BTDT
Irradiated by LabRat
Jennifer posts about a dream involving needing to shoot someone and not being able to. (In her case, because the slide came off in the holster.) Coincidentally, in a bull session with some of our other gunnie friends the subject came up and it turns out we’ve all had that dream, often in a wide variety of ways.
Between Stingray and me alone, we’ve had:
- 900-pound trigger pull
- Unclearable jam
- Gun fires, but the bullet just falls impotently out of the barrel
- Gun falls apart
- Gun was apart in the first place, cannot be put back together
- Wrong ammo
- No such thing as right ammo, gun chambered in something completely obscure
- Gun is magic ammo-eating device, perpetually not loaded when trigger pulled even if freshly loaded
- Uninsertable magazine
- Magazine falls out
- Gun successfully fired, intended target bulletproof
- Gun successfully fired, intended target not bulletproof but mysteriously mobile and also mad as hell
- Gun successfully fired, shooter recent graduate of the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy
The way I figure it for me at least, they’re out-and-out anxiety dreams. When I was much younger I had dreams about running from a pursuer who never stopped; when somewhat older, dreams about trying to beat somebody down with my bare hands and them simply not going down. Now that I’m a shooter and my subconscious has absorbed that defending myself from a threat may involve a weapon, it’s the Comedy Malfunction Parade.
These days I use them as a dipstick for my overall current mental health/outlook- if I neutralize the threat, escape, or otherwise deal acceptably with the situation, I’m doing pretty well. The time I dreamt I actually DID successfully beat someone to a bloody pulp and then felt REALLY BAD ABOUT IT, I figure was right about the pinnacle of self-confidence for me…
July 22nd, 2011 at 8:25 pm
Hey, I had those “running from a pursuer who never stopped” dreams too. Mostly when I feel trapped in a situation… getting one of those dreams is never a good sign for my mental health. Not to mention that waking up with one’s heart racing like one has just run a mile is not particularly restful.
July 22nd, 2011 at 9:00 pm
My running from a pursuer dreams consist of me falling down. A lot. Like falling down in the process of getting up from the last fall. It’s very frustrating.
I figure that particular dream came out of stress and anxiety about current status, but since I was able to get the guy in the end, it must mean that I believe that everything will turn out alright in the end. The bad guy (real life stress like bills that keep coming and money that doesn’t) is an impotent threat (hence his barrel falling off *phallic symbolism?*) and will be overcome although not without setbacks. I just need to keep my wits about me and roll with it.
July 22nd, 2011 at 9:02 pm
I used to have the “Gun successfully fired, intended target bulletproof” dream a LOT.
July 22nd, 2011 at 10:54 pm
My gunfighting dream is usually pretty simple, bad guy (or bad guys) come at me I fire, gun jams, I clear it and fire, gun jams and so on. Oddly enough, I don’t seem to get upset in these dreams and the few times they get to me I take care of them hand-to-hand. Mostly with a knife, but one time I remember breaking a bulletproof BG’s throat with my hand, over my knee. It was very graphic and visceral. Yuck.
I take these dreams to mean that while I have problems and fears in my life I can handle them.
July 22nd, 2011 at 11:15 pm
I tend to get either 1) 900lb trigger pull or 2) no ammo available. However, as I live in a country where guns are pretty much banned, I get the one where I have a gun, or several, and need to hide them.
July 22nd, 2011 at 11:25 pm
My threat-anxiety dreams don’t usually get to the point of an actual confrontation. Mostly, I just find myself SOCMOB and approached by Bad Guys, whereupon I try to disengage, escape, and evade and run into more (or the same) Bad Guys no matter which way I turn. I usually wake up somewhere between becoming convinced that I can’t get away and any actual confrontation.
July 23rd, 2011 at 4:57 am
Huh. In my dreams I always kill the bad guy. No problem. I also kill all the innocent people behind him.
I wonder that that means.
July 23rd, 2011 at 6:40 am
Oooooh, yeah. The one really really memorable one for me was a dream where I had fired all 5 rounds out of my .44 Spl successfully, though without hitting anything, and all I had to reload with was loose rounds in my pocket. And so I had my hand in my pocket, and I was trying to get the rounds out, and I kept not being able to sort the rounds from my keys and chap stick and so on (and no, the idea of just dumping the pocket never occurred to dream-self) and then I got the rounds in my hand, and I couldn’t get my hand out of my pocket with my fist closed around the rounds…
All this while trying to conceal myself behind a piece of conduit laying in the street while other people were shooting at me. And being 6’5″ and 250 pounds at the time, yeah, that wasn’t going well either.
July 23rd, 2011 at 6:55 am
I’ve only been shooting a couple of times, and I still frequently have the Useless Gun Dream pretty often. Usually its a combination of those causes you listed, one after the other. One other you didn’t mention: a trigger that offers no resistance at all because it isn’t connected to anything so it just flops around uselessly.
July 23rd, 2011 at 8:23 am
I’ve had a similar recurring dream involving my 1911. I pull the trigger, but something snaps and the hammer just kinda flops forward. I think I have subconcious issues with leaving a gun cocked and locked for long periods of time, because I never have that dream about DA guns.
July 23rd, 2011 at 10:07 am
It seems pretty universal among those who have worked a weapon into their daily routine. I have the 900-pound trigger pull, followed by a primer-only firing or something similarly quiet. I usually end up field-stripping the gun in the middle of the fight and realizing something is horribly wrong. “Why is there a Hi-Point slide on my Glock frame?”
Tracie has the bullet falling out of the barrel, or a puff of vapor/smoke.
I talked with a cop buddy while parked one night about these dreams. He said that in his dreams his gun always works and is effective, but that there’s too many bad guys or he just can’t reach some objective in time. He was at the time a sergeant in the USMC reserves and had recently returned from a deployment.
July 23rd, 2011 at 10:55 am
Oddly, in most all of my dreams, I am an unstoppable ninja badass, which is a pleasant change from the thoroughly mediocre schlub I am when I’m awake.
July 23rd, 2011 at 2:10 pm
I’ve played with lucid dreaming a bit.
When my subconscious messes with me in this fashion, I do something off the wall, like throw a truck at the enemy, or kill him with my mind, or a death ray emanating from my hand for no good reason.
Then my subconscious retaliates by shouting in my ear and waking me up.
July 23rd, 2011 at 4:26 pm
I used to have the occasional nightmare involving being overrun by some manner of horde, generally not of the human persuasion.
Then I started providing my dream-self with an M1911 (an apparatus with which, at the time, I had no personal experience whatsoever). This proved highly effective for getting myself out of, e.g., a basement full of guerrilla gorillas.
Eventually I acquired an actual M1911 for the nightstand - kept in condition 3, so’s I’d have to be awake before I could fire it; wouldn’t want to wake up to find myself shooting nightmare giant spiders with a real gun.
That was about 20 years ago, and in and in all that time I’ve never again had a nightmare in which a weapon was called for. The nightstand pistol is currently homeopathic, but the nightmares (of that sort, at least) remain vanquished.
July 24th, 2011 at 3:33 am
Matt’s Dream Firearm Deficiencies:
1. 900 lb trigger pull.
2. Molasses hammer drop, insufficient to ignite primer, or causes me to miss because of 5 second locktime.
3. Complete inability to get sights lined up. The target is right. There. There! Right there! Why can’t the front sight find itself on the center of the target?!?
4. Inablity to bring pistol to firing grip. This is such a dreamcentric thing. It won’t fit in my hand such that my finger will go into the triggerguard while able to pull the trigger back.
July 24th, 2011 at 5:45 am
So funny that you’d post about this today…
Last night (ok, yesterday day, given that I sleep days and work nights) I had a great dream that everything worked out fantastically (and included firearms and lots of noisy *boom*s)! And at the end, I had just enough time -in-/-after- the dream to think, “wow! how cool that it all ended up right and wrapped up before the alarm went off!” when the alarm went off and woke me up.
It was one of the few times when I haven’t had an anxiety-based failure-to-perform during a dream like that. But it was very cool.
July 24th, 2011 at 7:09 am
Mine is always the wrong ammo and missing head shots by the right ear… When I’m really down it’s not being able to pull the trigger (900lb). And I agree, it DOES seem to tie into the stress level I’m under at that time.
July 24th, 2011 at 1:41 pm
A lot of the can’t put it together, a lot of the 900 pound trigger pull, a REAL lot of the can’t get- rounds to- load, in the pocket or in hard to open box, keep dropping cartridges into impossible places (like sewer grates) thing.
Arms vary from 1911’s to double guns- and make me wonder why such dreams are so universal…
July 24th, 2011 at 2:01 pm
What’s odd for me is that often the gun in my dreams is a revolver, and I don’t have any revolvers I shoot with any kind of regularity. I find my semiautos much more comfortable to shoot. Maybe it’s that I’ve encountered too many that really DID have an incredibly gnarly trigger pull?
July 25th, 2011 at 6:05 am
I have had a few where the bad guy is right there but there are way too many innocent people (often children) around him and I don’t have a shot and end up having to watch the bad guy do whatever it is that he is doing because I can’t shoot (him knowing it and grinning all the while). I’m not sure why I don’t just run up and tackle him or something. See, things are so much easier in real life than in the dream.
I have also gotten the one where somebody notices my gun (usually shirt tail gets caught on the butt of the gun and I don’t notice) and I get surrounded by antis who all want to lecture me about it. Telling me it’s illegal, when I know it isnt. Crying about how I’m putting everyone in danger, when I know I’m not because I’m not one of those people who are prone to “snap” which is what they are apparently affraid of. Usually, a cop eventually shows up. After that, it varies. I have gotten everything from the cop laughing and telling the antis to go away, that it is perfectly legal for me to carry, to the antis lying and saying that I threatened someone (which I didn’t) and me getting hauled of to jail.
s
July 25th, 2011 at 7:39 am
I find it amazing how well you all remember your dreams, to such minute details. I usually don’t.
I am not a shooter, but I’m familiar with anxiety nightmares, too. When it is repetitious over the years, one remembers… so in my case it has been a college thesis presentation I have to give to a committee of numerous blank faces (more than 5), over and over again. No other details except it is hot, the room is small, I have nowhere to hang my boards (or the boards disappear when I turn to point). It all sounds innocuous, except the underlying paralyzing fear that unifies those noghtmares.
Agree with Labrat - it’s the subconscious expressing hidden fear of failure.
July 25th, 2011 at 10:58 am
I still have vivid and clear memories of nightmares I had when I was eight. I don’t know why it is, but if I wake up anywhere close to the end of a dream I’ll remember almost all of the details.
Individual quirk, I guess.
July 25th, 2011 at 12:45 pm
I have those dreams and I’m not a shooter - although because of that the problem usually is that I remember I’m not a shooter and actually have no bloody idea how guns work, so I can’t really imagine any type of gun, or how to shoot it, accurately.
No problem though, I usually also tend to go at least halfway lucid if the dream gets too unpleasant, at that point I realize that what is happening isn’t real and I can influence it. I rarely get full control, but almost always can get out of the more unpleasant situation and end with something better.
July 25th, 2011 at 2:36 pm
Y’know, if you have these sort of hallucinations when you’re awake, they take your guns away and put you in a shirt with really long arms…
July 25th, 2011 at 2:50 pm
Sounds a bit like “teeth” dreams, usually indicates a feeling that something, somewhere is coming apart at the seams.
July 26th, 2011 at 5:04 am
Marja,
If you ever make it to the Orlando Florida area, look me up. I’m not a certified instructor or anything, but I could easily give you the basics so that next time you have such a dream you WILL know how the gun works. I have taught quite a few of my friends how to shoot (some of them very afraid of guns) and am told that my “basic class” is nice and very low stress.
s
July 26th, 2011 at 10:31 am
Thanks for the offer Stuart. However it’s unlikely I’ll get the chance to take you up on it, I live in Europe. Unless my attempts writing novels go somewhere I’ll probably will never travel your way.
July 26th, 2011 at 11:26 am
Better than my dreams as a kid. I was always on an old wooden roller coaster, being chased by a station wagon (convertible, to boot — or at least with the roof and sides posts chopped) full of vampire Dominican nuns. The station wagon rode the rails like a coaster car, but never quite caught up(Oddly enough, I went to a Catholic school staffed by Dominican nuns, and the nun who generally drove the station wagon drove like a bat out of Hell and no fear of death.) I’d always wake up right before they caught me.
Now, when I have the SHTF nightmares, it almost ALWAYS involves me with a Glock 19 (while I am quite fine with the Glock as a tool, I roll out my M2HB layout chart on the floor and knock my head towards Ogden five times a day). With a Portable Hole full of loaded mags, apparantly. . . For variety, I sometimes get an AKM that I leave on SEMI, instead of the Combat Tupperware.
In my dreams, it’s not that I’m “A-Team incompetant” while fighting off hordes of nameless Evil Mooks(tm) (although the extended magazine fumble shows up now and again). if anything, I am Todd Jarret good, it’s just that there are more targets than I can service in time. Every time I reload, the horde tide gets a little closer. Eventually I end up using the empty gun as an impact tool for the last half dozen. Then I’m standing around, exhausted, winded, busted weapon, and cannot find a functioning (and ammo) firearm ANYWHERE to pull security until relief shows up — but I wake up with no more bad things happening, just a “memory” of frantic lurching about for more weapons before the next wave shows up. . .
Weird.
July 26th, 2011 at 4:16 pm
IRL once, I was so nervous that I jerked the slide completely off the piece when trying to chamber a round in a .22 Short Beretta Jetfire.
I had a hell of a time putting that gun back together.
July 26th, 2011 at 6:05 pm
My bad dreams seem to run towards total brake failure when driving downhill in the mountains.
August 1st, 2011 at 9:14 am
I’ve had similar Gun No Workee dreams. Other times the gun works, but like Matt mentions I can’t get a proper firing grip. Still other times I’ll get a few good shots off but when confronted with additional attackers the gun stops working or becomes ineffective and I’m forced to yell BANG BANG BANG. Curiously enough, I’ve had attackers go down from that.