Shots Fired!

[Filo McShoe]

What I’ve seen when shots were fired.
I’ve been present 2 times when shots were fired, both times in Denver and a bar was there.
One other I know of but wasn’t there and wasn’t at a bar.
One was attempted murder the other 2 were just stupidity at full steam.

1st one I was on a bar stool having a beer when a guy walks in walks up to the guy a couple of bar stools down and shoots him in the back, turns around and walks out. Guy that got shot never saw it coming falls to the floor there was no defensive shooting guy was just shot period. Myself and some of my fellow bar patrons figure maybe our bar tabs would wait and exit via the side door. The shooter walks by (maybe should have waited and paid the bar tab after all) gets in a car and drives off.
I make a statement to the police that was about as useful as not making a statement. Guy was medium height, weight, build, brown hair medium length, and I didn’t see the gun.

2nd shooting I’m playing SP augmentee on Lowery AFB base after a drug bust kind of cleared out their ranks. Bar fight outside the airmen’s club. I was riding with the assistant flight chief we pull up and she runs up and grabs this young Marine from behind, he spins decks her, and takes off running. I take off after him pretty damn sure the way this guy is running I’m never going to catch him. SP flight chief pulls up in his car next to me stops I’m still running, he pulls his M15 .38 and shoots. I hit the ground thinking there must be something more to this than I’ve seen and wondering why the buttons on my shirt are so thick because I want to get lower to the ground if people are shooting. No one was hit.
Turns out the female assistant flight chief and the flight chief had been playing house and he was pissed someone hit his girlfriend so he shot at them. Stupid end of an AF career.

Other shooting again in Denver was a friend of mine had fixed up his van and put an alarm system in it. He’s watching TV hears the alarm grabs a single action .357 goes running down the hall, slips, falls, gun goes bang right next to his head, and I’d bet his ears are still ringing today.

2 ex-wives and these shooting all in Denver are why I live in Florida now.

 

[HOUSTON RICK]

When carrying too much into the kitchen through the backdoor after a shopping trip to Academy, a plastic bag ripped and a box opened and three federal 22 lr rounds hit the floor. Two went off and the flying casings put small nicks in the wallboard. Too fast to ruin my underwear. Fortunately, I was the only one home. Lesson learned, carry ammo very carefully. I have been lucky and not witnessed accidental discharges or use of guns in a crime.

 

[Skeet 028]

I have been around a couple of shoot outs . Scariest was when a fellow dropped an old model Superblackhawk. Went off and blew a hole through the lamp in the room. Luckily I wasn't sitting real close to the lamp. The shoot outs they were shooting away from me. Wonder why gun fghts happen in bars so often? One reason I quit going to them I guess

 

[CCHGN]

Been shot at twice and was not armed. Learned that you CAN dodge bullets. 1st time , I was in the USMC at LTA Tustin ( socal) and delivered pizza at nights( 1983). They had hot trucks (little Nissan trucks with an oven on the back). We had to park on the street , in front of the houses, so as not to leak oil on their driveway. I took 3 large pizzas up to the house, there was a mini van in the driveway and lights on in the house, so I went up and rang the door bell. No answer, again, no answer. I looked through front window, didn't see anyone. House looked empty. So, as not to waste any time( nor let the pizzas get cold) I went back to the truck. As I stepped off the porch, the side door of the van opened up and 3-4 Mexicans stepped out. The "leader," in front said," GEEVE ME your money!". I kept walking( stepped the pace up) and said, "I don't have any money!". He pulled a pistol and repeated the demand. ON pure instinct, I tossed the pizzas onto the ground, at their feet. I kid you not, the other 3 stopped and picked up the pizzas. I ran to the tuck. The one with pistol chased after me, shooting. I ducked and ran around the truck. so here's me and this Mexican, running around the truck, him shooting and me ducking and running. The BEST sound in the World is BANG, BANG, BANG, CLICK CLICK. HE quickly walked back to the van. I just stood up, got to my door and yelled, Adios.....!! and drove away. The 2nd time was 4 yrs later, I was out of the USMC and back home in KY, working at my Dad's Auto Glass shop. Now, the County was dry, so we got our Alcohol at the Bootlegger. So I was taken and introduced to the local Bootlegger, the 1st time. The 2nd time, I attempted to go alone. I got to the door of the trailer and knocked. Someone opened the door slightly, but quickly shut it. Next thing I know, the door opens and a pistol is coming out the door. Now, I don't know how fast it was, but it seemed like it was in slow motion. Now, in KY, they have 55 gal drums in the front yard , for burning paper and debris,. etc. I instinctively ran to the burn barrel, bear hugged it, picked it up and put it between me and the revolver. Again, the best sound in the World, is BANG, BANG, BANG,CLICK, CLICK. The rounds were going into the barrel, but it was 2/3 full of ashes, so not one went through. I dropped the barrel and ran to my truck. I never went back and started carrying that day( 1989). Been carrying ever since.

 

[Ingramite]

When I was on the street we had a saying
"Shot at and missed, S#it at and hit"
It was a reference to department and city politics.

Snipers in the upper floors and roof tops of the public high rise housing projects were my worst fears. Luckily they were all lousy shooters.

My closest brush with having to take out a shooter happened on a hot Summer night. We responded to a call for "shots fired". When we were just a few blocks out the dispatcher advised that our call was now a "shooting".

"B" addresses were always in the back. So we glided to the curb without lights or sirens and walked down a dark breezeway between two buildings to find a cold water walk up flat with a railed gallery on the second floor. On the gallery, directly in front of the door we were looking for stood our shooter.

The lady held some old revolver pointed at the door, with her back to us. I yelled for her to drop the gun, police.....or some equally inspirational message.

At that instant everything kicked into slow motion. I realized what I must do if she spun around with that muzzle still elevated. Split seconds hung like hours. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears as I leveled my sights on her.

Just then my partner broke the silence with the rack of the 870. He was standing there right next to me and that sound was like sticking your finger in a light socket.

Thank God for that sound. I believe it saved her life. The revolver dropped to the gallery floor.

It was a domestic dispute. She fired 4 shots through the door, killing her common law husband.

 

[ParadiseRoad]

...I've never been shot at...but I have been held at gun point...

...I was sitting minding my own business in the parking lot of a cafe that was across the street from the port of entry in Dumont Colorado...

...two sheriffs deputies pull up...one from each side...and tell me to get out of the car...hands up...

...they frisk me and search the car...and tell me that a truck driver was claiming I had been following him...and that I had a gun...

...this was before I started routinely carrying a gun in the car...that came later after a car chase I was involved in...

...they check my ID and realize I'm a local and my story checks out...

...truck driver apparently had a drug problem and was imagining things...

...thinking back on it...I'm lucky I didn't get shot reaching to unfasten my seat belt without announcing my intentions...

...also interesting that the deputies didn't check for a gun under the bedding of my two Basset Hounds who were in the back of my jeep...

 

[Skeet 028]

Isn't it amazing how thick those buttons are? Keep you sticking up...way up ...in harms way! Went to a bar fight one night..20 some shots fired over a bar box pool table. Only person hit was another "patron"... in the hand... while trying to find a place to hide. That bar emptied out in not time at all. Hardly anyone was left who saw the whole thing go down

 

[Filo McShoe]

Making me a SP augmentee was my branch chief getting back at me for some silly stunt I had pulled. Anyone who knows me would tell you I don't have a LEO bone in my body. To me most stuff is just funny and I couldn't see messing with some young airman about some infraction of the "law".
I was having a screaming fit after that yahoo fired with me in the line of fire (he claimed he fired high, I still believe in the dark at the distance he just missed the kid). After that they sent me out past Buckley ANG to a munitions storage site with a dog handler and his dog for the rest of my augmentee time, they figured the munitions or the dog would scare me. My real career field was nuclear weapons, Max never shot at me, Prance the dog never bit me, we all got along fine so it was all OK.

 

[CCHGN]

Making me a SP augmentee was my branch chief....

I live right next to Eglin AFB. I can hear the Vulcans fire at the range, right before it rains. They're a better weather detector than the local weather folks...lol

 

[wingriderz]

Last year my Wife brings an elderly friend of hers over for dinner. This Lady in her 70's pulls out a pistol two show around . It was some sort of two shot like over and under.38 odd looking to say the least. I was really trying to show no interest hopeing she would put it away. Next thing I know she says this thing isn't loaded see . Bang as she pylls trigger. I could feel a brush of air across my leg. Wife says she felt it around her head. No one was hit . Round did find its way inro antique dresser. Never found round. I told wife after women left shes is never coming here with another gun

 

[BigBill]

I have a dumb question. In these crazy shootouts were many rounds were fired I don’t understand when no one gets hit. Is it just dumb luck on the victims part? Or the shooter can hit a barn. It’s funny.

 

[Sevens]

Handful of years ago when my marriage ended, I moved across town to my buddy's house. The neighborhood has been going downhill since the mid-90's and while it is far from the worst place in this large city, it's problematic. My house serves as a buffer between the lovely and extremely well kept house of my very old retired neighbors and a Section 8 house that is absolutely dealing drugs right through the front porch window.

In the last 3 years there have been two known shootings. First was 2 years back, where a "friend" of the occupants showed up at 11pm but didn't realize that he was being followed or chased by thugs of his own ilk. They shot him in the neck and face while he was on the porch, at the front door.

Next incident was just a couple months ago. Word is that a customer may not have been pleased with their shopping experience... again from the street, they shot out the back window of the resident's Durango and also sent 3 rounds through the garage door.

I wasn't at home for either event which is a blessing for EVERYONE involved. I am certainly more skilled, more practiced and better armed than any of these idiots, and me getting involved would perhpas serve the neighborhood but it wouldn't gain me anything.

I've since left, my buddy is selling the house and the thugs gain more territory. As to be 100% fitting, a local worthless puke parked in front of the drug house on the last day I moved things out... 45 minutes in a running hoopty junker, smoking weed the entire time. Typical fare between noon and 1pm on a sunny Sunday.

 

[Farmer17]

When I was a kid in Tulsa in the 1970s I was with my dad buying some fence materials when a Volkswagen beetle bug came around the corner with two cop cars chasing it. This long haired hippie gets out wearing a suede leather fringe vest and starts running and the cop turns sideways and puts his left hand on his hip and draws his gun and takes aim and shoots the hippie in the back of the thigh. He's grabbing his leg and still limping and running and the cop fires again and he went to the ground and the cop started walking back to his car. I heard later the hippie had robbed a pharmacy and that he survived.

 

[Ingramite]

I have a dumb question. In these crazy shootouts were many rounds were fired I don’t understand when no one gets hit. Is it just dumb luck on the victims part? Or the shooter can hit a barn. It’s funny.

I think it's because a lot of the time they are firing the gun just like it came out of the box....sideways

 

[JBTrucker]

When I was living in Memphis TN is was shots fired 24/7

 

[TX-Dennis]

Never been shot at, but once while having lunch with coworkers at a local Mexican place there was a shooting in the parking lot. The shooter ran into the restaurant still holding his gun. Most of us hit the floor under tables. A few ran into the kitchen and out the back way. The guy put his gun down and surrendered to a couple of police officers who were having a quick lunch.

 

[Muley Gil]

Too many to count right now. Time to hit the rack. I'll get back on this thread tomorrow.

 

[Weimar]

Okay, interesting topic. Not shot at, but in the vicinity a few times.

*was working as an MP and hot-seated an MP vehicle, as I got in, I noticed that there was a bullet hole through the upper right of the windshield! Turns out that the previous two patrol guys had witnessed a Dominoes driver get shot (not killed) and one of the Sergeants I knew locked and loaded his 1911a1 and upon trying to unload it, popped off a round..
**was inspecting an ammunition site in Camp Ames, Korea and as I walked out of it, a South Korean military (ROK) who started yelling at me to stop (I presume) and locked and loaded on me. I assumed that he had no rounds. later, I wondered...
***on at least two occasions I was working Charge of Quarters (Unit Arms room for the MPs) and people would clear their 45's before turning in and popped off a round - always was because they were exhausted and being stupid. One Traffic guy, popped one, then a second one! He said, how the hell did two rounds get in my gun! - He said he dropped the mag and pulled the slide back and clicked it - works fine if you drop the mag and clear it correctly!
****In Iraq I was laying in bed and watching a movie and a rocket hit a couple hundred yards away. Kinda makes you jump a bit - and at night in Baghdad you'd hear machinegun fire at night

 

[Kiwi cop]

A guy I used to work with would do everything at 100 mph. One night he left the station and was driving home thinking about something else. He decided to overtake a car that was indicating a turn across the opposing lane of traffic and wondered why he hit it in the rear door. Lucky for him he was just slow enough not to hit the drivers door and injure the driver.

Anyway he got a transfer to our Diplomatic Protection Squad, the guys that protect politicians and visiting dignitaries. He was on a plane carrying a visiting Prime Minister or equivalent between the South Island and Wellington. They were flying in to land when he realised that his Glock 17 was still loaded in his briefcase against both department and Civiil Aviation rules.

Even though it was doing no harm and no-one but he knew of its condition he decided to unload it instead of leaving things be. Still thinking at 100 mph he racks the slide, drops the mag and, like they teach us, decocks the Glock by pulling the trigger. The round went through his $5K encrypted radio and bounced around his briefcase a bit before coming to rest just penetrating the side.

Two days later he started work as a trainee detective in the Criminal Investigation Branch, where he had been trying to get a transfer for 2 years.

And you wonder why I call our big city CIB staff Clowns in Business Suites?

 

[Wise_A]

2 ex-wives and these shooting all in Denver are why I live in Florida now.

All I read was, "Bar, bar, and another bar", and I'm pretty sure they got bars in Florida.

 

[Filo McShoe]

Me: 2 ex-wives and these shooting all in Denver are why I live in Florida now.

Wise A: All I read was, "Bar, bar, and another bar", and I'm pretty sure they got bars in Florida.

Ah yes there are but I don't have 2 ex-wives here they're in Denver.

 

[Skeet 028]

Oh Heck I had an ex-wife in Florida. I wouldn't/couldn't even go to Florida as she had some kinda warrant out for me. Well she finally died...so I went to the funeral...yep she was in a box..didn't believe the lying witch though so I stuck her with a pin...didn't move so figured she really was daid.......... .so I pulled out a 13 inch oak stake and drove it through her heart. Somedody called the Po-Leece.. When he got there I knew I was ok..he was a younger Po-Leece man. Asked me why I drove that stake through that pore ladies heart. Tole him that Po lady was my ex-wife he blinked a couple times..grabbed me by the elbow an took me out the door. I thought...oh Lord this feller ain't never been married...Got outside he looked around and let me go...said get outta here and the state. I got two of them ex-wives. The above is all true...till ya get to So I pulled out an oak stake...It was my dream for years

BTW that warrant was vacated or something by a judge...but I still didn't go to Florida...Fraid somebody might not get that message.

 

[Lt JL]

Been there. Done that. That is all.

 

[Skeet 028]

Tween the cops and the firemen the divorce rate was horrendous. There were some terrible stories with those guys. I learned at an early age to leave them women alone

 

[Onomea]

112th St and Broadway. NYC early ‘80s. I am having lunch, a bowel of soup, at my window three floors up.

Bang!

Look down and across the street. See one guy on the ground and another running off.

Lotta people milling around. Very quickly sirens wailing. Cops and EMTs.

I shake my head, and go back to my lunch.

 

[Delta Expatriate]

I am not sure whether accident and/or negligence counts for this thread, but at a gunshow, sometime around 2005, give or take a year or so. Someone looking at .22 rifle put a shot through the ceiling of the Trademart in Jackson, Mississippi. Apparently the rifle was loaded when the potential customer picked it up - the vendor was thrown out of the show immediately. When the shot was fired, things got real quite, real fast.

About ten years earlier, I arrived at a gun show at the same venue just minutes after a shot had been fired. This time it was a .38 someone was looking at. They were throwing the vendor out just as I arrived. I was not inside when the shot was fired.

I know of another instance in the same venue where a .270 was fired, but I was not there. Thankfully, no one was injured in any of these instances.

 

[S&W Fan]

Me: 2 ex-wives and these shooting all in Denver are why I live in Florida now.

Wise A: All I read was, "Bar, bar, and another bar", and I'm pretty sure they got bars in Florida.

Ah yes there are but I don't have 2 ex-wives here they're in Denver.

Hmm, been in the Denver area since 1984, learned a long time back areas not to go to even armed. There are places in Tucson and Florida (Miami area) that to me were a lot more dangerous.

Funniest one was a shooting at a sh** hole bar just outside the city limits in Pima County-two guys traded shots at each other across a pool table (one had a 1911, the other a Smith .38) neither of them hit-thankfully no one else either-but lots of holes in the walls and bar area. My buddy with the sheriff's office was on the call, they found both parties within the hour as they were well known to the bar, both so drunk they got mad over the pool game, called each other cheats and the guns came out.