PA Bill Number: HB2663
Title: Providing for older adults protective services; and making a repeal.
Description: Providing for older adults protective services; and making a repeal. ...
Last Action: Referred to AGING AND OLDER ADULT SERVICES
Last Action Date: Nov 19, 2024
What Does it Feel Like to Kill Someone? Some Who Did So in Self-Defense Share Their Story. . . :: 10/31/2015
In the movies, when the bad guy is killed, the audience cheers and the hero rides off into the sunset. But in real life, taking a life- even in self-defense- can take a toll that haunts them for years.
Some people who have taken lives in acts of self-defense recently shared their story of the impact it’s had on them.
On Reddit, assailer10 wrote about his girlfriend’s ex who broke in and pointed a gun at them. Assailer10 tried talking him out of it, but the man shot at him. Assailer10 shot back:
“It was a terrible experience, I still see it in my nightmares, the moment haunts me to this day, I wonder if there was any way that I could have made this situation better without making everything so… final
We have both been to therapy several times, and it never seems to help. Looking back, in a way he did kill us, he killed us both. My girlfriend has learnt to deal with it in her own way, but i’m still pretty f****d up over the situation. I’ve not been able to deal with the feeling of helplessness I’ve had since the moment I pulled the trigger.
But those issues are my own, I still live my life free, the case was deemed self-defense, and I was able to obtain a stable job. We’re still together, 6 years later, now with two adorable little children. We just hope we never have to have anything like that happen ever again in our lives.
I don’t regret what I did though. Not for a single second. I did for a while, but when I posted this story before, I got so many comments from you guys on reddit who really made me think of if in a way I hadn’t before. And for that, I just want to say thanks.”
For theJester5421, it was during war, but still troubled him:
“I killed one person while in Iraq. It was a 15 year old kid who got paid to shoot at us. I had seen the kid probably every day before that. He seemed like a good kid. It kills me everyday to think those monsters made this innocent kid do something just because they didn’t want to risk their own a**.”
Mlive spoke to R. Scott Stehouwer, chairman of Calvin College’s psychology department, who explained some of the internal conflict people who have killed in self-defense feel:
“We do recognize that people who are killed may very well deserve that,” Stehouwer said. “But they’re still people. They have families and they have people who love them. On TV shows, it’s over and done with. In real life, there are funerals for these people. There are families, there are friends – there are loved ones.”
“Regardless of how justified it is, it is still a death.”
According to experts who commented for the article, feelings of shock, anger, isolation, elation, and guilt are a normal part of the process, but, if left unresolved, can lead to anxiety, depression and ‘post-shooting disorder’ (PSD).
Still, many who have been in such situations say they feel comforted by the fact that countless lives have been saved by those who’ve shot in self-defense.
As Usman Seth, a man who shot and killed an armed robber who made an attempt on his father’s convenience store, put it: “I feel proud I saved my sister and my dad’s life.”
