QOTD #70: Have you ever seen a weapon used in violence?

Actually, no. I'm kinda surprised to realize that. My husband and friends are into knives for protection and carry small ones often. My chick friends are badass. We all have our CCs and carry when traveling, but not on a regular basis. I'm wondering if the prevalence of personal protection is the reason I've never seen them used. Everyone knows the other person is likely just as armed.

I did see a teenager split the back of another teen's head open with the side of a ping pong paddle once. Substance abuse detox is a bitch. It made me sick to my stomach. And they made me stay at the ER with him. I quit 2 weeks later.

I'm seeing less of the DV issues in my current practice, but I'm positive it's because of the population and private pay situation. I had a 16 yo once that dissociated in my office repeated due to abuse and exposure to violence. It used to be one of the top three referral issues when I worked in a more public setting. Even two years ago in Louisiana.

 

No.

But I have seen the aftermath. It isn't pretty.

 

I've seen weapons and I've seen violence, but somehow I never actually saw violence involving a weapon, although I've been close to it.

I went to a high school in the 1980s, near Hollywood, where half the kids were bussed in from South Central and Compton. So I saw plenty of weapons-- we used to sit around the quad at lunch and play a game of spot-the-concealed-handgun, and I recall once losing a round where the winner spotted 29 just in the quad around us. And I knew plenty of kids who carried switchblades or butterfly knives-- I was acquainted with one kid in a Filipino gang who could make that butterfly knife move so fast it was almost a blur. We had a number of stabbings, and a couple of shootings during the years I was there; and I was once in a classroom across the hall from a bathroom wherein another student committed suicide by gunshot. We heard the shot but didn't see anything, although I was friendly with the poor guy who happened to be in the bathroom at the same time, and saw it all.

I did see a number of fights, including one where a kid got just brutally beaten before the cops broke it up, and one where the kid losing the fight picked up a piece of two-by-four and just fucking slammed it into the head of the guy beating him, who went down like a sack of potatoes-- there was a lot of blood, but he turned out to be fine, just had to be taken to the ER for a bunch of stitches.

And when I lived in Mid-Wilshire at the end of the 90s, I heard gunshots all the time, and a guy got stabbed to death maybe a block and a half from where I lived, but I never saw anything....

 

If it bleeds, it leads. Despite the fact that the violent crime rate is currently perking around at an all time low, the 24/7 in-yo-face media can't get enough of the few outliers.

Couple of close calls, but no. I like to think that prior planning and preparation helped dodge those incidents.

What if I told you there is no controlling guns, only controlling people?

Given what passes for children's entertainment today, you mean 100%. Movies, TV and those gosh-darned shoot 'em up video games are brainwashing our children.

 

Seen a couple of fellows get cut in a bar room brawl. Same bar weeks later, retaliation for the cuttings turned into a shooting. The cutter got jumped in the parking lot, so he whipped out his trusty 38 and shot the guy. Grand jury no-billed him.
Years later watched a friend get shot by his jealous wife.

 

It kinda depends on how you define things. I've had a gun pointed at me 3 times, all semi-justifiable. Farmers take trespassing as seriously as Southern gentlemen take the virtue of their underage daughters.

I've been hit by a pool cue in a barroom brawl and dragged a few people away from the same.

No, no degree of gun control would take away weapons from the people that pointed them at me, nor should it. I'd be all for pool cue control, that thing hurt. (as an aside, I did overcome my aversion to hitting a girl with that one. Whack me on the head with a pool cue and my response will be gender neutral).


I was an itty bit wild in my teens and 20s, I'm living a boring middle age, it seems.

 

My little brother stabbed my dad with a steak knife.
It was after my brother had stolen my dad's car and taken it for a joy ride, then drove it out on the runway to escape the police which worked out about as well as you can imagine.
When my dad went to pick him up from jail they arrested him for two outstanding bench warrants from speeding tickets he ignored many years before.
Things got really ugly when they got home.
My dad tossed my brother over the coach and the two of them ended up in the kitchen with my brother holding a steak knife that he used to slice my Dad's arm.

I couldn't decide who to go for, I was certain they would kill each other, but everything stopped.
It was like all the air went out of the room.
My dad got his arm stitched up and things worked out.

I'd have to say that my perception of violence is different because of events like this one.

 

The actual usage, no.

The threat to use a weapon, yes.

...In junior high (middle) school a standoff involving a sharpened rake (the metal Afro comb, not the yard tool) and brass knuckles, and very possibly a knife.
...In HS some bricks, and pieces of 2x4s (some kids grabbed what was handy in a construction discard pile), and knives. Both situations were racial conflict.
...I've seen knives and pieces of heavy chain displayed to make the "Don't fuck with me" point rather than a direct threat.

We have a lot of violence in our "hood." I don't let it stop me from getting out to grocery shop, shopping center, resale shops, pawn shops, etc. I've never been advocate of gun control (even though I question the need for normal?? citizens to have military "style" weapons, esp those that are easily converted to fully automatic).

In our area I think the right to keep a loaded handgun within easy reach in your car is a very good thing. Within the week after the law passed in Texas, we had one carjacking and one driveway robbery thwarted. In each case the person in the vehicle, the would've-been victim, shot and killed the criminal. I have no issues with that.

 

I actually never have. I tried remembering if I had, but I don't remember any. It is kind of surprising.