The only time I've ever been shot at was at a demo at university, and I'm not sure that they were aiming directly at me but rather more generally into the crowd that was running around blindly in the tear gas.

I had quite a lot of tear gassing in Johannesburg, as it was the cops' favourite method of breaking up fights. Very effective too: Hitting someone is difficult when you're blinded and coughing like crazy. It was so normal in fact that one would be out on a saturday evening going for a burger or something and as you rounded a corner, you'd smell the gas, and someone would say, "There's been a fight. Let's go have a beer and come back later".

The only time I had a gun stuck in my face was when I was selling dinner services door to door, and I had the bad luck to be at a house where the owner had already been foolish enough to buy one of the sets only to discover that they were nowhere as nice as the ones in the demo set. I rang the bell and the door opened and there was this quite drunk Afrikaner pointing a really big revolver in my face. He made me come in and drink with him as he told me his story of dinner set woe. Eventually I managed to flee when the guy was too drunk to move.

Moral 1 of the story: Don't sell crap to customers who are liable to turn violent.

Moral 2 of the story: If you're going to sell crap to customers who may turn violent, at least remember where those customers live.