Relax, NC, there's no real need to insult anyone. It's much like combat, the people who most want it rarely react well to it. However, until you actually experience it, nobody knows how they'll react. Some people bluster about it to develop a mind-set that they hope will allow them to perform adequately.
Killing isn't an existential experience. Most of the time, fight or flight is in full effect, and the actual moment can blur. Others have found that the moment holds crystal clarity for them. Research has shown that the mind "fills in" what is missed, and that is why you are cautioned to obtain an attorney PRIOR to making any statements requiring details after a shooting, lethal or not.
What someone feels about taking a life is a personal experience. There is no "common reaction" beyond relief that you are still alive after a defensive situation forces you to act.
Some people literally feel nothing beyond that relief, as far as the deceased is concerned. Their life experience may allow for that, and they aren't latent killers. Others will suffer long and hard over the fact that they took a life. It has nothing, for them, to do with the circumstances, only that they were required to kill.
Because of the stigma that some attach to the act, right or wrong, and the juvenile "real men don't cry" approach that mandates stoic silence on the subject, most people maintain silence. For the most part, the experience gets filed along with every other unpleasant topic, and life goes on.
