This is a discussion on Oops! within the Concealed Carry Issues & Discussions forums, part of the Defensive Carry Discussions category; A 4-year-old boy was killed by a falling bullet from celebratory gunfire while attending a New Year’s Eve church service in Decatur. As a father ...
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A 4-year-old boy was killed by a falling bullet from celebratory gunfire while attending a New Year’s Eve church service in Decatur.
As a father who has had a child die, it is sad to read of any death. As a shooter, I'd call this one unnecessary.
Posting this as a shooter safety item.
Be Blessed.
Array
imagine how many rounds fall to ground every time Hamas has another peace parade. Those guys celebrate w/ AK bursts into the air.
Array
Its never a good idea to fire a gun up into the air unless you are using a shotgun for hunting/clay purposes and know the area you are shooting into is clear.
I cannot imagine a round fire into the air, falling by gravity, then penetrating a roof with enough force to be lethal. Amazing.
Retired USAF E-8. Avatar is OldVet from days long gone - 1978. Oh, to be young again...
Paranoia strikes deep, into your heart it will creep. It starts when you're always afraid... "For What It's Worth" Buffalo Springfield
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The Straight Dope: Can a bullet fired into the air kill someone when it comes down?
... a .30 caliber bullet ... testers shot the bullet straight into the air ... It came down bottom (not point) first at what was later computed to be about 300 feet per second.
... According to the article, doctors at King/Drew Medical Center, ... that between 1985 and 1992 they treated 118 people for falling bullet injuries around New Year's Eve or the Fourth of July. Thirty-eight of the victims died. ...
...There is some skepticism about the numbers reported by the King/Drew team," ...The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and the Los Angeles Police Department ...reported only about half a dozen deaths in the same period …
Originally Posted by OldVet
That might be true when a bullet is shot straight up, but how many bullets are?
Anything less that a 90 degree angle would have the bullet falling at a pretty fast rate. We hear of people being just slapped or even wounded with spent bullets and we also see people being killed.
If you watch those middle easterners shooting their AK wildly into the air, especially on full auto, the guns are bouncing around spitting lead everywhere and some of the angles aren't very steep. Shooting a rifle at say a 45 degree angle, and you'll still have enough velocity to punch right through a body a long ways off.
In any case its a dumb thing to do and it violates one of the rules of safety which is "know you backstop and what is beyond".
It dumb and its dangerous.
It is better to live one day as a lion, than a thousand years as a lamb...
AR. CHL Instr. 07/02 FFL
Maker of cool things to shoot
Array
Amen to this post and the boys family.
"I dislike death, however, there are some things I dislike more than death. Therefore, there are times when I will not avoid danger" Mencius"
Years ago a woman was killed by a falling round, which was shot over a mountain in deer season. It fell through the roof of a factory in the town where I was living, at the time, in PA.
It went through the metal roof, ricochet off a steam-pipe and still had enough force to kill her.
Μολὼν λαβέ
I'm just one root in a grassroots organization. No one should assume that I speak for the VCDL.
I am neither an attorney-at-law nor I do play one on television or on the internet. No one should assumes my opinion is legal advice.
Veni, Vidi, Velcro
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Concur. Most shots fired into the ait are not straight up and will still have more velocity than that imparted by gravity upon impact. It is a stupid practice done by stupid people. It is also a very common practice in rural areas and inner city areas.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around laws. Plato
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I think they need more parades!
"Brains before Bullets"
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Exactly how fast a bullet (or any object) can fall and exactly how much energy it will have on impact is not a mystery. Bullets aren't magic.
Array
He was hit in the chest. So unless he was laying down, I doubt the gun was fired strait up into the air.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Question everything, Learn something, Answer nothing.
Those who have an answer for everything, have an answer for nothing.
Correction: The subject of the OP was hit in the head.
Straight up would have to be from the church, and nobody's saying that's where the shooter was.
It's a trivial point since the boy is just as dead.
Array
I think any angle above about 45 degrees above horizontal will result in the bullet going pretty close to terminal velocity when it gets back to ground level. (Terminal velocity is where the drag force equals the component of the gravitational force along the direction of motion, and the speed no longer changes much).
Whether terminal velocity is lethal ot not depends mostly on total mass relative to cross-sectional area of the bullet (and, to a lesser extent, on the exact bullet shape). Terminal velocity of .22 long-rifle bullets is pretty slow and rarely lethal. But terminal velocity of .50 machine gun bullets is high enough to be very lethal.
It's like a 1" long 3/8" bolt dropped from a skyscraper is lethal, but a "bb" isn't, even if they were made from the same material, and thus had the same density.
Mike Fontenot
That certainly is much worse than what happened to me and my prayers for the family.
I have a new hole in our chimney from New Years Eve... after reading this post, I hope that's the only damage the moron did.
How can people be so stupid? Good gawd, if you must so stupid as to blow off rounds at the very least least shoot them in to the ground! Better yet, shoot yourself!
ALWAYS carry! - NEVER tell!
"A superior Operator is best defined as someone who uses his superior
judgement to keep himself out of situations that would require a display of his
superior skills."
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