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Re: Man shot 32 times before dying
Posted: Mon Oct 12, 2009 11:21 am
by MoJo
If it was a .38 loaded with 158 gr RNL ammo the bullets tend to pass through if they don't hit bone. There are documented cases of people surviving multiple gunshot wounds. I met a gentleman years ago who was a WWII veteran of the Pacific who had been hit in the torso multiple times by Japaneese machine gun fire and survived.
You have to make hits to the central nervous system, (medulla) spine, or supporting structures (pelvis, legs, ankle) to effect a quick stop.
Re: Man shot 32 times before dying
Posted: Mon Oct 12, 2009 11:34 am
by MoJo
MechAg94 wrote:CHL/LEO wrote:The human body has only a few areas where an injury causes sudden death: the heart...
Not true - there are many, many documented cases where individuals have been shot in the heart and not died until they bled out. In fact, a female LAPD officer was shot point blank in the heart with a .357 magnum during a home invasion and struggled with her attackers until she fought them off. She survived to tell about it.
In the Dallas area a LEO struggled with a suspect and during the fight the officer shot the suspect in the heart. Before the suspect bled out from his injuries he continued to fight with the officer, take his weapon away and kill him. We were (and still are) taught that the only instantly incapacitating shot is to the cerebellum, a part of the brain that controls voluntary movement that lies at the base of the skull. During sniper training we would fire at targets that had a dot placed directly below the nose and right above the top lip to indicate where we needed to aim to hit that area.
I noticed you didn't say that lady got shot THROUGH the heart. Where was the actual wound? A bullet passing through the heart is normally fatal I would think.
Yes she did have a bullet wound to her heart requiring surgery repair the damage. There was a British General who was hit in the heart during the Boer War. When he passed away many years later the bullet was still in his heart. A heart shot will be fatal most of the time but not instantly fatal. The only shot that will be instantly fatal is a hit to the medulla oblongata that shorts out the computer running the body.
Re: Man shot 32 times before dying
Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 9:16 pm
by nils
I have two .45s that I carry...and it won't take 32...more like one or two well placed shots....but that IS a crazy story.

Re: Man shot 32 times before dying
Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 11:40 am
by RPB
I knew a man who survived being shot 6 times by a .38 The 6th bullet went through his hand as he took the gun away from the bad guy. The ambulance had to take the bad guy to the hospital first, as he had been almost beat to death with the gun afterwards and was in worse shape than the guy who had gotten shot 6 times..
Re: Man shot 32 times before dying
Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 12:47 pm
by karder
Crazy story. Shooting a guy 45 times is self-defense? Maybe if you playing a video game. It is amazing how much damage the human body is capable of absorbing. I have been to the scene of nearly 100 car wrecks and I am amazed how a vehicle can be completely shredded and the passengers can be unhurt, or other times, a car will have very little damage and everyone inside is dead. Even stranger are the accidents where everyone is buckled up and one person dies and the other is unhurt.
It can be the same in shootings. Some guys get shot a dozen times and live to tell about it, while others are dropped with a single shot from a pellet rifle. The older I get the more I am starting to believe that when it's your time to go, it's your time to go. Why some people survive and some don't, is beyond my capacity to understand. When it comes to self-defense, there are so many factors. Lot's of practice and solid shot placement are the best chance to stop an attacker, and even that doesn't guarantee success.
Re: Man shot 32 times before dying
Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 1:04 pm
by seamusTX
Thanks for reviving this thread. It's a reminder that handguns are not like Star Trek phasers that make your attackers evaporate every time -- without aiming.
Come to think of it, they're more like Star Wars blasters that rarely seem to harm anyone or damage anything.
- Jim
Re: Man shot 32 times before dying
Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2009 1:06 pm
by WarHawk-AVG
A great example would be Roy P. Benavidez during vietnam.
http://www.quad-a.org/Hall_of_Fame/pers ... avidez.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
SSG Roy P. Benavidez saved a Special Forces unit in Vietnam in spite of a broken jaw, 37 bullet wounds and bayonet puncture wounds while assigned to Detachment B56, 5th Special Forces Group.
On May 2, 1968, a 12-man Special Forces reconnaissance team was inserted by helicopters in a dense jungle area west of Loc Ninh, Vietnam. The team met heavy enemy resistance, and requested emergency extraction. Three helicopters attempted extraction, but were unable to land due to intense enemy fire. Benavidez volunteered to assist in another extraction attempt. He jumped from the hovering helicopter, and ran approximately 75 meters under withering small arms fire to the crippled team.
Despite severe wounds and under intense enemy fire, he carried and dragged half of the wounded team members to the awaiting aircraft. Benavidez was severely wounded by small arms fire in the abdomen and grenade fragments in his back. At nearly the same moment, the aircraft pilot was mortally wounded, and the helicopter crashed. Benavidez made his way back to the wreckage and helped the wounded out of the overturned aircraft and formed a defensive perimeter. He was wounded again just before another extraction helicopter landed.
Upon reaching the aircraft, Benavidez spotted and killed two more enemy soldiers. With little strength left, he made one last trip to bring in the remaining wounded. Only then, in extremely serious condition from numerous wounds and loss of blood, did he allow himself to be pulled into the extraction aircraft. His refusal to be stopped despite numerous severe wounds saved the lives of at least eight men. He received the Medal of Honor for these actions. SSGT Beneavidez died after a long illness in 1998.
I got to meet him and shake his hand at my Highschool, I bought his book "The Last Medal of Honor" before he changed the name for the new MOH winners in the gulf war..he signed it for me too.
He said he was so tore up that they though he was dead and left him in his body bag...he said he remembered the extreme hot from laying in the bag on the tarmac, then the cold of the cargoplane, then he said he spit in the eye of the guy fixing to embalm him (that's all he could do)..I wish I could find the picture of the diagram of the wounds he sustained yet kept on fighting!
Re: Man shot 32 times before dying
Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2009 10:08 pm
by gclooney
shots below the belt. good God. Maybe after he realized what he did he figured he'd go nuts and plea insanity.
Re: Man shot 32 times before dying
Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2009 8:59 am
by Kythas
I have a friend of mine from high school who was shot in the head with a .308 rifle by (if any of you remember this) someone who was sniping at cars on South Padre Island Drive in Corpus Christi back in the late '80s - and lived. When all was said and done, it actually improved his eyesight.
I don't think they ever caught the sniper.
Re: Man shot 32 times before dying
Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2009 9:06 am
by Crossfire
Kythas wrote:When all was said and done, it actually improved his eyesight.
Although LASIK was no picnic, I wouldn't recommend THAT method either!
Re: Man shot 32 times before dying
Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2009 11:34 am
by R_Comstock
In reading this, I had a few observations:
1) The aforementioned General who survived several years with a LEAD bullet permanently lodged in his heart...and they worry about lead poisoning from paint and pipe solder nowadays.
2) It is taught in most LE/Military shooting classes that the 'will to survive' means everything. Perhaps that's why that female officer survived. I was told as a child of a grizzly human experiment conducted by the Nazis in which two prisoners would be taken to a room and individually tied down to separate tables. Someone would come in, cut the arm of one and force the other to watch until the bleeding victim died. Then, shortly thereafter the survivor would be blindfolded, his arm 'cut' with a piece of ice. Although there was no physical injury whatsoever, the second person would die simply because he THOUGHT he was dying.
3) A .38 Special revolver holds 6 rounds (I know this has been casually mentioned but I wanted to re-iterate this). This means, the shooter had to reload AT LEAST 5 times! Yeah, I would have sent him away for murder as well...probably 1st degree. Who the hell needs to carry around that many rounds anyway? Take the recent Ft. Hood Massacre for example.
Re: Man shot 32 times before dying
Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2009 11:39 am
by R_Comstock
Wanted to throw something else out there...
I recently heard about a would-be robber who was shot and killed by 30 rounds from 5 different guns. Here's how the story goes...
BG decides he wants to rob a gun store (of all places).
BG goes to said gun store, notices a MARKED POLICE CRUISER parked out front.
BG walks around said cruiser noting the lack of police officer inside.
BG walks inside gun store to commit the crime...
Inside the gun store are 2 customers, 2 employees (all CHL holders) and the 1 UNIFORMED POLICE OFFICER.
BG pulls his gun to rob the store...
Remember, kids...crime doesn't pay because criminals are STUPID!
Re: Man shot 32 times before dying
Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2009 12:19 pm
by seamusTX
R_Comstock wrote:1) The aforementioned General who survived several years with a LEAD bullet permanently lodged in his heart...and they worry about lead poisoning from paint and pipe solder nowadays.
Many a man has lived a long life with a bullet embedded in his body. The body forms scar tissue around the bullet and renders it inert.
Airborne or waterborne lead is another story. It forms water-soluble compounds that get into the bloodstream and make their way to the nervous system. That is very damaging to fetuses and children. It's unhealthy for adults, too.
A .38 Special revolver holds 6 rounds (I know this has been casually mentioned but I wanted to re-iterate this). This means, the shooter had to reload AT LEAST 5 times!
It was a five-shot revolver, so he reloaded more than six times.
I recently heard about a would-be robber who was shot and killed by 30 rounds from 5 different guns. Here's how the story goes...BG decides he wants to rob a gun store (of all places).
That is a widely circulated, exaggerated version of a real event. The goofball did walk past a police car and try to rob a gun store with a uniformed police officer present. He was shot several times by the store owner and the cop.
The real version is on snopes.com.
- Jim
Re: Man shot 32 times before dying
Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2009 12:51 pm
by R_Comstock
seamusTX wrote:R_Comstock wrote:1) The aforementioned General who survived several years with a LEAD bullet permanently lodged in his heart...and they worry about lead poisoning from paint and pipe solder nowadays.
Many a man has lived a long life with a bullet embedded in his body. The body forms scar tissue around the bullet and renders it inert.
Airborne or waterborne lead is another story. It forms water-soluble compounds that get into the bloodstream and make their way to the nervous system. That is very damaging to fetuses and children. It's unhealthy for adults, too.
A .38 Special revolver holds 6 rounds (I know this has been casually mentioned but I wanted to re-iterate this). This means, the shooter had to reload AT LEAST 5 times!
It was a five-shot revolver, so he reloaded more than six times.
I recently heard about a would-be robber who was shot and killed by 30 rounds from 5 different guns. Here's how the story goes...BG decides he wants to rob a gun store (of all places).
That is a widely circulated, exaggerated version of a real event. The goofball did walk past a police car and try to rob a gun store with a uniformed police officer present. He was shot several times by the store owner and the cop.
The real version is on snopes.com.
- Jim
Thank you for the clarifications.

I am not a genius, nor do I play one on TV.

Re: Man shot 32 times before dying
Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2009 1:32 pm
by MadMonkey
R_Comstock wrote:Who the heck needs to carry around that many rounds anyway?
Glock 17 + 2 mags = 52 rounds?
