Shooting guns on NYE

[Patboone7]

So here I am in Gary, Indiana, it's NYE and like downton Iraq. These geniuses are firing these guns off like were fighting a war! My only concern is what goes up, must come down~ Any of you other guys stuck in some stuff like this? Not to mention they keep sending us to every single shots fired call....boom boom boom and when we get there of couse they are GOA!

[TXCharlie]

Wear a Kevlar helment :D

The minority sections around Dallas are the same way - I stay away on New Year's Eve.

I forgot what the terminal velocity of a bullet is in the air, but I do know it's deadly... Of course if a bullet were fired straight up in a vacuum (without air resistance), the terminal velocity coming down would be equal to the muzzle velocity going up.

[ChesCopPodz]

I remember back in the mid 90s in my little city of Erie PA, a girl was hit by a falling bullet. Struck her in the head and put her through one hell of an ordeal and recovery. Lucky she didn't die.

[Scruit]

Mythbusters did a bit on Bullets Fired Up. They concluded that a bullet that is fired directly up is not fatal on the way down as it's terminal velocity is lower due to tumbling. The vertical speed of a bullet under gravity is not of great concern when compared with a bullet fired at an angle that will retain most of it's lateral speed and will continue to spin per the rifling in the barrel.

The lateral speed can be calculated using the cosine of the angle from the ground when you consider the bullet speed as hypotenuse, eg A Winchester 22-250 JHP Varmint round fired from a Ruger M77 MkII travels at 4000fps. When you consider the first second of travel as a triangle between the gun, the ground and the position of the bullet after one second, you can use simple trignometry to calculate it's lateral speed.

Hypoetnuse = 4000
Angle = 45
A over H = cos(45)
A over 4000 = 0.707
Therefore 4000 * 0.707= 2828 fps

For a 9mm fired up in the air
Hypotenuse = 1325
Angle = 89 (almost straight up)
Cosine of 89 is 0.017 therefore lateral speed is 23 fps laterally. My grandma throws baseballs faster than that. :D



Still, I don't want to be around when bullets are being fired at all... :eek: All it takes is someone to fire at lower angle and that's a lethal bullet. Even at 75 deg (ie 15deg from directly up) the 22-250 will travel at over 1000fps laterally which is likely to keep the spin and therefore be easily lethal. Couple with the fact that these idiots are usually drunk also, they don't really think too hard about where the bullet goes.


Sorry if my math is messed up. I can barely count to 4, which is the number of Guinnesses I've had so far.

[TXCharlie]

I don't think the lateral speed is what you have to worry about when a bullet is fired straight up.

I did some checking around, it it appears that others say that the terminal vertical velocity is slowed by air resistance to about 300 FPS, which would be plenty to kill if it hit in the right place - Pellet pistols with about the same velocity have been known to kill rarely, but pellets have much less mass (therefore much less energy) than bullets going the same speed.

Of course whether or not it tumbles, how much energy it has, and whether or not it penetrates would depend on many factors such as the shape, spin, weight, and caliber of the bullet. Naturally a 60 grain .22 bullet would have much less energy than a big ol' .45 slug going the same speed.

[Penguin]

Last night a BSO deputy's car was struck by a falling bullet. It went throught the roof on the passenger side, and luckily no one was in the passenger seat at the time. :eek:

[phantasm]

I thought you were going to be talking about brooklyn. lol.

[Scruit]

I don't think the lateral speed is what you have to worry about when a bullet is fired straight up.

I did some checking around, it it appears that others say that the terminal vertical velocity is slowed by air resistance to about 300 FPS, which would be plenty to kill if it hit in the right place - Pellet pistols with about the same velocity have been known to kill rarely, but pellets have much less mass (therefore much less energy) than bullets going the same speed.

Of course whether or not it tumbles, how much energy it has, and whether or not it penetrates would depend on many factors such as the shape, spin, weight, and caliber of the bullet. Naturally a 60 grain .22 bullet would have much less energy than a big ol' .45 slug going the same speed.

The angle it's fired at will dictate if the bullet slows down enough to tumble, or it it keeps spinning. Fired directly up, the bullet will fall under gravity alone, will tubmle, and will be no more deadly than a pebble. Sure, get one in the eye and you are in trouble, but many of us are pretty thick skulled (so my wife tells me. A lot)

Fired at an angle the bullet will retain it's spin and the impact force will be dictated by lateral speed minus air resistance - which is much lower on a spinning bullet.

[Scruit]

Last night a BSO deputy's car was struck by a falling bullet. It went throught the roof on the passenger side, and luckily no one was in the passenger seat at the time. :eek:

I'd love to see the anlge the bullet struck at. If it was coming directly down then I'd be surprised. I'd not be surprised at all if the angle was 15deg or more.

[Piggy]

I think regardless of the speed, even if you were to drop a round off of a 10 story building and it hit you in the melon, it would hurt like a mf.

[Patboone7]

Well I made it through the night. One of our squads did get hit with little damage from a falling slug. A maniac pinned down a few guys for a bit before the tactical unit arrived, I was out on foot running around with my shotgun full of slugs from block to block. We recoverred several rifles, some AK's looked brand new! It was like Beruit at midnight, but all in all was a successful NYE with only 2 shooting victims and I didn't get either call so I don't know the circumstances!


On the 4th of July this year (our other big shooting into the air day) a guy was sitting on his back patio when a slug fell out of the sky and implanted itself into his right thigh. He was transported and the bullet removed, he survived and there was minnimal bleeding. Forget mythbusters, I saw the REAL thing with my own 2 eyes and if that thing would have hit him in the head it COULD have been fatal. But we could argue physics all day, the angle could have been greater or less, the caliber was unknown (but looked like .22) Anyway stay safe little campers!

[Jenna2006]

I'll bet the sky doesn't rain so many bullets in the deep blue gun-controlled states! :D

[Stan Switek]

In the mid 90's, I was working a large public gathering on New Years Eve, 25,000+ people. I was standing with a large group of fellow cops. A lady standing right next to us screams & goes down, struck by a falling bullet. After that, almost all of us wore our kevlar helmets around midnight when on the job, even when in our cars.

The 70's & 80's were crazy. Some years it rained so much lead we parked in parking structures & just listened in amazement. We even heard some automatic weapons. In the 90's we started seeking out shooters & engaging them. That really calmed things down.

One new years, Back when I was still an apartment dweller, this moron across the street walks out front & starts spraying magazine after magazine at the police helicopter. Surf City PD showed up & took the guy to jail bloody.

In the city where I live, crime is pretty low. A few years ago we were the safest city in the USA over 100,000. This year was the first year I did not hear any gunshots at midnight. Plenty of fireworks but no shots which suits me just fine.

There have been some incidents in LA County of people being killed by falling bullets in recent years.

[CPDlife4ME]

I'll bet the sky doesn't rain so many bullets in the deep blue gun-controlled states! :D

HA! It sounded like Baghdad over here even before midnight.

[TXCharlie]

I'll bet the sky doesn't rain so many bullets in the deep blue gun-controlled states! :D

HA! It sounded like Baghdad over here even before midnight.

Jenna, I think that proves you'd be wrong... Gun restrictions stop law-abiding people from having guns, but only inconvenience criminals, who get and use guns illegally.

It's a crime in almost every city (including cities around Dallas) to fire a gun in a populated area for no legitimate reason such as self-defense - especially into the air, over a roadway, etc. I don't know of any gun-toting friends of mine who condone such stupidity. The people doing that are either ignorant retards or criminals - Actually all of them are criminals doing that in Dallas or any city I know of around here.

More proof that laws do not stop crimes - Only the enforcement of laws stop crimes.