Iraq's soccer team for the first time advanced to the finals, after beating their opponent today. During the celebrations in Baghdad, with people parading down the streets in a show of triumph and solidarity, some resorted to the traditional form of celebrating by firing weapons into the air; one dead and 17 wounded, as a result of falling bullets.

Perhaps we could try another surge, of Elementary school teachers, to instruct these idiots on the basic science of gravity.



And, of course, there were bombings, to remind everyone that they were not supposed to be united about anything.:(

I knew where it was going as soon as I got to parading down in the streets,

Aren't we disarming these people ?

Myth busters did a work up on that same theory you speak of.,....that actually firing a round into the air will return to Earth and be able to kill you. I say...not.

Most likely someone fired the gun horizontally rather than vertically...which would actually kill someone.
Episode 50: Bullets Fired Up



Bullets fired up into the air can be lethal: busted, plausible, and confirmed.
The "all of the above" ruling on the bullets fired into the air myth was a new one for MythBusters. All of their tests showed that if you fire a bullet perfectly straight up into the air, it will not kill you as it will fall down on its side and have too low of a terminal velocity to kill, much like the Penny Drop myth. However, it is very difficult to fire perfectly straight into the air and they even found an international expert in falling bullets who was able to confirm for them that people have died from bullets fired up into the air.


Bullets Fired Up

Myth: A bullet fired up can come down and kill you

How high would a bullet fly up?

Adam's idea was to correlate the density of ballistics gel with the density of air (Jamie: "Huh."). Adam figured that if they could see how far a bullet traveled in ballistics gel, they could use the difference in density to calculate the distance it would travel through air. Adam calculated that the ballistics gel is 650x more dense than air, so, according to his theory, if a bullet fired into ballistics gel goes 1ft, it would go 650 ft through air. At least that was the theory: they would have to go to the firing range with some blocks of ballistics gel to see if it would work.

They lined up several blocks of ballistics gel end-on-end at the South San Francisco Police Department firing range (last seen in the Catching a Bullet with Your Teeth myth (http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2006/02/mythbusters_catching_a_bullet.html)). They quickly ran into a problem. The 9mm round went through three blocks of ballistics gel for a total distance of about 5ft. The much more powerful .03-06 (http://www.cartridgecollectors.org/30-06intro/) only went one block in. This wasn't so surprising given the results of the Bulletproof Water myth (http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2005/07/mythbusters_bulletproof_water.html), though they didn't seem to anticipate the same happening with ballistics gel. The .30-06 rounds travel much faster, so they a greater tendency to break up on impact. Jamie managed to flip a block of ballistics gel with a final shot, finally putting an end to this particular avenue of testing: the ballistics gel was not going to help them figure out how far a bullet would fly up.

Based on the failure of the ballistics gel experiment, they used a computer simulation program to calculate how high the bullets would travel up into the air. The calculations: *.03-6 10,000 ft 58 seconds



9mm 4,000 ft, 37 seconds
Terminal velocity of a falling bullet

Adam built an acrylic wind tunnel (much like the one in the Penny Drop myth). Air was shot up through the bottom and a bullet was dropped into the chamber. The terminal velocity was calculated based on the speed of the air needed to make the bullet stop falling. They figured that the terminal velocity was 100mph (150 ft/s). The wind tunnel also showed that the most stable falling position for the bullets was on their side.

Firing bullets at terminal velocity

The rigged up an air hose to an aluminum pipe to launch the bullets at terminal velocity (150 ft/s). Their first shot put a good dent in the metal door. Their next target would be a pig's head, just as soon as they got the amount of air pressure tuned correctly. A chronograph (http://www.clcweb.net/Shooting/Oehler/oehler.html) was used to measure the speed of the bullet and a solenoid valve (http://solenoid-valves.globalspec.com/) was attached to the tube to control the air flow.

They fired bullets from the pipe into the pig's head and recorded it all on the high-speed camera. At 166 ft/s, the 9mm bullet bounced right off of the pig's head. The .30-06 bullet did only slightly better, piercing the skin and then bouncing off.

It was looking like this was going to be busted, but, as it turns out, there is an international expert on falling bullets working in nearby Stanford. The expert, Dr. David G Mohler, told them about a case in Menlo Park where a woman sitting in a lawn chair was struck in the leg by a bullet that was fired into the air 1 1/2 miles away during a 4th of July celebration. Mohler recovered the bullet from her leg and the police were able to match the ballistics to a shooter.

Mohler also told them about a case of an elderly man in Alameda who was talking to his wife underneath a plastic corrugated roof in his carport. His eyes rolled up and his wife thought he was having a stroke. When they got to the hospital they found out there was a bullet in his brain and, unfortunately, he died.

"I know for a fact that bullets fired at a distance, returning to Earth, with terminal velocity, have the ability to kill people." - Dr. Mohler

This contradicted their findings so far, so it was back to the drawing board.

Mojave Desert testing

They figured out what was different from their original assumptions: the bullets in Dr. Mohler's cases weren't fired straight up into the air. They were fired at an angle, which meant that they remained spin-stabilized and on a ballistics trajectory.

It was time for them to figure out what would happen with real bullets fired into the air. They went out to the Mojave Desert, where they setup a rig to fire straight up into the air. They planned to fire a bunch of bullets into the air and hopefully find at least one of the bullets where it landed. To maximize their odds, they stationed their crew in bulletproof listening posts.

They first fired bullets straight into the ground as a control:



BB: 3"
9mm: 6"
.30-06/M1 Garand: 12"
Jamie fired a clip of 9mm bullets up into the air. 39 seconds later they heard the bullets hit the ground.

Adam: "I'm searching across the desert for a pencil-sized hole"

The first bullet that Adam found went only 2" into the ground and appeared to have hit the ground on it's side. The bullet had traveled 330ft horizontally. Jamie found another bullet hole almost identical to the first.

Jamie then fired the .30-06 rounds. Big problem: after 40 rounds fired into the air, they weren't able to hear any bullets land. The .30-06 rounds travel over twice as high, so they were simply traveling too far for them to find.

Adam brought out plan B: a balloon attached to an instrumented platform that could drop bullets remotely. The platform had a wireless video camera that fed an image of the platform, including the altitude gauge, down to Adam.

The bullets were dropped in a bundle from a height of 400 ft. The .03-06 made a 2" hole. The 9mm made a 2" hole as well, matching up perfectly with the actual 9mm bullet firing.

For the first time ever, they deemed this one busted, plausible, and confirmed. All of their tests, from the pig's head to the 9mm firing to the balloon, showed that a bullet fired perfectly straight up into the air is not lethal. However, it is also very difficult to shoot perfectly straight up into the air and, with the cases cited by Dr. Mohler, they have confirmed that people have died from bullets falling from the sky.

Did you even watch that show, or read the summary?

"I know for a fact that bullets fired at a distance, returning to Earth, with terminal velocity, have the ability to kill people." - Dr. Mohler right from the article you posted.

Yes, its hard to kill yourself with a bullet, but its not hard to kill someone else. Every big celebration like this in Iraq as well as anywhere in Africa or South America and thousands of other countries around the world ... even Mexico and the United States ... people are injured or killed by bullets returning to the earth.

You also need to remember that this isn't a sole gunman. This is thousands and thousands of firearms being fired off accross the country. Simply a law of averages that a few of those projectiles will hit someone on the way back down. One out of thousands of bullets to be fatal is far more than just likely.

One thing I have noticed when seeing these folks firing their weapons in celebration on the news footage, is that they never seem to be concentrating on firing exactly vertically into the air.:rolleyes:

there was a kid a couple months ago killed from a falling bullet a few acres away outside Austin. He is facing charges.

I think I remember from military channel an AK 47 can fire 600 rounds a minute.

Maybe a full auto AK 47 ...and I highly doubt he had one. AK 47 round is a small caliber. Once again bullets fired straight up into the air and returning to Earth are not lethal. Doesn't mean you should do it...and Kelraz read the entire article...that one quote you pulled out is the exact reason they did the test lol...no wonder your in the media.

They figured out what was different from their original assumptions: the bullets in Dr. Mohler's cases weren't fired straight up into the air. They were fired at an angle, which meant that they remained spin-stabilized and on a ballistics trajectory.


So point being.
A. Don't shoot guns after celebrations
b. If you are point the barrel straight up before firing.
c. Don't shoot guns after celebrations.

CSI even had an episode that centered on someone target shooting in their back yard, they were distracted and shot up into the air, and blocks away a woman was killed by the round. Once again, you are citing an article talking about shooting straight up in the air; there would seem to be a difference in velocities between firing 90 degrees versus maybe, 45 degrees.

As much as CSI seems to try to present factual information and science, I would be distraught to find out that they are actually presenting fantasy.:p

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,292168,00.html

Oklahoma Police Kill 5-Year Old Boy While Shooting at Snake
Sunday , August 05, 2007

NOBLE, Okla. —

A stray bullet fired by a police officer trying to shoot a snake hit and killed a 5-year-old boy fishing at a nearby pond, officials said.

Austin Haley was fishing with his grandfather, Jack Tracy, Friday evening when Tracy said he heard a shot and saw a bullet hit the water just a few feet in front of the boat dock where he was standing.

Moments later, a second shot was fired that hit Austin in the head.

A Noble police officer who had responded to a report of a snake in a tree apparently fired the deadly shot while trying to kill the snake, according to City Manager Bob Wade.

Tracy said he initially thought he and his grandson were under attack by someone trying to kill them, so he put the boy into the back of a 4-wheeler and drove to his daughter's house about 200 yards away.

"Then two officers came out of the brush over there," he told The Oklahoman. "They didn't tell us they were the ones who had been shooting or that they had shot him. They didn't admit a doggone thing."

The boy was taken to an Oklahoma City hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

A resident of the Crest Lane neighborhood called police after discovering a large snake in a tree, Wade said.

"I was told that they tried several ways to get the snake down, but it was still hissing at them and firmly lodged," Wade said. "What I was told is that the owner of the home either suggested or agreed that they should go ahead and shoot the snake, and then everything happened from there."

Wade refused to identify the officer suspected of firing the shots but said the officer has been placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation.

"This is so bizarre it has to be fully investigated. ... We're pretty sure circumstantially that it is the bullet from the police officer's gun, but it might be a bullet from someone else," Wade said.

A state investigation has been launched into the shooting, and it appears the fatal shot was fired by the officer, said Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman Jessica Brown.

"We have no reason to believe it's not," Brown said. "But there certainly will be an investigation."

Tracy has little doubt about what happened.

"I'm not saying the cop shot him on purpose," Tracy said. "It was an accident. But let me tell you — if I had a kid and put him in this car and didn't put him in a car seat and he got killed on the way to town, they'd charge me with murder ... and what this cop did is a lot worse than that."


I'm not saying the policeman was shooting straight up in the air at the snake (likely not) ... but you really need to know what's behind your target before firing. That's the first or second rule of handling a gun anyway.

Cops used to carry rounds filled with "#9 or 10 shot" for snakes or rodents, I would hope a cop wouldn't shoot a standard round at a snake in a tree.