Posted on 01/29/2011 10:19:21 AM PST by OneVike
While many gun owners often times go to the firing range or to the back 40 to shoot their weapons and practice safety, every now and then accidents happen. In the case of the men in these two videos, the accidents were within 6.5 millimeters of ending their lives. Luckily they both ended up with just a graze on their head and maybe dirty shorts when their bullets ricocheted back to them from down range...............
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Hold ma earmuffs alert.
Ping for your expertise.
Please tell me that photo was staged.
If it really happened, then the shooting of a woman holding a baby by an ATF officer at Ruby Ridge makes more sense everyday.
I got hit in the fanny pack once by a ricochet rifle bullet. I was standing behind the person doing the shooting. I searched for the bullet for s long time because I wanted to keep it. But never found it.
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Let Freedom Ring,
Both of those guys were darn lucky - heavy steel targets are a bad idea. One range we used to use had a big metal gong at about 100 yards and the rangemaster himself had one round come back at him and bury itself in a post within one foot of his head. The gong was taken down that day.
Shoot-N-C targets have a dye between the layers and instantly show where your shot has gone.
These are also very cool, just don’t get too close:
sureshotexplodingtargets.com
Hubby and I tried a few ranges around here, and one of them spit back shrapnel pretty regularly. I finally got a nasty bruise on my calf. We don’t go there anymore.
A fifty caliber rubber bullet?
I shoot a 1/4 inch swinging steel plate with a .45 glock and a 9 mm Uzi all the time. I shot it with an AR-15 once, using the M855 ball round with the SS109 tungsten penetrator projectile. It melted through it like it was butter. Regardless, I have never had a richochet issue. I wonder if the swinging nature of my steel plate absorbs the bullets energy as opposed to transferring it back to the projectile like a stationary steel plate would?
I shot myself in the sternum once.
A 22 into the right spot of a toliet bowl will ricochet straight back at you.
Target shooting at the dump can be dangerous.
I got hit by a .45 ricochet at the indoor range.Some Einstein thought it would be a good idea to place truck tire casings around the base of the bullet trap.The bullet hit the rubber and rebounded,struck me in the left thigh.
The gong I wrote about was a 12 inch circle of laminated steel plating about 1.5 inches thick taken from the hull of an Iowa Class battleship during overhaul at the Bremerton Navy Yard. It was suspended from a cable and would swing a bit when struck with a rifle round, but no one had mentioned ricochet problems until that day - must have been just the right angle, I guess.
I’m glad you clarified.
I was going to ask what in the bathroom had upset you so.
Sounds like a physics problem to me. Since every action has an equal and opposite reaction, a heavy dense generally unmoving piece of armor is going to transfer a significant portion of kinetic energy back to a speeding projectile which will then, via the law of angular momentum, return whence it came. The more in line you are with the target, the closer the projectile will come to hitting you. I think the lesson to be learned here is to shoot the lightest steel plate you can find that doesn’t turn into a piece of swiss cheese after a magazine and make sure it freely swings on a pendulum.
Steel plates are fine to shoot at. It’s when you start using full metal jacket bullets or armor piercing rounds at very thick steel plates you start to have problems. Lead bullets will either pancake or disintegrate on impact. So do hollow points and soft points. With hollow points you might get hit by a piece of the metal jacket now and then but that’s not horribly dangerous. The one that hit me in the fanny pack was a 30-06 armor piercing round shot at a 2” thick steel plate. I believe I was struck by the steel core when the it failed to pierce completely through the steel plate. That DOES have the potential to do serious injury.
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