A person’s physical size does not matter much when it comes to the damage a bullet can do, the doctors say.

In 1995, the man in North Carolina, Kenny Vaughan, did not have a car to protect him when he was shot about 20 times in Rougemont.

As Mr. Vaughan pulled into his driveway one evening, he said, a man in a van pulled in behind him and hopped out with a rifle in his hand. Mr. Vaughan recognized the man as a former neighbor. As Mr. Vaughan dashed for the side of his house, he was struck in the side of his right leg and fell to the ground.

Image Kenny Vaughan was shot about 20 times outside his home in 1995. I asked the Lord not to hit me in my heart and head, said Mr. Vaughan, who said he never lost consciousness. Credit... Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times

Then, from about five feet away, the man fired shot after shot as Mr. Vaughan crept on his side, trying in vain to crawl under his minivan, to somehow find a reprieve from the indescribable sting he felt with each bullet that tore into his body.

“You’re thinking clearer than you ever thought in your life,” Mr. Vaughan said during a recent interview. “I don’t know if it’s the adrenaline or just the will to live. You want to live more than anything in the world, and you know you have no control. I asked the Lord not to hit me in my heart and head.”

When the gunman stopped to reload, Mr. Vaughan said, he pulled himself to his feet and onto the hood of his minivan. But the man knocked him on his back with a shot to the abdomen, again from about five feet away, and continued shooting.