Veterans’ firearm injuries

While working on his car, Andrew was shot in the leg by an acquaintance who didn’t check the chamber of firearm he was handing.

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My story is just kind of a tragic story. Even before I got shot, I was married to my second wife, and she committed suicide with a gun. And so, I moved away from New Mexico. I moved into Colorado. And I kind of put firearms on the back burner after that because it just kind of affected me really badly.

And so, one day I was going down and taking care of some stuff on the property where I was renting to a person. And I was working on a fuel pump on my vehicle. And him and some other friends were – they were comparing their weapon lubrication with each other. And they had set the firearms on the back of the tailgate of a pickup. And I was under a different pick up working on the fuel pump. And my brother pulled up. Just before my brother pulled up, I went to one of the firearms and I noticed the magazine was in it. Actually, there was only one gun there at the time. And I noticed the magazine was in it, so I popped the magazine, and I cleared the weapon. And I set it there.

And then unbeknownst to me another friend came and put the exact same weapon next to it, next to the weapon that was already cleared. And I didn’t know about it because I was working underneath the truck. And when I got up, the guy that had brought the second weapon was trying to clear that weapon and he didn’t make sure that there was a bullet – actually, he was trying to take the slide off of the top of the gun. It was a Springfield Army XD45, and part of the process is you have to pull the slide back, push down a little switch and pull the trigger and slide the slide off. Well, he didn’t make sure that there wasn’t a bullet in the chamber.

When my brother pulled up, I got out from underneath the truck to go make sure that – or just to go say hi to him actually. And I heard my brother say, “Is that gun unloaded?” And the guy says, “I know what I’m doing.” He kind of turned himself towards me. And the firearm, he pulled the trigger and he shot me in the leg. So that’s what happened. It wasn’t – there was nothing ever glorious or anything about getting shot.

After that he – he shot me in my tibia. And I couldn’t walk – it didn’t knock me down, but I went to step, and my leg felt like a wet noodle. And one of my other friends came running up after he heard the gunshot and grabbed me under the arm. And my brother threw a belt around my leg, around my thigh in order to stop the blood. And they threw me in a pickup. The guy who shot me called 911. By the time I got to the bottom of the road – I live about half a mile off a dirt road. By the time I got on the pavement the ambulance was actually – happened to be driving by there. And I was able to get in the ambulance fairly quickly. They took me to the hospital right away where they thought they were – they took x-rays of my leg. Of course, I was in and out of consciousness at that time. I lost a lot of blood, but I didn’t have any – I didn’t need a transfer of blood or anything. They took X-rays of my leg and they seen that it was – my tibia was shattered. And they were thinking that they were going to have to cut my leg off below the knee.

After surgery and months of rehab to treat a shattered tibia, Andrew’s leg still “hurts very badly.”

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They took X-rays of my leg and they seen that it was – my tibia was shattered. And they were thinking that they were going to have to cut my leg off below the knee, when they got a phone call from a really
good orthopedics doctor out of Santa Fe. And I guess he’s one of the best in the world.

They flew me down there. And he was able to actually use new technology, I think it’s called B2MP, some type of porous bone graft type of stuff that encourages bone to grow in it. And put a titanium rod in my leg and told me that 50/50 chanced whether or not my leg would accept the bone growth – it looks like terry cloth. So, I had to go there once a week back to Santa Fe. I was only in the hospital a couple days after the surgery. After that I had to spend the next few months, once a week going – driving to Santa Fe, which is about a three-hour drive to make sure that it was taking. And it did. Then it became once a month. The whole time, for the first 16 weeks, I was in a wheelchair with no weight bearing on my leg.

After about a year, after about eight months I’d say I could start putting a little pressure on my leg. And about a year later I could ride a bike a little bit. I walked with a limp for a long time. And I don’t know, it took about two years before I could actually, you know, kind of jog on it and run on it. It took a long time for it to heal.

And now I’m – I don’t even walk with a limp. My wife, she’s like you stop limping. Because I limped for a long time. She said, “Quit it.” So, I sucked it up and used my military bearing and almost marched – guys remember marching and how you had to hold your head up straight and your arms to your side. And I practiced marching basically to learn how to walk without a limp. And now I don’t limp. But when the weather changes, of course, we all have it. It hurts, it hurts very badly sometimes. It makes me want to limp, but I try not to. I think it’s aged me a little bit because of the pain.

Andrew describes feeling emotionally numb from his experience.

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Emotionally? It still – I don’t, if I got too emotional about it... I hadn’t even been a year out from when I lost my wife, you know? I was still pretty numb. I think that the more the emotional – it’s more now than probably then. I was more sad because I thought I had great legs, and now it’s not so pretty. I was more like, “Oh my gosh, come on, really?” I mean, I don’t know, emotionally I was pretty numb. I was already pretty numb, so it didn’t really – I was more numb off my wife shooting herself.

I think now more, I have a little more anger now. For a long time, for years it didn’t really bug me, every once in a while. But now as I keep getting older it hurts. And I think that I get more like – it’s just painful. I get kind of angry that it hurts. And it makes me tired. I feel like I aged a little bit. Every time the onset of the pain, I’m like, “Ugh.” I don’t like – there’s other things – I don’t like loud sounds.

I don’t like loud sounds, like bangs. My wife wanted a bird, and I was like no, that chirping and loud – I have more sensitivity to loud banging or sharp sounds. I think I’ve been that way all my life. I don’t think it really affected me emotionally, just more physically. It was too compounded, too close in time, that it just kind of all went together, you know? I was already emotionally destroyed. And so that was just the icing on the cake. It didn’t even make a cool story; it was just stupid.

The only time it messed with me emotionally is, these girls they were walking through. And they were like, “Oh.” I can’t believe they’re walking out, and they were like “Oh look, a handsome gimp.” I was like, “Man.” That made me feel bad. I wish I would see that girl again. And say that wasn’t nice of you to say. But that emotionally kind of hurt. People calling me a gimp. Someone called me a gimp. That was her being honest, being drunk. I couldn’t imagine what other people thought of me when I was walking and limping down the road.

I know that sometimes when I see people walking and limping down the road, I feel bad for them. So, you know, I don’t know. That kind of hurt to think that I was a gimp. I didn’t know how long it was going to last, actually. If I was going to limp forever. That made me sad, actually, that’s one emotion. I was sad that I might, you know, limp the rest of my life. That’s the only emotion, and a little anger, because that guy left me with all these bills and took off. It was so close, not even a year. A little over a year before I lost my wife, and I was already emotionally wrecked.

A passion for shooting firearms is something that connects Andrew to his friend group.

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My friends, and like I said, I don’t have a lot of friends, but the friends I do have, because that’s something that we enjoy – we can enjoy once in a while together, is to go shooting. And that’s part of our, you know us, being friends. I have friends that don’t have firearms, you know? We’re still friends. But the friends that we do have that in common – a common bond and go out shooting. We know we got each other’s back; you know if need be. But as far as like me identifying as a gun – I think people know – I’d rather people know me as this fun-loving guy that likes to do, you know, have some adventure. Not a guy that’s like, “Oh there’s a gunner. He owns guns.” I don’t identify with that.

Andrew recalls learning about gun safety from an early age.

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Well, I grew up in a firearm—a family that owns firearms. I was trained from a young age how to fire them and their safety and how to maintain the weapon. I got my first weapon when I was 11. And I took care of it and maintained it. I bought more—let’s see, I was never really a hunter, just rabbits and stuff. We’d go shooting once a month. It wasn’t a constant thing that we did. But you know, once a month maybe we’d go shooting. My dad was in the military, so he trained me in the military way how to fire – or how to handle my weapon. So, it was pretty good.

Andrew feels there is little that the VA can do to prevent firearm injuries.

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No more than they could do from preventing car injuries or you know, accidental slips and fall injuries. There’s – now slips and falls, they could be – they could actually help out with that, but when you give someone control of something that could be used as a weapon, how are you supposed to teach them how to control that? It’s like telling them how to drive their car. It’s an object that can be used as a weapon. I mean I don’t see how the VA could actually help anybody as far as, like, keeping them from hurting another human being with a weapon. I don’t see it.

Andrew talks about safely storing firearms when not in use to avoid unintentional injuries.

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I always tell everybody, “Don’t get shot.” It was an accident. There was no way of knowing. Don’t play with guns. Don’t have them around. I don’t know, it would be like, what would I change about that day? What would I change? I don’t know what I would say to them. Because it was so unexpected. He had the gun in front of him like this. And I was coming up from behind and I didn’t even know he had a weapon in his hand. And he turned and I got shot. Know the people, know your friends. Know your friends. And if they have firearms, tell them to keep them put away. Just, unless you’re at a firing range or going hunting, don’t pull your weapon out. That’s it. That’s really it. Keep your weapon holstered and away. That’s what I’d say. Just keep it out of the picture. You guys are getting together and having some fun, having a barbecue at your house and stuff, just keep the weapons – put them away. They don’t need to be out. There is no reason for you to pull out a firearm. You don’t need to compare which lubes are better by pulling out your weapons. It’s just ridiculous. Keep them stored. Keep them stored or keep them in the holster. You want to carry your weapon, keep it holstered. Don’t be pulling it out and trying to do stupid stuff. Show and brag to your friends. It’s just not necessary. It’s not. Having a gun doesn’t make you a bigger or better person, or anything like that. And definitely, it’s none of anybody’s business whether you own them or not. So, keep them put away.