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Boy shot from distance of miles

H

Herr Heckler Koch

Guest
It is not possible to prove in principle a negative.

Within the month there was a report of a BP rifle, fired to clear before cleaning, killing a girl at 1.5 miles range. That is a less than 1/20 million chance if the ballistics are sufficient.
 

SovereignAxe

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Joined
Jul 29, 2011
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Elizabethton, TN
It is not possible to prove in principle a negative.

Within the month there was a report of a BP rifle, fired to clear before cleaning, killing a girl at 1.5 miles range. That is a less than 1/20 million chance if the ballistics are sufficient.

I have a feeling that in that case the rifle wasn't angled that far above the horizon. I would think that at most it was held 45º above the horizon. At that angle, and the ballistics that I would think a blackpowder round would take, I think it would be easy for the round to take someone out at 1.5 miles. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same story in this case.

We all know how easy it is to get a rifle round to travel a mile. Maybe not accurately, but it'll go that far easy. The only thing Mythbusters proved was that a rifle round fired straight up doesn't have sufficient velocity on its return trip to cause death. They didn't test a rifle round fired at a 45º angle because it's near impossible to recover a round fired that way.
 

William Fisher

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Jan 21, 2011
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2430 meters or 1 1/2 mils was the record sniper shot in afganistan.

[video=youtube;wbzVpcTrQb4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbzVpcTrQb4&feature=related[/video]
 
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Brass Magnet

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Apr 23, 2009
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Right Behind You!, Wisconsin, USA
I agree that it all depends on the angle at which the round was fired. Anything greater than a certain angle (0 degrees being parallel to the ground) and the bullet will fall harmlessly, being slowed down by the drag of the air around it to it's terminal velocity. Unless it's a huge bullet, terminal velocity won't kill anyone. Determining the exact angle would be dependent on a lot of things and would be different for different cartridges, muzzle velocities and environmental conditions. Generally, we can all agree it's not very smart to fire a gun in the air; especially anywhere that's densely populated. You could argue that shooting one straight up is relatively safe but try and shoot one straight up; hell, it's hard enough drilling a straight hole with a hand drill.
 

William Fisher

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Jan 21, 2011
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238
Location
Oxford, Ohio
I agree that it all depends on the angle at which the round was fired. Anything greater than a certain angle (0 degrees being parallel to the ground) and the bullet will fall harmlessly, being slowed down by the drag of the air around it to it's terminal velocity. Unless it's a huge bullet, terminal velocity won't kill anyone. Determining the exact angle would be dependent on a lot of things and would be different for different cartridges, muzzle velocities and environmental conditions. Generally, we can all agree it's not very smart to fire a gun in the air; especially anywhere that's densely populated. You could argue that shooting one straight up is relatively safe but try and shoot one straight up; hell, it's hard enough drilling a straight hole with a hand drill.

Yeh, you see some idiots in places fire mutiple rounds into the air whooping it up, not thinking "What goes up, must come down".
 

Felid`Maximus

Activist Member
Joined
Nov 12, 2007
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1,711
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Reno, Nevada, USA
As said previously, a bullet going straight up will fall down without much velocity, but it doesn't take much of an angle to retain a lethal horizontal component to the velocity.
 

4sooth

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Oct 6, 2006
Messages
126
Location
, Louisiana, USA
Falling Projectile

Hatchers Notebook, pg. 514 paragraph four discusses the terminal effect (fired straight up)of various projectiles relative to their weight. A fifty caliber projectile of 718 grains returning base first has a velocity of 500fps with 400 foot pounds of energy. This is enough to cause a lethal wound. The .30 caliber projectiles retained a velocity of about 300 fps with an energy level of approximately 100 foot pounds. Bad bruise maybe but not generally fatal. Hatchers Notebook is loaded with information of this sort--and much more. General Hatcher spent his entire military career doing all the things with firearms all of us would like to do--and got paid for it!! If you shoot or own firearms this is required reading. With this book lot of arguments can be won.
 

Daylen

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Aug 29, 2010
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Location
America
Mythbusters never proved such a thing impossible. They did show that a bullet fired straight up would have only terminal velocity when reaching the ground again, thus making a fatal wound highly improbable. 45 degrees will almost yeld the farthest distance possible from a firearm and is far from straight up, it can be very deadly still.
 
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