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college physics teacher said

And you believed him/her?

One more reason college professors should be fired and institutionalized. Sheeeeez. Here in Tucson, AZ it is illegal to fire your guns into the air precisely for the reason this little boy has tragically died. Over the years several people here in Tucson have died or been severely injured because of lead falling from the sky after morons found it fun and funny to shoot rounds into the air during their 4th of July, Cinco de Mayo and other celebrations.

I was always taught that you do not shoot your weapon towards anything if you don't have a pretty good idea where the bullet is going to rest.

Prayers to the child's family.

Physics is physics. A bullet of the caliber normally discharged into the air is incapable of being lethal due to terminal velocity. Now if that same bullet travels in an arc (which all bullets do if fired NOT straight up) it is very capable of serious damage.

In the case of the .45-70 there are documented cases of lethal shots at well over a mile. In Afcrapistan some Canadian snipers wacked a guy at at 1375 Meters. Fire those weapons straight up and they could do some damage due to the weight of the bullet. But a 38 caliber or a 9mm have very little force when acted upon by gravity.

BTW the penny off the Empire State building killing someone is also not true.

Here in Tucson, AZ it is illegal to fire your guns into the air precisely for the reason this little boy has tragically died. Over the years several people here in Tucson have died or been severely injured because of lead falling from the sky after morons found it fun and funny to shoot rounds into the air during their 4th of July, Cinco de Mayo and other celebrations.

Bullets "flying through the sky," not "falling from the sky."

The statement that a falling bullet lacks the energy to be lethal is like advice from Microsoft technical support -- technically accurate but more or less useless. [*] Technically correct because a falling slug simply does not have enough kinetic energy to be lethal. More or less useless because the kind of stupid drunken yahoos who treat firearms as party noisemakers are unlikely to hang a plumb bob and be careful to fire straight up.

A few degrees off plumb, and you're no longer talking about something going up and faling down -- you're talking about something following a ballistically-stable arc, and that's a whole 'nother animal. They can and do kill.

* - Semi-old joke: A helicopter pilot is surprised by a sudden fog bank and a sudden instrument failure. Flying slowly and looking for a safe spot to land, he sees a high-rise with people inside. Digging around in the back, the passenger grabs a piece of poster board and a marker (just go with it), and writes, WHERE ARE WE?

The people in the building signal that they have received the message, wheel over a white board, and write on it 'YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER."

The pilot nods, flicks the controls, and has the copter safely on the ground five minutes later. The stunned passenger asks, "how did you do that?" The pilot answers, "The folks in the building gave us an answer that was completely correct and utterly useless. From that, I knew we had to be on the Microsoft campus, and the Redmond airport is a few miles due east of there."

(I don't even know if there's really a Redmond airport, so folks who know Washington State geography, please take it easy on me.)