, in case you were wondering. They are not close friends; they have all been work associates at two different companies. Two of them are middle-aged, and all have been quite friendly and jovial, even when they offhandedly mention those guys they shot (plural, in each man's case) in their sordid youth. It's strange to try and mentally reconcile the fact that they seem pretty innocuous with the idea that they've taken someone's life on more than one occasion, and don't mind telling you all about it. I suppose, though, that with 10,000 gun homicides in the United States every year (and more than that in earlier decades), someone must be doing all that shooting.

Part III: No, the police should not have been firing the shots at Amadou Diallo in the first place. (By the way, they fired 41 shots, but Diallo was "only" hit 19 times.) There were at least four officers present at the time - the four who were on trial - all of whom, I understand, are issued flashlights. Could not one or two of them have pulled out that flashlight to better illuminate Diallo and what he might be pulling out of his pocket, since they had more than enough guns to cover him? Also, they made the mistake of thinking that, because they were looking for a really evil, dangerous guy (a serial rapist), any guy they came upon fitting the vague description of the attacker was quite possibly also an evil, dangerous guy. Black male, about this tall, walking around at night? Yeah, that's unusual in the South Bronx. </derail>
posted by skoosh at 2:59 PM on June 6, 2004

Taz -

I threw away my career, it's been years since I've seen my friends and family, and, assuming I had survived, I would be making lots of money now instead of wondering if we can even pay the phone bill, but the relief of not having to think about this every single day is enormous. I don't think I could do it again.

I think it's sad that you threw away your career and close relationships with your friends and family because you couldn't get past the idea that America isn't like this everywhere. You had a spate of bad luck or lived in a bad area. Count me in too, as one of those Americans who have never been around gun violence in any capacity.
posted by agregoli at 10:47 AM on June 10, 2004