Where does the bullet land?

Pup

Was reading a couple of posts about the Rem 700 AD problem with the safetys and started thinking what happens to the bullets that go off into the great blue yonder? They're going to come down eventually, just like the ones that miss that pesky squirrel. Anybody ever heard of someone being hurt/killed by an errant bullet coming back to earth?

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Politicians, like diapers, should be changed often and for the same reason.

One shot

I saw a deal on TV a few years back. Someone was doing some target shooting where they should not have been. One of the stray rounds traveled about one mile striking a man in the chest. I do not remember if the man died or not. The man was in a park for a picnic with his family. the gun was a .44 magnum. I do not know how accurate the info is. The media has a way of stretching the facts.

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"This we will defend"

nunn

A pair of cohorts of mine were shooting a pair of Thompsons on a range. One got the bright idea to shoot with one gun in each hand. Muzzles rose dramatically. Bullets overshot the berm. Bullets went about 1.5 miles and broke the plate glass of a car showroom. Fortunately, it was Sunday and no one was at the dealership.ALWAYS be sure of your backstop.

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Certified SIG pistol armorer/FFL Dealer/Full time Peace Officer, Moderator of the General Discussion Board on Gunbroker. Visit www.gunbroker.com, the premier gun auction site on the Net! Email davidnunn@texoma.net Jesus is Lord!

badboybob

I remember reading , about a year or two ago, about a woman who died from a bullet fired in the air by some idiot. It came straight down and hit her on the top of the skull. This was in New Orleans during Mardi Gras.

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PC=BS[This message has been edited by badboybob (edited 02-21-2002).]

Pup

nunn....That being the rule of thumb, shouldn't the use of a .22 rifle or handgun for squirrel hunting be questioned? If the bullet misses the tree-rat and isn't stopped by a branch, then it's off to possibly do some damage. I'm not against using the .22 at all, been known to shoot several thousand rounds myself every year I was just wondering if it's not safe in some regard shouldn't the use of a shotgun be encouraged?

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Politicians, like diapers, should be changed often and for the same reason.

He Dog

The way I learned it, you always know what is beyond your target. Probably good advise. If you are in deep woods a .22 into a tree will probably come down in a tree. If you are hunting squirrels in fence rows on a farm it may come down in the barn two farms over. Not good obviously. Don't get to hunt squirrels anymore, but I am sure careful about what is behind deer and elk.

mopar

Hopefully not in you!

SXSMAN

I know man that has spent most of his life in a wheelchair because of a stray,rocheted off a tree,22 bullet that hit him in the spine while he was riding a minibike.This man is a true inspiration to me. I felt I was gun safe before,but his story has made me take safety to a different level.And although I'm 6'2" I will always look up to this man.Always thinking of others before himself.Shooter 22,god bless you.

oz652

My uncle was shot by a 22lr while inventorying a county gravel pit. All he felt was a cold spot below his stomach, it was windy and the blood spotted his shirt. This was about 12 years ago. He drove himself to the hosp. he was interviewed by a Leo. They left the bullet in because it would cause more damage to get it out. Leo's charged two farm kids for the accident, they were shooting crows in a cornfield 3 miles away. This was in the middle of Iowa. He died about five years ago from a heart attack, with bullet still in him. God rest his soul.

smokinggun

In Cal. there was a man in a boat target shooting at cans or something and killed a woman driving in her car miles away.

Txs

Bullets are generally constructed with their center of gravity towards the rear, so as they're brought down from a high trajectory by gravity they're traveling base first. During the Battle for Britain there were literally tons of bullets launched through the skies over London. I've read that the rooftops of buildings there were speckled with bullets buried in the tar, with only their tips being visible. I've never heard about any specific incidents, but the Brits are bound to have lost some citizens to so many stray heavy machine gun rounds raining down daily on their cities.I can't remember what terminal velocity is when expressed in feet per second, but I believe it's close to a couple of hundred. I'd say a 750gr. .50BMG bullet at this speed could put a serious hurt on you.

offeror

Funny how we don't think about the obvious sometimes. Where do bullets go? They fall to the ground. All of them. They gradually lose speed and altitude and finally hit the dirt. If they break apart for some reason, all the pieces fall to the ground that don't embed in something else. Supposedly a penny dropped off the Empire State Building can kill a person. Same thing applies here, except we use a much more aerodynamic projectile. That's why "statesmen" like Saddam and Hitler and Moussolini look so d*** silly standing above a crowd of thousands and firing a gun straight up into the air off a balcony. Can you imagine the President doing anything like that? The only reason more people aren't hurt or killed when bullets are fired in the air, or when they over-travel, is pure luck and odds, and the fact that they don't come down quite as fast as they went up. But if lawn darts were banned for skewering children's skulls, you can imagine that with anything we shoot, even bb's, WE HAVE GOT TO BE SURE where they are going to end up. Bullets are like arrows in this respect. Shoot them straight, they fly level, then slow, then come down. Shoot them in a high arc, they come down somewhere on the other side of your horizon of visibility. They hit something every time, hopefully just the ground or the roof of a building. One thing you can count on, they sure don't burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere on re-entry....! Yes, even .22s. Be sure of your backstop, and never shoot in the direction of anything remotely civilized, inhabited, or built by human beings, even if it's through the woods a mile and you can't see it from where you are. If it's there, something or someone might get hit, particularly if you're shooting high. We've always shot against an earthen backdrop, at the outdoor range, or even if it was just the high berm of a railroad track. Anything that is guaranteed to absorb your round without penetration. And keep in mind that if you always put your bullseye in the same place, you're digging a hole through your backstop behind it with round after round, so check it once in a while.

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"The 2nd Amendment is about defense, not hunting. Long live the gun shows, and reasonable access to FFLs. Join the NRA -- I'm a Life Member."

Bullzeye

I dont know how frequently people are killed by small caliber rounds that fall from the sky.I do know that anti-aircraft fire directed over a large cities kills people all the time. They fire massive amounts of big, big rounds and it comes down right through people's roofs and kills 'em sometimes.Happened in Iraq during Desert Storm a lot.

SUBMARINER

ONCE WHEN I WAS ABOUT 10 I WAS SHOOTING CATFISH IN THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER WITH MY GRANDDAD,WITHOUT ASKING(OR THINKING)I TURNED TOWARD THE MIDDLE OF THE RIVER AND CRANKED OUT ABOUT 3 RNDS B4 GRANDPA TOOK OVER.AFTER A GOOD LECTURE AND GETTING MY LITTLE * WORE OUT RIGHT THERE ON THE RIVER BANK,I HAVE ALWAYS THOUGHT ABOUT MY BACKSTOP.SOME LESSONS STAY WITH YOU

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SUBMARINE SAILOR,TRUCK DRIVER,NE'ER DO WELL, INSTIGATOR,AND RUSTY WALLACE FAN

timberbeast

Some years back, I swapped the cook stoves in my hunting shack, set the old one up out back and proceeded to destroy it, sure was a blast, pun intended. I have a blind made of OSB about 200 yards back from where we were firing, with thick woods between where we were shooting and where the blind is. I figured that it would be a good experiment on the principle of where bullets go. Obviously, and expectedly, many went into trees. We didn't count the rounds, but it was a full day of almost nonstop shooting with .22's, .223's, 9mm's, .44 Mags, shotguns, .45-70's, .338 Win Mags, and just about anything in between, 4 guys shooting all day. Next morning, we went out to check the damage to the blind. LOTS!!! Even found some .22 LR's which penetrated the first layer of OSB. Lots of the 9's were keyholed in and could be dug out with a fingernail, the .338's went right through both sides, as did a few .44's, lots fell to the ground inside, and lots bounced off the first wall and landed on the ground. Bear in mind that this was a deliberate test, and beyond the blind, there is nothing but deep swamp for over 20 miles, 3/4 of a mile of it mine, and gated, and we were also shooting downhill, knowing that the rounds could not travel more than 100 yards beyond the blind without hitting earth. Most of the rounds had hit aluminum cans or milk jugs on top of the stove, some unidentifiable slugs went through the sheet metal of the stove, and absolutely none could have made it to the blind without hitting many conifer branches, it's so thick that you can't see the blind from more than 10 feet away...I made a "proper" range after that, with a few cords of unsold pulpwood as a backstop.

niklasal

Falling bullets sure are a tricky thing. Physics states that the velocity and the angle of a bullet fired will be equal to that of the bullet coming down at the same altitude... Basically if you fire a bullet from your shoulder at 6 feet, at a 45 degree angle, at 1100 fps, after it makes a big arch and reaches 6 feet from the ground once again, it will be traveling at 1100 fps at 45 degrees down. Minus of course wind resistance, which would be minimal if the bullet does not tumble.One lady died up in Pheonix a couple years ago. It was new years and at the new year a lot of people shot their guns in the air. One came down and hit her in the head.By the way, there were tests done about dropping a penny off the empire state building... Because of wind resistance and the penny's lack of aerodynamics, the penny will reach a terminal velocity of 23 MPH

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NIKLASAL@hotmail.com

gruntled

In basic training we had to pull targetsin the pits & there were quite a few ricochets. The only people that got hurt were the ones that picked them up. Ever hear Minnie Pearl's story about the guy that picked up a brand new horseshoe?Dropped it quickly, & when asked "Burned you didn't it?" He replied "Nope, just don't take me long to look at a horseshoe."This question about terminal velosity of a bullet fired straight up & falling back was asked and answered in the American Rifleman some time ago. Due to air resistance the terminal velosity will be very much less thanthe initial velosity.

beachmaster73

nik....wind resistance is indeed going to make a significant impact on the bullet's velocity. At a 45 degree angle you are going for a bullet's maximum range but it will by no means be a perfect parabolic arc. In fact the bullet's velocity at the end of the arc will probably be just a little over terminal velocity.In Mogadishu in the port complex we frequently had incoming rounds probably fired from another part of the city dropping in on us. Usually we only heard the ones that bounced off the cargo containers with which we ringed sleeping and working areas. The clang of the bullet on the container was an opportunity for a souvenir. For the most part the bullets(most probably fired from a 7.62x39) we recovered showed little to no deformation as a result of impacting the steel shipping containers. Certainly they had no impact whatsoever on the steel containers other than to chip paint. That is a far far cry from the ballistics of a bullet fired at a target 100 to 1000 yards away.And I read of a person in Florida, about 10 or 12 years ago driving their car, who was shot in the head. Police initially suspected homicide; but it turned out to be an errant round fired from a range about two miles away. Probably that bullet had not been fired from a 45 degree angle and instead with just enough angle to clear the berm of the range. It therefore had not burned off as much velocity when it returned to earth and impacted the person's head. Beach

salzo

PUP- I never shoot at a suirrel in a tree, when using a .22. I wait for the little rats to get on the ground, and then I shoot. I will shoot them out of a tree with a shotgun.Topic kind of reminds me of a piece of fiction I read that struck me kind of funny.One day, this young lad goes target shooting with his dad. It turns out, the kid is a great shot. His father, who never though much of his son was thoroughly impressed, and found a new respect for his son. The father was so impressed, he eventually gave his son a key to his impressive arsenal. One day, the boy went into his fathers arsenal and took out a rifle. He decided to put a round in the chamber, and fire it out the window, into the forest. He never thought he might hit something, because he was such a great shot. And since he was not aiming at anything, he figured he would not hit anything. An hour later the police come to his home, asking if anyone recently fired a rifle. The boy says he did, but was not aiming at anything, so he could not have hit anything. Turns out, the bullet flew a couple of miles, went through the window of someones home, and struck a woman who was vacuuming her living room. The bullet hit her right between the eyes, killing her instantly. After the incident, the boy was known as "DEADEYE DICK".

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Happiness is a warm gun

Redleg

We in the artillery community call it the "Big Sky, Little Bullet" theory

He Dog

I have found New Years or July 4 .22's in the shingles of my roof a couple of times. Little penetration, could easily pluck them out, alwys tip, not base, down.So Beach, how could a bullet reach a speed of a bit over terminal velocity? I thought terminal velocity refered to maximum velocity. It does at least when refering to the final speed of a dropped object accelerating due to gravity. It is about 120 ph in a vacuum, less in atmosphere.[This message has been edited by He Dog who is purty smart, but cant spel wurth shucks (edited 02-22-2002).][This message has been edited by He Dog (edited 02-22-2002).][This message has been edited by He Dog (edited 02-22-2002).]

beachmaster73

He dog...terminal velocity normally refers to an object dropped from stand still from a given height. A bullet fired from a weapon will probably still have more velocity imparted from firing than terminal velocity when it achieves its maximun height. Though wind resistance may continue to slow it down I would tend to doubt that it would slow to actual terminal velocity as determined by the maximum height that an object dropped from that same height would achieve. Now I'll go have another gin and tonic and try to understand what I just wrote. Cheers, Beach.

madminute

Want the ultimate stray-round nightmare? spend a day on an armored tank firing range at Ft. Knox with a whole company of green'cruits tryin' to learn how to shoot all this big ordinance and not kill themselves and everyone around them. It would be high comedy were it not for the number of training accidents and serious injuries, and some deaths. So picture a bunch of yahoos, age 18 to 25, about a month in service, with a half dozen M-60 tanks armed with 105mm tank gun, .50 cal, 7.62 belt feds, m-3 grease guns....what a SHOW...tracers flyin' everywhere and red-faced drill sergeants screaming and kicking *...I saw rounds fly away to God knows where (and a tank will throw that sucker about 10 miles)...MANY stories about local farmers and other residents having close calls and getting their barns re-built on Uncle Sugars' dime..but the best one was from 1st Inf, Kansas, where a Cobra gunner let loose a barrage of 2.75 rockets, missed the entire gunnery range, and leveled some farm house miles away....this * goes on CONSTANTLY...

He Dog

Thanks Beach, wait for me...

William81

My Father in law used to live in Peoria, Illinois. About 10 years ago we were replacing the roof on his garage and found what appeared to be a perfect .30 sized bullet stuck in a support joist. There was not a range within 15 miles. Approx. 5 years ago some moron took an up hill shot at a deer. He missed and the .44 JHP went through the window of a farm house almost 1.5 miles away. The owner of the house found the bullet on his couch.

offeror

One assumes that if the .44 slug were found on the guy's couch it penetrated something, a wall or a window, in order to get there, unless it had the uncanny luck to fly in through an open door or window. And this was well over a mile from the muzzle. I kinda wish I hadn't quoted the ancient penny story if it's going to be used to imply there's any doubt that a bullet has enough energy left to hurt somebody at the end of its flight. In the first place, few of us shoot straight up in the air, so the idea that a bullet will have only gravity going for it at the end of its flight is generally a moot point. And the heavier the bullet, the more the danger. The bb has less mass, and it will be far more affected by wind resistance. It is generally shot at very low velocities from typical bb guns. A pointed round like the new .17 Hornady, although bb-diametered, would be far more powerful. A round nose handgun bullet is heavier yet, and somewhat streamlined. A pointed rifle round, like the .223, 7.62x39, .308 and so on have far more mass, are more aerodynamic, are fired using a larger powder charge, and will be less effected by resistance of the atmosphere. And unless they are shot straight up and "fall" down, they will maintain some of the momentum from the original gunpowder blast for most of their flight. I have a 25" Sanyo TV with a small hole in the glass to remind me that a bb at 6 feet can wound, and this was one of those $10 black pistols.All in all, we appear to generally agree that knowing your backstop is a necessary part of the deal. Most shooters I know underestimate their round's maximum range anyway, and don't give enough careful thought to what's in the far distance.

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"The 2nd Amendment is about defense, not hunting. Long live the gun shows, and reasonable access to FFLs. Join the NRA -- I'm a Life Member."

v35

In Korea in the early 50's some idiot lieutenant with his squad on training maneuvers in the woods fired two 57mm recoilless rounds that landed our company area. The tents were spread out in combat formation and no one was injured but there were a few damaged tents from the shrapnel.

William81

The Police officer I spoke to about the incident with the .44 Mag. said the bullet went through a triple pained (SP?) window. By the time it landed on the couch across the room it may have bounce off the floor. Thankfully no one was home at the time. The owner was out of town for the weekend.[This message has been edited by William81 (edited 02-22-2002).]

s.gun

About 30 yrs. ago we had a woman working in the field picking up corn that the picker machine missed.She felt a pain in her knee and looked to find a little blood from a wound. Later at the hospital they found she had been shot with a .22 cal. Probably a squirrel hunter in the distance,because she never heard a shot.

boeboe

SaxonPig, maybe you ought to check your spelling against a spell check, or a dictionary.

jet

"american ammunition and ballistics"30-06 200grn btsp 38 deg ele 6191yds7mmremm 175grn hssp 36.1 deg 5166yds30-06 2550fps muz 545 hit 7mm 2860 muz 474 hitin the maximum range table

groundhog devastation

All the more reason to choose the little 17 HRMfor squirrel hunting. It will blow up easier when it hits any resistance. Also it will lose velocity very fast. Therefore it should turn base down and fall to the ground quicker than larger projectiles fired at comparable speed. It should cause less damage or injury if it falls where it shouldn't!! This whole thread is missing Judge Drudge!! He could have expounded on this subject greatly!

Iconoclast

Beach & badboybub, I don't know about FL & KA, but there was a case about 10 years ago of a woman killed on the Long Island Expressway by a slug from a .303 fired from several miles at sea. Bullet traveled that distance, came through an open window in a moving car w/ just enough velocity to deliver a fatal head wound. Any variation in speed or having the window up and a different ending. Turned out the shooter lived just down the street. He had an old Enfield for sharks and wasn't sure it would still shoot, so just touched off a round toward the horizon. It was quite an article focusing on the investigative techniques used to crack the case.

madminute

So it should be obvious to all now...that what my late grand dad,the WW2 naval ordinance instructor, taught me was correct. Be certain of your target. And be certain of what is behind your target, out to a range of a couple of miles. I was taught that firing a weapon, ANY weapon, down to and including slingshots and BB guns, was a deadly serious business and NEVER to be taken lightly or played with. And this was triple reinforced when I came of age and did my term of duty in Uncle's Army, where in spite of every known control and supervision, an occasional idiot would let one fly off over the horizon or worse, into his or his buddy's foot. Guns are weapons. They are designed to do one thing. Shoot holes in things, animals, and people. To destroy or kill them. So follow grand dads rules guys. NEVER point a weapon at anything you do not intend to kill. There is no such thing as an empty gun. Be certain of your target. Be certain of what's BEHIND your target. And take this * SERIOUSLY. Christ, if kids today were taught like I was, you wouldn't see the problems you do with kids and guns....

gunpaq

What goes up must come down. About 15 years ago I worked for a specialty roofing firm doing work in Philly and Reading. I was amazed at the quantity of bullets we found stuck in roof surfaces of downtown buildings including highrises. In another case, two locals were blasting away at a doe with shotgun slugs. Two of the stray rounds travel in excess of 1/4 mile smashing through a nursing home patient's window and being caught by the heavy curtains. The hunters were caught and the LEOs confirmed their story of where they were shooting from by the spent shells left of the ground and tracks in the snow.

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Pack slow, fall stable, pull high, hit dead center.