Question: How many pro-gunners know someone who's been shot?

Or otherwise been a victim of gun-related violence?

I'll start - Two people I knew have died from gunfire. The first was a step-cousin. The official story was he was playing Russian Roulette at age 15. Nobody believed that line. He committed suicide.

The second was a coworker who was known to have psychiatric and personal problems. He was a former Navy man. The official story distributed at work was that he had "a tragic accident involving a firearm" while alone on the beach at 1:00 AM. Obviously another suicide.

I don't believe either of those people would still be alive today even if guns had never been invented.

Who's next?

On edit: I just remembered, while I was in high school a friend was robbed at gunpoint during a drug deal gone bad. Nobody was hurt.

My second cousin, shot dead in Brooklyn in 1982 in an apparent illegal drug transaction gone bad. I was 11 at the time I found out. They found him in his car in some back street. We knew it was a drug transaction because that's what he was doing with his life. Still unsolved.

My relative-in-law (my MIL's partner's sister's husband), whom I never got to meet, was killed in the early '90's during a late night home invasion. I met his widow (the MIL's partner's sister) at my wedding. The husband was shot dead while lying next to her in bed. The home invader burst into their bedroom at 0-dark-30, and when the husband rose up to confront the invader he was shot. Still unsolved.

At least three come to mind, all accident or suicide. I also did see a man shot who survived. I've even had one pointed in my face! Still I am not opposed to guns, although I don't own one at the moment.

I am ignorant on this subject, fortunately.

I have experience live fire though! And it is pretty creepy, bullets actually emit a high pitched whistle when they zing past!

A kid on an uncontrolled shooting range was shooting a rifle in my general direction. He wasn't following safe gun handling rules. I didn't like that very much.

The .223 and 7.62 crack when they pass overhead.

So does 8 mm Mauser, I know from personal experience.

Gotta wear hearing protection when pulling targets in the pits.

Both committed suicide.

To be completely honest I believe it is possible that both might still be alive if not for the fact that they had guns easily available.

To be completely honest I believe it is possible that both might still be alive if not for the fact that they had guns easily available.

I have a friend who is under treatment for chronic severe depression. When he was first diagnosed, he immediately disposed of the three firearms he owned.

I came to the opposite conclusion in the case of the two suicides I knew personally. Especially my coworker who was 34 years old - He went to great lengths to conceal his deep depression from family, friends, and acquaintences. If he didn't have a gun he would have figured out another way. Nobody who knew him doubts that.

including myself.

I only know a couple of people who've been shot, one police, one military. Our new (Democratic) mayor is a retired police captain. Before he made captain, on one occasion he entered a house on a call and was struck by a .357 Magnum round fired from the room upstairs through the floor. The bad guy went to jail. Our future mayor's injuries were not life-threatening.

One was a high school friend that was shot to death at a party, over a girl. This was before graduation.

Number two was myself. I took a load of .22 LR ratshot 15 feet. The only real injuries were a pellet stuck in a knuckle and another that had to be removed from my eye. I still see fine to this day. I was lucky in that respect.

Mostly through my experience in the military and as an EMT.

2 guys from my High School homeroom are dead from gunfire

One guy had a serious drug problem and killed himself. I don't know the details but I suspect that he would be dead regardless of whether guns were invented.

The other guy, sat right next to him in homeroom had just joined the Indianapolis Colts defense. Unfortunatly was in a bad area of town and got blocked in by some punk. He hit the horn and the punk walked up to his window and shot him dead.

Been several cousins, distant cousins or high school mates killed by gunfire.

As sad as those are, all the situations were either suicidal, or in violent situations and would have turned out badly regardless.

One was a suicide while the guy was dusted...he had enough problems that I don't think he would have survived that long anyway.

A buddy of mine also was shot when we got into sort of a brawl with some other guys. One of them had pulled out a .22 revolver and shot my buddy in the leg...all it really did was piss him off though. We wound up beating the hell out of the guy who had fired the gun. In case anyone is wondering, these guys jumped us for being in the "wrong" neighborhood.

I've had a gun pointed at me once and another guy sort of "show" me his gun during an altercation. My mother was once caught in crossfire in a White Castle but she wasn't hit at all and I once witnessed a gun fight in a movie theater...and no, I don't remember what the movie was!!!

I know of three acquaintances who died of gunshot wounds: both of the people involved in a murder-suicide; and another man who killed himself in an unrelated incident.

No -- wait -- actually, one of my sister's friends shot herself to death as well. My sis was really distraught over that. That makes four that I can think of off the top of my head, and I'm only counting deaths. I can't swear that my list is exhaustive. It's just that firearms are such common tools of suicide, and my state has a fairly high suicide rate.

:(


Mary

A high school classmate of mine, or someone one year ahead of me, was shot apparently for having the wrong skin color (so said the police) in a bad part of Los Angeles during his freshman year at UCLA. His wound was superficial and he made a full recovery.

A very close friend of mine was shot and killed last year.

His brother and I are still FIRM believes in RKBA!

There were a few who posted derogatory remarks in the original thread posted regarding his death.
For those who did... F.O.!

...comitted suicide with a revolver.

My best friend, shot in the face with a 45. He was responding to a accident, when he got there the driver shot him. The driver was 17.

My nephew put a shot gun in his mouth, he was 15.

Another dropped his pistol, the round went through his left lung. He survived.

I took a round from a AK47 behind my left ear , lost all hearing in my left ear, most of my sight in my left eye. Discharged in 72

He was held up by 2 black teenagers. They wanted his wallet, and then shot him. He died 2 weeks later.

He was held up by 2 black teenagers.

Not Negroes With Guns, surely! (And here I thought, if I may borrow a voice and say something outlandish as if it were worth taking seriously, that the effect of USAmerican gun control measures was to keep African-Americans disarmed.)

Did you not want to tell us their height, weight and shoe sizes too? What, just their colour?

Shall we assume that your friend was white ... and that you also are?


In other news, I'm curious about the timeframes involved in the cases reported here.

The two firearms deaths in which I knew the people personally (the father of the depressed, disabled 13-year-old who shot himself with dad's hunting rifle was my, uh, intimate partner, but I never knew the child; the woman who was murdered by her sister's estranged husband was my client) took place 15 years apart, and the most recent one of the two was over 15 years ago.

That's two such deaths that I know of personally in, oh, a half-century, spent in communities spread out over 500 miles, including one very large and one large city, two medium-sized cities and a couple of small towns. One death was in a small town where hunting was common, and so hunting weapons were present in many homes; the other was in a large city and involved a handgun illegally acquired by a dangerous and desperate individual.

I suspect that the multiple shootings that have touched some people's lives happened in a much shorter time period and maybe a smaller geographic area.

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Most all gun control has racist roots in keeping guns out of the hands of blacks.

The KKK and the gun control zealots have much in common.

I needed a good snicker.

And of course I can always count on my little friends around here to come up with the kind of non-sequiturial stuff that brings on those snickers.

Funny how there's so much gun control in Canada, and so few black people. And how the most white (and racist) regions of the country ... like, rural Alberta ... are where gun control is most fervently hated.

.

Enjoy.

hahaha, smarties.

Like M&Ms, only better. G'head, have a few.

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My best friend in high school shot himself with a .380 at age 20.

A good family friend shot himself with a .357 in 86.

A jr. high student who was friends with one of my step-daughters was killed by firearm while hunting.

A deputy I know was shot under the vest with a revolver last year and quit the pursuit moments before passing out. He is the one of the four who survived.

On edit...Our neighbor shot his four year-old daughter while playing with the shotgun. She lived but required serious shoulder surgery.

All together now:

Every gun is loaded.