“The only difference between suicide and martyrdom is press coverage.” –Chuck Palahniuk
The answer is yes.
There have been suicide cases where the persons shot themselves two times or even more before they were killed.
This happened when the first shot wasn’t fatal and the person intending to kill himself got another chance to pull the trigger.
If the first shot isn’t fatal, there may be cases where the person can still pull the trigger as he twitches due to muscle spasms caused by the disruption of communication between neurons.
It depends heavily on the angle of the barrel to the body or head and the caliber of the gun, which can be best explained by Iloilo police investigators who are the experts on this matter.
Arnel Rebeta, a DPWH district engineer in Antique in the Philippines, who was recently found dead inside his boarding house at Bankers’ Village subdivision, Barangay Dungon B, Jaro district with gunshot wounds on the chest and on the nape, could have killed himself, according to the initial investigation of the Iloilo City Police Office (ICPO)’s Special Investigation Task Force (SITF) headed by Superintendent Rogen Morales who faced reporters on July 18.
Unique
An Australian who committed suicide on parkland in Canberra in February 1995 had the most unique method in killing himself.
He shot himself in the chest using a pump action shotgun. Without hitting a single rib, the load passed through his chest, and went out the other side.
Sensing he was alive, he pulled out a pistol and shot himself in the head while walking for 15 meters.
He was still alive, thus he reloaded the shotgun, leaned it against his throat, and pulled the trigger, hitting the throat and part of his jaw.
He survived anew.
He reloaded a final time and walked 200 meters to a hill. He sat down on the slope, held the gun against his chest with his hands and operated the trigger with his toes.
This time, the shot entered the thoracic cavity and punctured his heart. He died, finally.
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Is there really a hell, heaven and purgatory literally?
Religion tells us they exist.
Many independent thinkers and philosophers believe they don’t exist literally.
One of them is lawyer-philosopher Ernie J. Dayot of Dingle, Iloilo in the Philippines, who exhorted this writer to read more about Italian poet Dante Alighiere or simply called “Dante.”
In the book, Who’s Who In The Middle Ages by Dr. John Fines I acquired from Barnes and Noble in Manhattan for $7.98, Dante was described as “a voracious reader of vernacular as well as classical literature, and he claimed to know the Aeneid by heart. He also studied painting and music.”
Fines describes Dante further: “By 1287, he was at Bologna–possibly at the university, but his whole heart was set on poetry, and at this young age he dared to submit a sonnet for criticism to the leading poet of the age, Guido Cavalcanti. At the same time he led a rich social life, and (as was normal for young nobles of the time) twice appearing on the field of battle.”
Major work
Born in Florence in 1265, Dante’s first major work was the Vita Nuova, a striking piece of self-psychologizing, set in the form of a critical exposition of his sonnets.
“These were concerned with his strange relationship with Beatrice, with whom he fell in love at the age of nine (she was only eigth). With all the devotion of Courtly Love that demanded purification through a kind of self-denial and worship usually accorded to the Divine, he pursued Beatrice with adoring glances, being rewarded with one famous salutation on the bridge,” narrates Fines.
Dante’s devotion, however, was obviously real, Fines adds, “for when she died in 1290 he changed his mode of life considerably in reaction.”
Dante married and had children, and indulged in a certain amount of dissipation and free-thinking, which he much regretted in later years, according to Fines.
Dayot says religion copied the theory of hell, heaven and purgatory in Dante’s long narrative poem, Divine Comedy.
The Divine Comedy is composed of 14,233 lines that are divided into three canticas (Italian plural cantiche) – Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise) – each consisting of 33 canots (Italian plural canti). An initial canor, serving as an introduction to the poem and generally considered to be part of the first cantica, brings the total number of cantos to 100.
It is generally accepted, however, that the first two cantos serve as a unitary prologue to the entire epic, and that the opening two cantos of each cantica serve as prologues to each of the three canticas./WDJ