What does it mean?

Nancy - you are reading material packed with idioms, flippant remarks, metaphors and cultural references that may be beyond your understanding.

Sounds like you need a line by line translation.

Time to change your reading choice. Come back to it later.

I think these are assigned readings, PUNKEY.

"Shoot first, cry later" would mean that if you sensed you were in danger you should protect yourself without hesitation. If you later discovered that you weren't in danger you can cry about having shot someone without needing to.

That's the case with all language learners, Punkey, including native ones but that doesn't mean that we hide those collocations from learners. Exposure is a great teacher, exposure with great context is the best teacher.

That's how you learned language.