Shot by a handgun

December 21, 2010 8:52 AM

What it feels like to be shot by a handgun.
posted by nam3d (21 comments total)

My dad is an ER doctor. One of the more common descriptions of being shot is "like a white-hot poker was shoved through your body and left there."
posted by jedicus at 8:58 AM on December 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Looks like Hollywood was wrong.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 9:00 AM on December 21, 2010

Thin FPPs feel like a white-hot poker was shoved through your body and left there.
posted by punkfloyd at 9:00 AM on December 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'm pretty sure this post will be in red when I come back.
posted by exlotuseater at 9:01 AM on December 21, 2010

No more inside?
posted by Edgewise at 9:02 AM on December 21, 2010

It's more painful than an FPP derived from Yahoo! Answers.
posted by Frank Grimes at 9:02 AM on December 21, 2010

How is bullet formed.
posted by Threeway Handshake at 9:03 AM on December 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

How is bullet formed.

I make mine out of silver.

I have werewolf issues.
posted by quin at 9:04 AM on December 21, 2010

I understand that the individual responsible for shooting someone through the heart gives love a bad name.
posted by brain_drain at 9:05 AM on December 21, 2010 [4 favorites]

like a white-hot poker was shoved through your body and left there.

I got a ricochet bullet in the foot about 25 years ago. This description sounds about right, except it's missing the feeling of electrical sparks running through your body and lots of sweating. Funny thing is, the hole doesn't hurt much. Everything around the hole hurts like hell.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 9:05 AM on December 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Missing the "deletedpost" tag.
posted by etc. at 9:07 AM on December 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Ooh, I hate when that happens!
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 9:08 AM on December 21, 2010

I had to learn to deal with having little control over my bowels, having to learn how to do a 'bowel program' with suppositories, and the fact that I had no feeling in my groin--meaning no future physical sexual feelings, and no ability to masturbate--and still having a huge sex drive... how do you like that?--I had almost no way to relieve tension, escept exciesize, for endorphin release, and taking my pain meds. What made it worse was, before I was shot, at age 16, I had never had sex, and never had a girlfriend, eventhough I can say honestly I am, and have long been, a very attractive man.
posted by Avenger50 at 9:10 AM on December 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Motherfucker gets in there like a pinball - rip your ass up.
posted by exogenous at 9:12 AM on December 21, 2010

The heat is the big thing, the heat and smoke. And yeah, it's weird how it doesn't really hurt. That episode of Radiolab where they talk to the guy who almost lost his leg thanks to a boat blade and he says it's strange how you don't feel it at all when it's that serious is spot on. I mistakenly thought for years that meant I just had a really high threshold for tolerating pain and then realized not feeling extreme trauma is the body's normal stress response.
posted by ifjuly at 9:14 AM on December 21, 2010

Twenty percent of Vancouver is currently nursing collateral wounds from shootings gone bad, the rest of us expect to be caught up sometime early in the new year, so this is timely. Thanks.
posted by Keith Talent at 9:14 AM on December 21, 2010

Handguns don't shoot people, people shoot people.
posted by spicynuts at 9:16 AM on December 21, 2010

I suppose I will never know what it is like to be inside a woman--to actually FEEL it at all--or orgasm therein.

He should post that question to Google Answers.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 9:18 AM on December 21, 2010

* throws person at spicynuts at 4000 feet per second *
posted by everichon at 9:18 AM on December 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Don't know what being shot feels like, but when I was 13 I was stabbed in the back by a friend with the 3" blade of a jackknife (inadvertently). It punctured my right lung. The stab itself was like a pinprick, a quick, sharp, not very big pain. I was a few blocks from home, so I elected to walk there and several friends followed me. As I walked, the air escaped from my lung, some of it through the wound, and some of it into the pleural space, collapsing my lung in the process. Now this HURT. I don't mean hurt, but HURT. It got more and more difficult to breathe, the pain grew and grew, until I staggered into my home with the aid of my friends and slumped into the nearest chair while they went to alert my mother. She at first thought they were joking and laughed when she saw my blood-stained shirt, thinking it was ketchup and part of a prank. When she saw my face, she realized it wasn't and whisked me to the hospital a mile away in our trusty Ford LTD Country Squire. There I received a chest tube to drain the air from the pleural space and a stitch to close the relatively small wound in my back. As I rested, the pain subsided, and I eventually became a celebrity at my junior high school for about a week. Girls came to visit me in the hospital during my three day stay that would never have given me the time of day before. So, on balance, it was all worth it.
posted by Mental Wimp at 9:24 AM on December 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

Guns don't kill people, gaping holes in vital organs kill people.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:28 AM on December 21, 2010