How Many "Bad Guys" have YOU SHOT? (DMW TOP Salvage)

Submitted by detroitmechworks on Sat, 03/19/2016 - 5:00am

There’s a pernicious and evil myth going around that simply shooting the “Bad Guys with Guns” will make everything better. It’s the central mythology surrounding our citizens walking around armed, able to buy whatever they want to with regards to lethal killing implements with only a modicum of regulation.

I just want to know one thing from those who spout this drivel.

How many Bad Guys have YOU shot?

Because unless you can state first hand experience how it made things magically better, I would cordially invite you to shut the fuck up.

Shooting the “Bad Guy” in my case resulted in screaming nightmares, depression, PTSD, and numerous other mental ailments, because HEY, guess what? I’m not a psychotic. Not to mention the fact that I have to live EVERY SINGLE DAY with the knowledge that I have taken away everything from someone. EVERYTHING. The person I shot, who according to everyone around me was responsible for his own death, will never breathe again because of the actions that I took.

Can you imagine that? Can you imagine knowing that you have taken away everything that someone ever was, and ever will be because of a split second decision? A decision that you will forever agonize over, and over again in your mind, trying to determine if what you did was the right thing? Even if everyone around you tells you that you did the right thing?

There's a reason you will never know. You didn't sign up for this shit. I did. So did countless other veterans. We KNOW what it means to fight in a war, and to fight for your life. We also want to come home and not have to confront this shit on a daily basis. You cannot change the past, but you will forever regret it if you feel you made the wrong decision.

You want to know why I am against war? Because I fought in it. You want to know why I am against Guns? Because I know how to use one, and exactly what that use will do to a person, on all sides of the gun.

But don’t even pretend for an instant that more violence is the answer, when you won't be pulling the trigger, or seeing the horrors. And if you fantasize about being the hero with the gun, you watch too many goddamn movies.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5JkHBC5lDs]

(Decided that I'm going to salvage the best of my work from TOP. I have over 200 works over there, so this will take some time. If all goes according to plan, I'll have the majority posted within 4 years. Yes, I plan to be here at least as long as TOP, If NOT Longer.)

Tags:

guns

War

Veteran

PTSD

Vote

Comments

Submitted by detroitmechworks on Sat, 03/19/2016 - 10:13am

Ok, this was posted early.

But NOW, it's correctly up. Sorry about the screw up yesterday, and thanks for reading!

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Submitted by Lisa Lockwood on Sat, 03/19/2016 - 10:48am

Just wanted to thank you,

for prodding me to save all the work I've posted over at GOS.
Some of them were specific to 'that' place, but lots are worth thinking about putting up here, at some point.
Probably wouldn't have thought to do all the copy/paste if you hadn't mentioned it, so, again, thanks!

—

"When the powerless are shut out of the media, we will make the media irrelevant" ~Anonymous~

Submitted by detroitmechworks on Sat, 03/19/2016 - 1:43pm

More than welcome.

I am seeing this as a chance to edit what was actually insightful from the chaff that was just trying to get hits...

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Submitted by Martha Pearce-Smith on Sat, 03/19/2016 - 6:44am

I think you will appreciate this....

Mark Twain's - "The War Prayer"

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Submitted by detroitmechworks on Sat, 03/19/2016 - 10:08am

A sad testiment, but far too true.

Thanks, I really appreciate you taking the time to read my work, because it does mean a lot to me.

—

I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Submitted by Martha Pearce-Smith on Sat, 03/19/2016 - 10:46am

You are a fine writer... :-) n/t

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Submitted by detroitmechworks on Sat, 03/19/2016 - 1:42pm

Thank you!

As I joke, my porn novel still gets 50 hits a week after 7 years, so I MUST be doing something right.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Submitted by defaultcitizen on Sat, 03/19/2016 - 6:55am

shoot'emup!

Good post, good topic. I am deeply saddened at the thought of how many 18 to 25 yr old boys (yes, “boys” - not mature, experienced “men”) have been bundled off to some Conflict Overseas, steeped in the glory and excitement of first-person-shooter videogames and repetitive scenes of tv heroes brandishing a pistol professionally with both hands and advancing boldly into the lair of The Bad Guy. I honestly believe all boys should be given a bb gun and allowed to kill a songbird as a vaccination against taking a human life. I have killed two deer and several hundred quail. I think most hunters remember almost all of the occasions when they “got one” and maybe it's the lower testosterone level but with age, sadness replaces pride. I am grateful there are no images and sounds of a slayed human being to hinder my sleep.

Don't ask me any questions 'bout the metals on my chest
Take the star out of the window. Let my conscience take a rest.

—

defaultcitizen

Submitted by detroitmechworks on Sat, 03/19/2016 - 10:35am

Insulation from consequences...

Is one of the horrible things about our current coverage of war. Politicians who make the decisions never have to "Worry their beautiful Minds" about the death and destruction their decisions make.

And the saddest thing is the images that stick in my mind the most aren't the consequences... it's the decision I made. Maybe it's to ensure I never do it again, but yeah, that's what is really what sticks.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Submitted by Alison Wunderland on Sat, 03/19/2016 - 7:42am

Powerful diary, MDW. Thank You

It brought back so many memories even though I never served. I've always been against war. I protested the Viet Nam war, and I took great pains to get 4Fed to not contribute to it. I've been adamantly opposed to every war we've engaged in ever since.

Both my parents were in WWII. My Dad was in the Pacific. His Destroyer was blown up and he was lucky to survive. A lot of his shipmates weren't. He never talked about it. I understand only now why he never wanted any guns in the house.

For me WWII didn't end until 1965 when I left my Mom's house. She lived in France during the war. For her, I'm not sure it ever really ended. Hardly a day went by without "Pendant la guerre..." or "Les Allemand..."

I know one thing: no one would ever sit through another war movie if they could smell the smell of death.

I humbly say "I feel your pain, Brother." Loving my cats as much as I do and coming to the understanding that they're also living beings, I feel shame and sorry for the beings whose lives I thoughtlessly destroyed when I was younger.

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Submitted by Martha Pearce-Smith on Sat, 03/19/2016 - 7:51am

Both of my parents served in WWII also...

Mom stateside in the Army Signal Corp. At Fort/Camp Detrick. Dad also in the Pacific aboard the U.S.S. Lansdowne. He didn't talk about it much either.
They are now buried together at Arlington.

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Submitted by Alison Wunderland on Sat, 03/19/2016 - 8:13am

Small world, huh?

Dad was a Tin Can Sailor too.

Mom lived in Brittany when the Germans arrived. They took over my Grandmother's (Grandmammy) house and the officers moved in for the duration. When they left, they dumped all their munitions in the well. When I lived there in '55>'59 it was still covered with an 8" thick concrete lid because it was deemed too dangerous to try to clean out. They moved to Paris where Grandmammy took part in La Resistance and helped smuggle over 400 Jews out of France. She got shot in the leg one night while out after curfew.

And here it is 70 years later and that goddamned war still isn't over because I can't see through my tears well enough to type, remembering my wonderful Grandmother.

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Submitted by detroitmechworks on Sat, 03/19/2016 - 10:12am

Thanks for that...

I got quite a bit of feedback the last time I posted this, but it wasn't this kind of sympathy and respect.

So thank you, very much. I'm already very grateful for the community convincing me of the error of my ways on re-publishing my old work.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Submitted by Alison Wunderland on Sat, 03/19/2016 - 11:33am

Think of them as the paperback versions.

I for one, and possibly a lot of others here too, missed the hardback editions. Please proceed.

The world is a sick place and we here have been infected to one extent or another. For the time being we're all still in shock.

But we're here to heal and help heal each other.

—

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Submitted by mimi on Sat, 03/19/2016 - 11:03am

thank you, dmw, I hear you,

my son has not the verbal powers of expressing himself you have, but your words scream at me as his silence does or did. It's now 13 years after the Iraq invasion, only once he told me that he knows how many he had killed. That was may be six years later. I remember that and wondered ever since. When we knew he would be employed in the shock and awe invasion, I sent him the words of my grandfather on my mother's side, who went through wwI: "Don't volunteer for "hero" missions". In the end if you do the "hero" utter bullshit stuff or not, you are in the mess and have to deal with it for your life. I hate myself to not have tried stronger to prevent him from enlisting (he enlisted shortly before Bush was inaugurated. We didn't know nothing about the Bushies). He was so discouraged in his life that the recruiters had an easy task to talk him into it with the promise he could learn and go to classes while in the military, which turned out to be bs after all. I misjudged US foreign policies, never expected a "Bush" and a "Rumsfeld" and a "Cheney" and all their bootlickers could do that much harm. Still at times my son thinks that the military was the employer that was more fair with regards to be treated equally than any corporation ever would. And of course he is anti-war ever since.

It's a curse. I have to say that I believe the amount as to which people return from wars and be broken are also dependent of how burdened they were before enlisting and how burdened they are afterwards. Divorces, complicated lives as kids in complicated families, all of it becomes one huge melange of problems to deal with. It's not easy.

Lately I was overwhelmed with some personal stuff and one person, I would have expected the least to get understanding from, just told me: "don't blame yourself, time is everything, it can heal and you can forget (and she had the strong and desperate belief that "God is good"). Knowing what she went through, I have nothing but respect for her faith that kept her going. And it convinced me to not talk about things I haven't gone through myself and make judgments.

Her belief that time heals and forgetting is good reminded me why I hate the intertubes so much. Nothing is forgotten in the digital world. That's why I tend to believe that no matter what and how much we talk here, it will not help, but in the end it will make us sick. And we will disconnect from that technology to save ourselves.

Submitted by detroitmechworks on Sat, 03/19/2016 - 1:40pm

The military is both better and worse...

than the civilian life. At its best, it's almost a family, and that's a great joy in times of stress. At its worse, it's a dysfunctional family, with all the power games and cruelty involved.

I do however think that the sharing of experience is a good thing. It at least helps others learn from the mistakes we make. Whether people listen or not depends on the audience, and sadly there will always be that group that thinks they know better than those who have lived through it.

—

I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Submitted by Fentress on Sat, 03/19/2016 - 1:03pm

On the nose

Sounds like my late husband.

Be well.

—

******************************

Muerte al fascismo. Muerte a la tiranía. colapso total de los que promueven tampoco. A la pared con el unico porciento%

Submitted by detroitmechworks on Sat, 03/19/2016 - 1:42pm

I hope he's well, wherever we go.

Sometimes I think the reason that vets always seem to form clubs is that we really sometimes DO speak a different language. It's not easy to translate that to a form that others can understand sometimes.

—

I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Submitted by Bisbonian on Sat, 03/19/2016 - 5:00pm

I remember this from "over there"

Definitely worth saving, and re-sharing.

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"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X

Submitted by detroitmechworks on Sat, 03/19/2016 - 5:04pm

Thanks. Only downside is...

If I don't log in I can't access my "List" of diaries. As a result, I'm going to have to do this in the Opposite order that I initially posted em. So, it may seem like I'm getting less and less mature as time goes on.

—

I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Submitted by Szaephod on Sat, 03/19/2016 - 6:15pm

This one caught in my throat.

In the same way - and sorry to make it immediately political - that it catches in my throat when I think of the 4000 young Americans that then Sen. Clinton help sentence to death, the 50,000 more condemned to be maimed, and the 100,000's permanently traumatized. And we cannot forget the million innocent Iraqi's murdered. It is unfathomable, unimaginable, and unforgivable. And devastating to contemplate even for a few moments - black despair lurks in these thoughts. Maybe it's why so many choose to ignore or gloss over the horrible reality? Isn't it always the way it's been with war?

Thank you for sharing this.

—

The spirit of party serves to enfeeble the Public Administration,
agitates with Jealousies and false alarms, and opens the door to corruption,
which finds access to the government itself through the channels of party passions.
George Washington

Submitted by detroitmechworks on Sat, 03/19/2016 - 6:25pm

The sad thing is that...

It used to be we LISTENED to veterans who complained of how horrible war is.
Now, the media brands them cowards and listens to the hawks who will never see the consequences of their actions. Perhaps it's always been this way, but compare the accounts of war up until the last century with last century's, and you see a definite shift in the portrayal.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.