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Oh boy, there’s a lot to go over here. Let’s dive in, shall we?

If you want a character to lose a lot of blood, not die, and have a decent chance for survival, go for gut/stomach wounds. That area will bleed a lot but not enough for someone to bleed out (usually.) If you want them to be shot several times, you can go with either upper arm or shoulder wounds as well. As long as the left/center pectoral space isn’t hit, there’s a high chance that the heart and other massively vital organs will be missed. You can always use the “if it was a half inch higher, you’d have died” line if you want as well!

First aid for bleeding wounds in general is pressure. Both for the book and in real life. If you come across someone who’s been shot in the shoulder and it’s non-fatal (they’re still alive) what you’ll want to do is hold a bandage or other cloth REALLY HARD against the wound. The less blood that gets out is the less blood lost, and blood loss leads to a whole lot of bad things. If someone is shot in the stomach, TIGHTLY wrap a bandage around their stomach as well. If the character is shot in the leg, have the defender put lots of pressure on the would and then TIGHTLY wrap the bandage/cloth in place. That’s a fairly standard first-aid training that most people have heard at least a couple times in their lives.

Now for the last question: can we have a bad guy shot in the head and survive to serve his sentence? Yes! Have him get shot in the eye. If the bullet is coming in from an angle, bits the eye, and exists through the side of the eye socket instead of traveling back to the brain, it’s survivable. Plus then he can get a cool eyepatch and be a pirate villain.

Adrenalin in fights essentially means that you can ignore *some* pain and get to safety before all the discomfort of injuries hits. For instance, if someone is running for their life and run through say broken glass, they might not notice all the glass in their feet until they stop. The brain decided that survival was more important than feeling all the pain and the adrenalin in the “fight or flight” response makes pain lessen somewhat. Getting shot in the eye is tough to affect with adrenalin, so I’d say probably nothing that could do there. But the good guy who gets shot up might not realize he was shot in the leg until he notices his blood soaked pants.