Walking wounded

Fascinating stuff from David The Wire Simon's Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, which I've been blazing through recently like the bookhound I once was (Wolf Hall, you tore apart my averages and gobbled up my confidence):

The distortion of television and popular culture is nowhere more apparent than in the intimate relationship of bullets and bodies. Hollywood tells us that a Saturday Night Special can put a man on the pavement, yet ballistics experts know that no bullet short of an artillery shell is capable of knocking a human being off his feet...

Although the popular belief that many people fall down upon being shot is generally accurate, experts have determined that this occurs not for physiological reasons, but as a learned response. People who have been shot believe they are supposed to fall immediately to the ground, so they do. Proof of the phenomenon is evident in its opposite: There are countless cases in which people - often people whose mental processes are impaired by drugs or alcohol - are shot repeatedly, sustaining lethal wounds; yet despite the severity of their injuries, they continue to flee or resist for long periods of time.

(Don't worry, mum, I'm not about to go and shoot up the high school.)