Posted on 01/01/2015 6:57:33 AM PST by eastforker
A man is dead Thursday after a stray bullet hit him in the head in southeast Houston.
Police say the victim and his wife were watching fireworks around 1 a.m. on their front lawn on the 800 block East Lake and Theta Street near Edgebrook.
Investigators say someone shot a gun in the air and the bullet came down and hit the victim in the head. He died at the scene.
I remember being taught that a bullet can have the same velocity as when it was fired if you shot it in the air during police training and could kill someone.
Mexicans think that a bullet fired into the air never comes down. Children in San Antonio have been killed by this ignorance on New Years Eve.
I’m absolutely appalled at the number of bullets that just wander off on their own and become strays. /s
I don’t think that’s right. Once the apex of flight is achieved it just falls. It can fall fast and pick up speed, but wind resistance will eventually slow it to some max speed (e.g., a human body would be about 200mph IIRC). I doubt it will be anywhere near the same as the original muzzle velocity of over 1000 FPS.....
That said, it’s speed and energy falling could very well be enough to penetrate a human skull on the ground. Still very dangerous.
Many years ago I had a neighbor who was an alcoholic and probably a drug user. Every New Years he’d come out at midnight and fire 6 .357 magnum rounds. I’d roll off the bed onto the floor as by that time he probably had a hard time knowing where up was. We were in the middle of St. Petersburg, Fl. I wonder how many roofs and cars developed .357 sized holes. (Idiot!)
Nothing can be a bigger monument to utter stupidity than ‘accidents’ like this yet you see it happen over and over. It is amazing to see the idiots in the Middle East tear off an AK47 clip and trust that Allah will kill only the ‘deserving!’
I would guess that a bullet, falling from a higher trajectory, might reach 300-400 fps or so. A lot slower than muzzle-velocity of most weapons, but a heavy slug would still be able to penetrate a skull.
If shot straight up it will return with dangerous but not necessarily lethal velocity. If shot in a parabolic arc it will return to Earth with lethal velocity.
In tumbled free fall it hits terminal velocity below lethality. If not tumbling, it’ll be fast enough to kill.
IMO, it will never return with the same velocity as when it left the muzzle if fired in ‘overhead’ fashion. It depends on the angle, which is what I’m taking from your explanation.
I went outside last night at midnight in Detroit’s northern ‘burbs. It sounded like downtown Fallujah. I beat a hasty retreat.
CC
Happy New Year!
Idiots ruin the world.
> I would guess that a bullet, falling from a higher trajectory, might reach 300-400 fps or so. A lot slower than muzzle-velocity of most weapons, but a heavy slug would still be able to penetrate a skull.
I thought the same as you when he said that. I was just repeating what he said which I didn’t believe either at the time. I think he was just trying o get across the idea that a bullet fired in the air can still kill someone...
Yea, it’ll lose velocity. All opjects falling have a terminal velocity where the effect of gravity is equalled by drag against its fall. For a bullet shot straight up it’ll hit an apex, stop, then fall back in tumble never picking up enough speed to easily kill.
When you fire it in an arc, it maintains horizontal velocity and it never comes to a full stop in flight. Instead it maintains a fairly stable trajectory and will hit much harder and can possibly kill.
Up`n here we throw squirrels up in the air at New Year’s Midnight. They land in the tree and throw acorns back at us.
Still, keep in mind a bullet in complete free fall could still fatally injure someone though odds are reduced. It’ll hit like a real heavy hailstone.
Right, a gun fired straight upward or close to straight upward probably isn’t going to kill anyone. But when it’s angled sideways that’s when things get dangerous. The horizontal component of the bullet’s velocity doesn’t have time to get reduced by air resistance to a point where it’s non-lethal.
“Idiots ruin the world”.
Most of those “idiots” are lefties. Probably 90%.
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