I've been in law enforcement for 27 years and I've had this same dream since the beginning. I call it the "1000 lb trigger". I go to use my weapon and I cant pull the trigger. It's frozen. I try with all my might and it wont budge. This dream has haunted me for years. Strange. I've heard of others have the dream where the bullet exits the barrel and hits the ground after traveling 6-8 feet. I havent experienced that one. I guess one nightmare is enough. I'm curious what types of dreams ya'll encounter...if any. .

I had it too early in my career. I think the dream was my brain trying to sort out wether I should kill someone or not..I dunno, I’m not a head shrinker.

After an OIS, I never had that dream again.

quote:

Originally posted by cajunmuscle:
I've been in law enforcement for 27 years and I've had this same dream since the beginning. I call it the "1000 lb trigger". I go to use my weapon and I cant pull the trigger. It's frozen. I try with all my might and it wont budge. This dream has haunted me for years. Strange. I've heard of others have the dream where the bullet exits the barrel and hits the ground after traveling 6-8 feet. I havent experienced that one. I guess one nightmare is enough. I'm curious what types of dreams ya'll encounter...if any. .

Release the safety.

I also have the 1,000 pound trigger dream from time to time.

And I've almost never carried a gun with a safety.

Go figure.

Count me in, the damn gun just won't fire no matter what I do. I have no idea how to interpret it.

These kinds of dreams are very common for LEOs, soldiers, and other gun toters.

Col. Dave Grossman talks about it in his books and classes about combat psychology.

He postulates that it's your subconscious telling you that you're not confident in your shooting abilities, and is a sign that you need to get out and train more to build confidence in your skills.

I think it relates to how you feel about potentially killing another human being. Unless you are a stone cold sociopoath you have feelings.

Back when I was still in the service I had dreams like those. The most common were not being able to find or chamber the right ammo. Frantically searching for proper ammo and seeing the enemy closing in and not being able to shoot back.

I too have had a dream like that. I'm not law enforcement or prior military and never shot a person.

What I've noticed is that any of my dreams where I dont have experience in that scenario, like shooting a human, the trigger can't be pulled and the rest of the story can't unfold and I usually wake up.

I had dreams where bullets hit the person and bounced like peanuts.

One was a UFO landing and them inviting me to explore the galaxy, but I had a heart attack in my dream and Ive not had one to know what its like so that woke me up.

Crashed my car into a frozen river and was submerged but woke up because I've never broke a window from inside a car

hopefully thats not too much of a thread drift

It’s a performance stress dream. The same as having to present a project at school or report at work totally unprepared. Or, take a test, give a speech, compete in an event, etc.
Mine is similar - I can pull the trigger, I just can’t pull it far enough. No matter how hard or far I pull - no bang.

I used to have a similar dream but in mine the gun would fire but was completely ineffective.

Yes, either really hard to pull trigger or bullets come out with about the same velocity as next darts.

Been a long time but early on I’ve had.
-thousand pound trigger
-nerf / ineffective bullets
-spontaneous disassembly of Gun….that may have been me shooting an actual Keltec but I digress

I think like was said it’s subconscious fear of one’s abilities / lack of.

quote:

Originally posted by maddy345:
I used to have a similar dream but in mine the gun would fire but was completely ineffective.

It's been many many years ago but I used to have that one too. I would be firing an automatic rifle of some sort and I could SEE I was getting hits, but the <whoever it was> just kept coming toward me. Like it was a human-shaped tank or something. Or a Terminator, but that was decades before the movie came out. I always woke up before he got to me, though.

I have had the gun doesnt work dream, too. But my most recurring dream is a vehicle pursuit where I crash onto a body of water.

Your "thousand pound trigger" dreams are happening because you're having them close to when you wake up. (the reason you remember them, you probably wake up immediately following it, if not in the middle of it) You're not in deep sleep, you're trying to pull the trigger and may even be physically. (curling your finger or clenching your fist) But since there's no gun in your hand, there's no feedback. Your brain/dream says "the gun's not working", it should be saying "there's no gun".

I used to have them often. Then I figured out what I posted above. I still have them on a rare occasion, when I do I realize I'm dreaming right away now and wake up. It's even made me realize I was dreaming and not wake right up, which allows for a few moments of recklessness. lol



My reoccurring gun dreams are that I'm looking at guns in gun stores. I have them very frequently. There are a few stores I've been visiting in dreams for decades (not stores that actually exist) Last night I dreamed about finding and looking at guns in a new store. In real life, I almost never go to gun stores. Once every few years at most.

I've actually mentioned this phenomenon in this forum before. A very common dream amongst gun enthusiasts. In my version firing the gun has no effect.

It's funny, when I first got into martial arts, I had the same dream except my blows and kicks to an opponent had no effect.

I sometimes dream I can't hit what I'm aiming at or that the bullet just falls impotently to the floor. I'm sure there's no Freudian parallel to be considered.

I'm not a LEO and don't carry, so my firearms dreams are very limited--I can only remember one.

I'd just done a ride-along with a couple of DPS Tac Officers (SWAT) and at one of their stops they left me in the car with instructions about picking up a gun left in the car and helping if they got into trouble (a condition I was poorly set to do). The stop went well and no issues. That night I dreamed I was in the atrium of a 2-story building with my LEO friends, and we were besieged by a bunch of gunmen shooting at us from all levels of the building. I was armed with my LAR Grizzly .45 Mag pistol and was shooting at all of them. (Not sure how effectively, but I was a good shot with that gun.) At the time I woke up all 3 of us were still alive.

That is the only time I had that dream, and it's the only one where I used a gun.

flashguy

Cop Dreams (though as Rogue pointed out others have similar dreams as well).

Mine was every time I pulled the trigger there would be a misfire. When I went to clear the malfunction something would fall off the gun; the trigger, slide, sights whatever. Or if the gun fired it was ineffective. I would watch the bullets' bounce off the bad guy.

After a few years and I was comfortable being on the job those dreams stopped. Of course new ones started, like pulling smashed, dead children out of mangled cars because of some drunk driving asshole. Those dreams never quite gone away even after retirement.