I saw  british solder shot in the leg, I pointed a gun twice while in the coast guard. I also had the pleasure of spraying mace and smacking the same person across the cheek with a blackjack! Insanity!!!

Great question Mike!

Never shot somebody but still wish I did.

Part 1:

I bought a .22 pistol in 1984 because of a male stalker(I was a tv meteorologist/local celebrity 1982-93). Vandalizing my car. Putting things in my mail box. Peeping in my windows at night, according to the neighbor.

After I had the gun, the attacks became more dangerous. He broke into my apartment and stole all my photo albums and dirty underwear from the laundry basket. That's when I knew it wasn't just somebody that hated me but was deranged and this was sexual.

 I took the gun with me everywhere and slept with it in the bed. I would wake up in the middle of the night from every little noise and make sure I had the gun next to me while I listened carefully. 

Backing up a bit, on numerous occasions, before getting the gun, I had a baseball bat. In case he was outside peeping in the windows, I would pretend I was going to the kitchen and go quickly out the door then run around to the other side of the building to catch him, if he was there. 

I was very athletic/conditioned (could bench 300 lbs) and had numerous fist fights in Detroit bars and unafraid of a confrontation. If I'd caught him without a bat, he would have been dead meat but was really just wanting to get him for the cops and not pulverize him. 

I got the gun after he actually broke in, realizing this guys is extremely dangerous.

In January 1985, I came home to the same window broken out that he'd broken the first time and the lights on. I assumed that he was still in there. Back then, there were no cell phones.

 So I cocked the gun and committed to not letting the guy get away with 0 reservations even if I had to shoot his arse. 

There were 2 doors to get in and I always used the back door which was at the kitchen.

After unlocking it, it wouldn't open.  At first, I thought he was on the other end resisting, so I used my shoulder to put some force into it and the door opened part way, then I pushed it the rest of the way. 

What was blocking it was debris piled up on the floor in front of it.

He had completely emptied my fridge, smashing everything against the kitchen door and did the same thing to everything in my cupboards. It was the smashed up debri on the floor that provided the resistance to getting in.

Then I saw bright flickering in my bedroom and ran to see..........a huge fire!

All my drawers were emptied out into a huge pile on the bed, along with all the stuff in the closet and he had used lighter fluid to torch them. The fire was massive, with the flames hitting the ceiling and spreading/deflecting  across the entire ceiling to hit all the walls.

I raced to the 1 phone to call 911...........but he had ripped the cord out of the wall to disable it.

I pounded on the door of the older gentleman, Preston that lived on the other side of the building and used his phone to call the fire department and woke up the guy and his girlfriend that lived upstairs.

You know how quickly fires can spread. I lost everything in the fire and if it had gone 20 minutes longer and nobody warned the couple upstairs, they might not have made it.

They never got the guy. I could more 10 pages about other incidents related to this but on page 2 will describe what might have been unrelated but even more potentially deadly incident related to a gun.

yes, interrupted a jail breaker come out of my house, He had already broken into my barn and tried to steal a car and truck. He approached me, I said, I have a gun, do not make me shoot you, get on the ground, He complied.
Found several of my things in his pockets and kept him there until police showed nearly a 1/2  hour later. Then things got interesting. The cop was following procedure and cuffing the guy and the guy was big and strong and started to wrestle. The cops gun was brushing against the bad gun as they wrestled. Very scary to think just how close the guy came to getting control. I would of had to shoot,,,,no other choice. But lucky for us all I just grabbed and held until the cop got the cuffs on. The guy was a x-con and got 9 additional years and I still think how lucky I was. And yes I would of felt even safer if I had been holding an AR but all I had time to get was my Marlin semi auto 22. Sometimes I think the bad guy could of done much more damage but maybe realized he would of had much more serious charges if he shot, knifed, killed or wounded one e\of us.

No

 Just on the other end of it a couple of times.

Part 2 on guns:

So with my apartment burned down in Henderson KY, I moved across the river to Evansville IN. The tv station is in Henderson, so it meant a longer drive to work, especially if there was severe weather threatening outside of my normal work day.

For an extremely long time, when I got off work around 11pm, if there was anybody following me the last mile of my drive to my new apartment, I would drive around until they were gone. Didn't want him to find my new place.

Then I got married in August 1985 and had a 5 year daughter from my wife, that I wanted to protect.

I bought a shot gun for her(and I took my .22 with me)

Later, when we moved to a house in the country, got a German Shepherd for extra protection for her and the total of 3 children. 

In 1986, about halfway home, I heard this extremely loud BOOM on the roof of my car while driving home at 60+ mph on Highway 41 north. 

I thought nothing of it.

 A few days later, while washing the car in our driveway I noticed this 12-18 inch long trail on the roof that was only a fraction of an inch wide but fairly deep in some spots.

OMG, could this be from a bullet?

It was exactly where my head was when driving, except around a foot, vertically above my head.

I went to the Evansville City Police and had a detective come out to look at it.

He says, with high confidence that it was caused by a small caliber bullet and asked if I had any enemies.

Where this happened on  highway 41, is where there are huge, thick pine trees which anybody could hide in. He completely nailed the horizontal plane on the shot, which would have been the toughest for somebody going 60 mph but was too high by around a foot on the vertical.

The chances of this being a shooter trying to pick off a random vehicle at 11pm on a weekday seems less likely than them knowing who was in the vehicle but we will never know.

Was it the same, guy that was harassing me a couple of years earlier???

There are some crazy people out there and when you are in their living room every night, they can form a close relationship with you that's based on them and you that's completely independent of you ever knowing them.

Before getting married, I liked to party. Being a local celeb, allowed me to go into any singles bar and get recognized by most ladies. Like with the crazies that form a relationship with you in their living room, the same mentality sort of existed with single women. I was young, good looking,  a competitive body builder and a tv celebrity.

Man, did I ever have big fun for the 17 months prior to meeting my wife. Partied with  hundreds of complete strangers and sometimes, took the party back to their place after the bar closed.

I feel horrible to have been that way and take advantage of my celebrity status but in my mind, I justified it because they were grown ups and it was THEIR IDEA. 

No doubt that this created some enemies I never met(previous boyfriends or a host of possible connections) . This could have resulted in the person taking a shot at me.

Regardless, thank GOD I met my wife in January 1984 and it was love at first site.

Part 3 next.

no, i never pointed a gun at anyone.  

once, i did have someone shoot me with a BB gun.  stupid stuff you do as kids.   he was just horsing around.  

... you can hear the parents... you could put somebody's eye out... !!!!!!

this is why I would NEVER have a gun around the house when my kids were young.  accidents happen.  also, kids do stupid things.  

metmike, btw, here is a different tactic.  keep some african beehives around your property.  folks tend to avoid coming around your place when they see bees.  

so you might get stung once in a while.  that's life.  but it does tend to keep the riff raff away.  

better than a guard dog.  

African bee hives............funny one bear!

As a bee keeper, it would be extremely fascinating for you to tell us about that and the affect of African bees.

Let's start a new thread about this!

Problem with polls like this...

Someone who has actually shot someone is unlikely to respond.

Maybe Tim, but you're reading from somebody at this moment that has always wished he had shot somebody because of the tremendous damage they did to me over an extended period, specifically targeting me(I'll never get back all the pix from my childhood......2 photo albums full) and almost killed 2 people and has never been held accountable.

I would say that I don't hate the guy or even think about it ever, but it just came up.

Justice should have been served and the podunk Henderson KY cops never did their jobs, so the only chance to get justice would have been if I'd shot the guy.

Maybe he was the one that tried to kill me on the highway too?

12 inches lower and I wouldn't be here and that person should have rotted in prison but would have gotten away with it.

So I totally would be at peace if somebody broke into my house and I shot them dead.

Maybe we should ask other people that didn't shoot anybody, if they COULD shoot somebody?

Pretty sure that my wife couldn't do it.

"If you haven't been there, then you don't know the price. If you have been there, the cost is indescribable."

You were in the coast guard. A branch that is lucky to see a threatening situation, but never actual combat. So the above quote is irrelevant to you.

So what's the point in asking if anyone on this forum has actually had to face the situation of killing another human being? Those who have, aren''t likely to be willing to admit or talk about it. And since you haven't been in their shoes, you don't know why they won't.

"So what's the point in asking if anyone on this forum has actually had to face the situation of killing another human being? Those who have, aren''t likely to be willing to admit or talk about it. And since you haven't been in their shoes, you don't know why they won't."

Mark, 

At least let people have the opportunity to respond to SEE WHAT THEY STATE before making YOUR assumptions that mean there's no point in even asking the question.

Some people, might actually acknowledge shooting another person. I would.  How do you know that isn't true?

With the extremely small sample size here, there's a good chance that nobody has ever shot somebody..........but hey, mcfarm already has been very willing to share his experience............which means the question has already paid dividends, in case you didn't read it and this has  also struck up a discussion related to it.

Great question in my opinion. 

Mark,

Are you having a bad day or is there something else going for you the last day, for you to attack common sense topics here?