i think it's pretty stupid you HAVE to have a water bottle to drink form a pond. i'm pretty sure that in rea life, i can just stick my head in the pool and drink. if Rocket sees this, you might wanna include this in the next patch
banditry is a core part of DayZ. it adds a whole new dimension of fear and paranoia from others, knowing that anyone you see can shoot you in the back of your head just because you had some ammo for his rifle or something. it's another way of surviving in this game.
i actually noticed a weird thing: happened to me as well with the revolver, but all these times happened on VETERAN servers. on regular servers, the damage was normal.