Every bullet hits something

Flerchinger isn't the city's first innocent shooting victim. In the past month or so, authorities say, two other men were shot dead by bullets intended for somebody else.
On Feb. 27, James Kilby, 29, of Union Gap died at a local hospital after he was shot in a car outside a Yakima grocery store. Authorities believe a friend who had called Kilby for a ride home was the intended target.
A week later, David R. Duarte, 40, of Yakima was shot dead while riding in his nephew's car. Police say Duarte was not involved in gangs but his nephew belongs to one.
In October, just a few blocks from where Tuesday's shooting happened, another man was shot to death during a Halloween party. Authorities say Jason Baldoz, 34, was not a gang member, but the shooter is.
Arrests have been made in all three of those cases.

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What exactly would the math on that be?
That is, if an object is falling form the sky, it reaches terminal velocity and no more. Bullets, from 40 - 300 grains, with a few exceptions, are not very heavy and at terminal velocity don't seem harmful enough to kill without some very exceptional circumstances.
I am not advocating shooting into the sky.
Just wondering how accurate the reports are that falling bullets kill several per Independence Day.

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Hammer wrote:

What exactly would the math on that be?
That is, if an object is falling form the sky, it reaches terminal velocity and no more. Bullets, from 40 - 300 grains, with a few exceptions, are not very heavy and at terminal velocity don't seem harmful enough to kill without some very exceptional circumstances.
I am not advocating shooting into the sky.
Just wondering how accurate the reports are that falling bullets kill several per Independence Day.

Click to expand...

Unless it's fired straight up, it's going to maintain it's forward momentum, and will travel at its initial speed minus velocity bled to air resistance and gravity.

Click to expand...

marshaul wrote:

Hammer wrote:

What exactly would the math on that be?
That is, if an object is falling form the sky, it reaches terminal velocity and no more. Bullets, from 40 - 300 grains, with a few exceptions, are not very heavy and at terminal velocity don't seem harmful enough to kill without some very exceptional circumstances.
I am not advocating shooting into the sky.
Just wondering how accurate the reports are that falling bullets kill several per Independence Day.

Click to expand...

Unless it's fired straight up, it's going to maintain it's forward momentum, and will travel at its initial speed minus velocity bled to air resistance and gravity.

Click to expand...

I'm not following you exactly. If it were fired at 89.99 degrees, it's horizontal velocity would exist, but be negligible. It would go up until it lost all velocity fired, then down to earth at (increasing to) it's terminal velocity, just not directly back where it started.
I appreciate that at angles less than___ (and I admit I don't know the # here, but probably above 60 degrees) it would continue to have a horizontal vector carried, but I haven't yet picked out the reasoning that it MUST be exactly 90 to horizontal to retain lethal forward motion when falling back to earth.
Is there a link?
A mathematic equation that substantiates?

Click to expand...

Hammer wrote:

marshaul wrote:

Hammer wrote:

What exactly would the math on that be?
That is, if an object is falling form the sky, it reaches terminal velocity and no more. Bullets, from 40 - 300 grains, with a few exceptions, are not very heavy and at terminal velocity don't seem harmful enough to kill without some very exceptional circumstances.
I am not advocating shooting into the sky.
Just wondering how accurate the reports are that falling bullets kill several per Independence Day.

Click to expand...

Unless it's fired straight up, it's going to maintain it's forward momentum, and will travel at its initial speed minus velocity bled to air resistance and gravity.

Click to expand...

I'm not following you exactly. If it were fired at 89.99 degrees, it's horizontal velocity would exist, but be negligible. It would go up until it lost all velocity fired, then down to earth at (increasing to) it's terminal velocity, just not directly back where it started.
I appreciate that at angles less than___ (and I admit I don't know the # here, but probably above 60 degrees) it would continue to have a horizontal vector carried, but I haven't yet picked out the reasoning that it MUST be exactly 90 to horizontal to retain lethal forward motion when falling back to earth.
Is there a link?
A mathematic equation that substantiates?

Click to expand...

Depends on the angle, the velocity, the mass of the bullet, etc etc etc. You're right that as the angle approaches the vertical the horizontal vector reaches zero.

I don't know of any hard and fast rule. The point is just that very few bullets are fired straight up. It doesn't take much to leave residual horizontal momentum. How much of that it takes to kill depends on a whole lot.

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