Veterans’ firearm injuries

Eric forgot he had stashed a gun under the driver’s seat of his truck. When he got out it fell, “hit the running board,” wounding him in the leg.

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Eric forgot he had stashed a gun under the driver’s seat of his truck. When he got out it fell, “hit the running board,” wounding him in the leg.

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And then the last time I got shot, it was in 2011, I went and checked on a mare I had, she’d just had a colt. So, I drove to the veterinarian's office, and when I drove, I forgot that I had that .45/.410 underneath my leg in the front seat of the truck. When I stepped out of the truck, it slid off the seat, hit the running board of the truck, and shot me in the back of the thigh, blew the bottom third of my thigh off. I’ve still got a leg full of buckshot. It gives me quite a bit of trouble, there’s a hole in it as big as my hand is. About three inches wide and about four inches long. It’s never going to be right. It hurts to stretch, hurts to walk, you know. It just, it’s a pain in the butt.

I stepped out of my truck and naturally heard a big boom behind me. Realized immediately that everything went south, you know. It was a bad day. You know, I felt the impact in my leg, I knew I’d been shot, because I knew a gun shot, and oh shit, I’d been shot. I jerked my belt off, put a tourniquet on my thigh. Luckily this kid was a first responder pulled up to the stop light that was right there by the veterinarian’s office. He jumped up and came running over, got me laid down, he looked at my son, he told my son, “Man, there’s three holes here and I only got two hands.” My leg is just hamburger meat looking. Well, it was about a few seconds later the ambulance showed up, they loaded me up in the ambulance, and took me to the airport. Got to the airport, they loaded me on the helicopter and flew me to the hospital. I was on one end of the hospital; my son was at the other end because it burst his eardrums. They went in, stabilized the wound, and then the next day they went in and did surgery.

It’s been hard to deal with. You know, because a lot of my friends thought I’d tried to commit suicide and shit like that. They didn’t know- all they’d heard was I got- I shot myself. You know what I mean? They all thought, “Oh, you tried to kill yourself,” and stuff. And no, it wasn’t nothing like that, just- we call it a “do he”. Two words, “do” “he”. Do he mess up? Yes, he do. You know, and yeah, I messed up real big on that gun shot.

You know, I’d had a buddy that had just died, and he was like a brother. Literally like a brother, he was one of my closest friends I’ve ever had. And I got shot the day before his funeral. You know, that’s kind of how I got shot. I was distracted, wasn’t really thinking. And just that lapse of gun safety there, you know, bit me in the ass.

Eric has a permanent limp and experiences ongoing pain due to his firearm injury.

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Eric has a permanent limp and experiences ongoing pain due to his firearm injury.

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Now every time I stretch, whether it’s in bed, standing up, doesn’t really matter. If I go up on my toes, or stretch that leg out, it jumps into a cramp that’s pretty painful, to say the least. Bad weather comes in I’ll get cramps in that leg that just, you know, phantom pain because there’s stuff missing. Part of the leg will jerk to the calf, and part of it jerks up towards the butt cheek. You’ve got two different directions in your leg at once. That happens whenever I get real tired and cold. But yeah, it’s a lot of fun. When I ride my motorcycle, the lead that’s still in my leg gets damn hot, I have to stop riding and let the leg cool down. You can’t back up against a wood stove or a wall heater because the led in your leg gets so damn hot that you can’t, you know. When you walk away, it’s not like your pant legs get hot and you can kind of pull it off. If that boy gets hot, there ain’t no getting away from that heat.

Yeah, there’s no riding a bicycle. I’ve got a limp, a permanent limp. Sometimes I have to drag that leg, you know, because it doesn’t want to work right. If you took your hand and stuck it in the crease of your knee, where your little finger touches your knee, the crease of your knee, about where your thumb is, is where I got shot in my thigh. And then you take that hand and you stick it above where your thumb is, and that’s how much of my leg is missing on the inside of the thigh. And then you’ve got about a hand’s length below your, you know, your crotch there that the regular meat is still there. But there’s a good two inches thick down just missing. So, when it has a muscle spasm and stuff like that, those muscles get to twitching in opposite directions. You know, because like I say, you’re having a muscle spasm and the brain signals are short circuiting on it, you know what I mean? And half of it’s trying to pull down, so it’s wanting to go into a cramp that way and half of it’s pulling up trying to go in a cramp that way. And then it just, the whole damn leg jumps in on it. Walking, it’s- like I say, there’s no long, long, walks anymore. I drag the leg about half the time. There’s a permanent limp. When it first happened, I had to use a cane for a while. Finally, I got away from that, but there’s a lot to deal with, a lot of pain, loss of muscle in that leg. Loss of strength and stuff.

Eric describes how the military taught him everything he needed to know about firearm safety.

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Eric describes how the military taught him everything he needed to know about firearm safety.

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One, there’s a lot more gun safety involved, the proper maintenance and tear down of a gun you’re taught. You know, you’re taught to respect your weapon, whereas your civilian gun courses and stuff don’t go into it quite as much. You know, just- I’ll say this, the military taught me everything I needed to know about the weapon that I was firing. You know, how to break it down, how to reassemble it, how to maintain it. You know, I carried that over into civilian life, when I buy a new gun, first thing I do, tear it apart, put it back together.

Eric feels that civilians who own firearms should be required to take a gun safety class.

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Eric feels that civilians who own firearms should be required to take a gun safety class.

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I think if anyone should be able to buy firearms, it should be military trained personnel. Because you have been trained adequately on how to take care of the weapons. It’s not a lot of the Veterans that are doing all this crazy stuff that everybody keeps saying. It’s these young kids that never served in the military, they spend their time in the basement playing video games, they’re not in touch with reality, and they don’t really care about: one, about other people, and two, they say, “Oh, well it ain’t what’s going to happen when I go shooting all these people and stuff.” You know, like I say, I think it’s the non-military people that need to be screened harder than military people. That they should have to take a mandatory gun safety class. Not just for children to get a hunter’s license. Everyone should have to take a mandatory gun class.

To move forward, Eric says, “You just have to learn how to readjust.”

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To move forward, Eric says, “You just have to learn how to readjust.”

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Just accepting it as something that happened. You know, deal with whatever consequences you have. Like me, I have a lot of pain with that leg, and stuff like that. You know, I just--you just have to learn how to adapt and how to deal with it. I tell you, that’s about all I know. You just have to learn how to readjust. Adjust your life to whatever handicap that this gunshot presents itself with. It depends on where you got shot, you know, how bad you’re going to be messed up.

Eric notes that family and friends may not know the full story, so “don’t be judgmental. Be understanding.”

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Eric notes that family and friends may not know the full story, so “don’t be judgmental. Be understanding.”

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Well, I mean, don’t be judgmental. You don’t know the full story. Be understanding, you know, a lot of people deal with a lot of different things. Just, the main thing is, just be understanding, you know, that things happen, accidents happen. Or sometimes you’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The worst thing to do is to make fun of someone when they got shot, or, you know, belittle them, and things like that, because they’re already feeling pretty down and out about being shot and if you put it too deep on them, they lose it that much more.

Eric recommends clinicians have an open mind and not rush to judgement when working with patients who have experienced a firearm injury.

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Eric recommends clinicians have an open mind and not rush to judgement when working with patients who have experienced a firearm injury.

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Well, they can be more understanding. And like I say, not so judgmental. I mean, when I went in to see the psychiatrist, she’d already made up her mind that I’d tried to kill myself. Before I ever set foot in there. And it literally was just a bad accident that happened. Like I say, my best friend that was literally, he was a blessed brother, you know, had just died, his funeral was the next day. And I was just distracted, thinking, you know, trying to get my head around the funeral, and being a pall bearer and stuff like that. Needless to say, they didn’t let me out of the hospital to be a pall bearer. I didn’t get to see his grave for two months after he was buried, but I did make it up there to see him. But just, you know, stuff like that, you’ve just got to deal with it. The main thing is, don’t let them--they don’t need to be judgmental; they need to keep an open mind. All kind of weird stuff happens out in the woods. Lean the gun up against a tree, it falls over, against a fence, drop it out of a tree, bounce it off of the four-wheeler, I mean, there’s a million things that could cause that gun to go off if it’s not handled right. The best thing to do is wait until you get in the tree before you load the damn thing.