New Years, tons of people shooting in the air. At what angle is it lethal?

[wacki]

Visited a friend in the city, a bunch of people were shooting in the air on New Years. I know if you shoot straight up it isn't lethal when it comes down, but what is the highest angle that bullets remain lethal? Handguns or rifles, any info will help.

[gifted]

9.8 meters per second squared. How far up are they going, and how long will they be falling? Straight vertical can be lethal. The closer to straight up you shoot, the closer to you the bullets will be landing. I'm not sure what angle bleeds off the bullet's energy, making it simply a falling object rather than a projectile on a high arcing trajectory.

[wacki]

According to this straight up isn't lethal

http://www.loadammo.com/Topics/March01.htm

In 1920 the U.S. Army Ordnance conducted a series of experiments to try and determine the velocity of falling bullets. The tests were performed from a platform in the middle of a lake near Miami, Florida. The platform was ten feet square and a thin sheet of armor plate was placed over the men firing the gun. The gun was held in a fixture that would allow the gun to be adjusted to bring the shots close to the platform. It was surmised that the sound of the falling bullets could be heard when they hit the water or the platform. They fired .30 caliber, 150 gr., Spitzer point bullets, at a velocity of 2,700 f.p.s. Using the bullet ballistic coefficient and elapsed time from firing until the bullet struck the water, they calculated that the bullet traveled 9,000 feet in 18 seconds and fell to earth in 31 seconds for a total time of 49 seconds.

As a comparison, the .30 caliber bullet fired in a vacuum at 2,700 f.p.s. would rise nearly 21.5 miles and require 84 seconds to make the ascent and another 84 seconds to make its descent. It would return with the same velocity that it left the gun. This gives you some idea of what air resistance or drag does to a bullet in flight.

Wind can have a dramatic effect on where a vertically fired bullet lands. A 5 mile per hour wind will displace the 150 gr. bullet about 365 ft based on the time it takes the bullet to make the round trip to earth. In addition the wind at ground level may be blowing in an entirely different direction than it is at 9,000 feet. It is no wonder that it is so difficult to determine where a falling bullet will land.

Out of the more than 500 shots fired from the test platform only 4 falling bullets struck the platform and one fell in the boat near the platform. One of the bullets striking the platform left a 1/16 inch deep mark in the soft pine board. The bullet struck base first.

Based on the results of these tests it was concluded that the bullet return velocity was about 300 f.p.s. For the 150 gr. bullet this corresponds to an energy of 30 foot pounds. Earlier the Army had determined that, on the average, it required 60 foot pounds of energy to produce a disabling wound. Based on this information, a falling 150 gr. service bullet would not be lethal, although it could produce a serious wound.

[gifted]

I'll concede the point, but do you want one falling on your head?

Blanks or fire crackers.

[Guy B. Meredith]

All angles are potentially lethal. Mathmatics are just part of the equation (no pun intended).

[chris in va]

I seem to remember a CNN report about the Iraqi's firing into the air after Saddam was caught, and several people in the large crowd were hospitalized, a couple possibly even killed.

Now I play paintball as well. Those very light projectiles travel at 290+- fps, and when one hits you at point blank range you're getting a nasty bruise. Come to think of it, I still have a fading blotch from a month ago when a guy hit me from 20'.

Now take a 150gr bullet travelling at 300fps...that's roughly 204mph. Holy crap.

[Apple a Day]

Whichever angle means that it's pointed at you.
"... although it could produce a serious wound." The difference between lethal and nonlethal could be the width of a blood vessel's wall. Want to take the chance?
It wouldn't take the bullet long to reach "terminal velocity", the speed at which the pull of gravity and the air resistance on the bullet are the same and the bullet reaches a steady velocity. In the case you mentioned, about 300ft/sec. Acceleration due to gravity in ft/sec is 32.2 (9.8 in meters/second). Wild guess, I'd say that it might take half the time falling to reach that. If course, if you fire at a shallow angle so that it doesn't reach that vertically, it has enough forward, horizontal velocity to punch a hole through your head. Either way, shooting up into the air is stupid and reckless.

[Mal H]

Uhh, doesn't the Army (who performed the experiments in wacki's post) always wear helmets?

I know I wouldn't want a 150 grain bullet hitting me in the bare head at 300 fps since I know what a 10 grain pellet will do to a squirrel from an air gun at just a little over that speed.

In short, there is no angle at which it is safe to fire a gun when there is greater than zero probability that it will hit someone or something you wouldn't want to hit. Firing off a ship towards open seas is about the only place on earth where the probability approaches zero.

[Doerdie]

They were shooting in the city? Seems like that would up the odds greatly of someone or something being hit. I don't just worry 'bout people, what about shingled roofs, windshields and automotive sheetmetal? I think any falling round would be lethal to my windshield :mad: See what happens when they BAN fireworks...we are so much safer now!

[Chuck Jennings]

Any angle is unsafe. If you are shooting, and you do not now where your shot is going, you are in violation of rule #4.

[FlyinGN]

a falling bullet is INDEED lethal. I few years ago in Philadelphia, a child was hit on the head by a bullet fired by some MORON up in the air and she lived but was brain damaged. The falling bullet went thru her skull.

Frank

[joab]

How many people do you know that can shoot at exactly a 90 degree angle from the ground.

And is this the same army that spent 10 years or so and about a million dollars to determine what happens if you shoot a cat in the head?
The answer they came up with- The cat stops breathing.

Or the same army that also spent alot of money and time to determine why admin type sergents tend to be overweight.
The answer they came up with-- They eat too much

[rolling thunder]

How silly. A discussion about shooting firearms off on New Years eve? And how to do it safely. I didn't this year but generally we celebrate with some friends who live in an area with about 9000 people. We grab our wheel guns, semi-autos, rifles, etc;. Right at the strike of midnight we would step outside in a large neighborhood and blast every round we have in fully loaded guns and rifles. My preference was usually a shotgun.

What I like to do is get a quarter dated that year. I set it on the ground and blast it point blank. No two quarters were ever the same. Anyway, the only safe way to fire off rounds in a city? THE GROUND!

[shep854]

After midnight this year, ALL I heard were firearms. Living in a city, I kept thinking, "I hope those morons were firing into the gtound." Yeah, riiight :rolleyes:

The thought did occur to me, though, that a Class III and a couple of cans of blanks would have been fun. :)

[wacki]

A discussion about shooting firearms off on New Years eve? And how to do it safely.

You're missing my point. I was worried about all of the morons bullets. And I was simply curious about how much I have to freak out. It looks like a lot of you guys think I should freak out a lot.

[joab]

A 75 year old man was killed in Orlando by a bullet fired into the air.
You can start to freak out at any time now

I fired a bullet in the air
It came to rest I know not where

[KTC4234]

Guns don't kill people; it's morons that shoot guns into the air citing studies so absurdly blinded by statistical details that they forget the obvious: What goes up, must come down.
Some of you seem to be focused only on the need for the shooter to be out of the way of the falling bullet. Yeah, well, my hope is the shooter IS the one who's in the way, because he's the only one who deserves it. Unfortunately, unless you live alone on a large island, there's a good chance those bullets are going to do SOME kind of damage to (or kill) either a person, an animal, or someone's property. :eek:

Geez, there are surely better things to do with one's time. :confused:

[nemesis]

It's an old tradition enjoyed especially by our friends from Mexico. There are times on festive occasions that it sounds like a firefight around here. And, yes, you can be killed by a falling bullet. We've had numerous injuries and a child sleeping in her bed in a mobile home was killed by a falling bullet.

Some ethnic groups just have different values.

[Danindetroit]

Can you state a study about mexicans. The chinese, the inventors of gunpowder, and fireworks, used low explosives for festvals, before mexicans.

[ssgmac27]

I was at the Baghdad Airport last year. The night after Saddam was captured, the Iraqi's were firing tracers into the air. A bullet fell through a tent, and lodged in the plywood floor, about 18 inches from the foot of one of the First Sergeants in the battalion. It could be deadly if hitting someone in the head.

[too many choices!?]

:cool: Only at appopriate angles and with proper precautions taken. I sometimes shoot at the bank of a small lake in the back of where I stay. It has about a natural 4 foot back stop and will only strike at non skipping angles if I set the targets like I should. There are also woods on the backside of the lake so IF by some wierd fluke a round "got away" it would have about a half a mile to go through the woods. Let me say that I haven't had one get away yet and really like the fact that I can see my impacts without a scope(even though my rifle has two :eek: panorama red dot of Japanese make and 3-9x32or34mm bsa scope
Whitch makes for an interesting M4gery ;) and I still like the "peeps" but I always say nothing like options :D

[Double Naught Spy]

a falling bullet is INDEED lethal. I few years ago in Philadelphia, a child was hit on the head by a bullet fired by some MORON up in the air and she lived but was brain damaged. The falling bullet went thru her skull.

Short of escaping gravity, all bullets shot will eventually fall. Shooting "up into the air" has a lot of connotactions. A 45 degree angle from ground will be a shot "up into the air," but it will fall and a trajectory that will have considerable lateral velocity, much more so than from a round shot straight up, reaching apogee, then falling to earth from apogee, reaching terminal velocity as determined by the physics of gravity, mass, and atmospheric resistence.

[BlackRazor]

It depends on the bullet. You can shoot .22's into the air all day long and none will come down with enough energy to hurt anyone. Same with birdshot and some buckshot sizes. 50 BMG, OTOH, will waste you when it comes back down. Think terminal velocity.

[Blue Jays]

Hi All-

Silly discussion indeed...

I wouldn't want to stand beneath a fistful of nickels tossed in the air by hand...much less a fired bullet returning to the ground.

~ Blue Jays ~

[357MagFan]

Straight vertical can be lethal

Nope, in fact they tested something very similar to this on the show Myth Busters. "great amusing show if you have never seen it." The myth was that if you drop a penny, which is comparable to a bullet in weight, from a skyscraper it would kill you. So what they did was use a real human skull and filled it with ballistic geliten, they dropped pennies until they hit it and it did no real damage to the skull, now it would definetly give you a nice gash but dosnt have the velocity to penetrate the bone. If you shoot a bullet at 90o it will come to a complete stop before coming back down and picking up speed all over again. Now this dosnt apply to bullets shot at more acute angles. those bullets can indeed be lethal even at very long ranges.
The thing is is that any bullet coming back down was shot at a more acute angle, it is pretty much impossible to shoot a perfect 90o, so consider all falling bullets to possibly be lethal.

The Revolver
Not as clumsy or Random as the semi-auto
An elegant weapon for a more civilized society

[brandx]

I live in a LARGE city(Dallas,TX) where the "normal"practice for some of the residents is to fire guns into the air to celebrate New Years and July 4th.
I own 1 square city block of apartment buildings and after one of these "celebrations" I usually dig 2-3 bullets out of the roofs of my buildings.
The bullets, from .22 rimfire to .308, are almost always buried up to the base in the composite shingles. This New Years I had to repair an A/C condenser that had a .25auto imbedded in it . Shooting into the air in/near a populated area at any angle is dangerous and irresponsible.

[Dadx4]

Like Brandx, I have seen the proof. While cleaning out my gutters just after the 4th of July last year, I spotted something bright on my roof and bent over to pick it up. Couldn't get it up, had to pry it out with my pocketknife. It was a .308 round buried point down. It penetrated two layers of fiberglass shingles and the point just broke through the lower side of the 5/8 inch plywood sheathing beneath the shingles. The point of impact was directly above the bed in my master bedroom. That round could have easily been lethal.

I live in a suburb of Atlanta and we have the shooting on the 4th and New Year's every year. This past New Year's Eve, a man was wounded by a falling bullet near the Ga. Dome and a young woman was wounded in the neck by a falling .45 round while celebrating at Underground Atlanta. Both events were reported on the news.

Don't mean to offend, but shooting ANYTHING blindly in the air at any angle is STUPID - IMO.

Dadx4

[wacki]

Don't mean to offend, but shooting ANYTHING blindly in the air at any angle is STUPID - IMO.

Just to clarify for the THIRD time, it's not my bullets I'm worried about. It's the MORONS shooting on New Years.

Thanks for all the info guys, you have helped a lot. It's interesting that mythbusters and the Army Core of Engineers seem to have different results than many people on this forum. I have no doubt that the reasons are due to angles, I'm just amazed at the difference a little angle can make in this specific case.

[mathman]

Nope, in fact they tested something very similar to this on the show Myth Busters. "great amusing show if you have never seen it." The myth was that if you drop a penny, which is comparable to a bullet in weight, from a skyscraper it would kill you. So what they did was use a real human skull and filled it with ballistic geliten, they dropped pennies until they hit it and it did no real damage to the skull, now it would definetly give you a nice gash but dosnt have the velocity to penetrate the bone.

The shape of a penny is very different from the shape of a bullet and the penny's terminal velocity would be significantly less than that of a bullet...due to differences in air resistance.

[Chuck Jennings]

I'm just amazed at the difference a little angle can make in this specific case.

Can be the difference between life and death.

[Dadx4]

Wacki

Didn't intend the comment to apply to you - I understood your question. The "stupid" comment was meant for the (I like your term) MORONS who think this kind of thing is cute. I seriously doubt that anyone on this forum would be firing into the air - especially in an urban setting.

Dadx4

[brickeyee]

"And is this the same army that spent 10 years or so and about a million dollars to determine what happens if you shoot a cat in the head?
The answer they came up with- The cat stops breathing."

This turned out to be a very important finding. The trauma to the brain interferes with respiration, but if steps are taken to provide oxygen (artificial respiration, followed by a ventilator, together with drugs to reduce brain swelling) the patient can survive. Depending on the area of the brain struck, and the actual localized damage to the brain, the long term prognosis can be good.
Before this research was completed it was assumed that anyone who stopped breathing following brain trauma could not/would not live. James Brady was one of the last people removed from the scene of Reagan's shooting since his wound was assumed to be lethal.

[Dead]

The angle that would cause the bullets path to intersect with your person.

[missourigunner]

Any angle is unsafe. Rule #1: The shooter is responsible for knowing where each has gone. :) Just my $.002 worth