The reality of celebratory gunfire | Hacker News Reader

The reality of celebratory gunfire

1point21interactive.com

207 pointsgmays265 comments

This article is trying to focus on falling bullets, but the only death it mentions (the Syrian refugee in Lebanon) was killed by a stray shot fired more or less horizontally from a rooftop, not from a bullet that was fired (approximately) straight up and then fell. And that's of course the real danger of celebratory gunfire - drunken partiers continuing to fire off shots as they're lowering their guns without thinking.

Shots fired upwards generally aren't lethal on the way down because the terminal velocity of a tumbling bullet (which the simulation in this article isn't accounting for) is usually rather low.

It looks like you are responding to the first sentence of the article. The immediately following two sentences:

"A small plane was shot down when it flew over a wedding party with guests celebrating the occasion by discharging firearms into the air. In California, five fans were injured inside the Oakland Coliseum by falling bullets fired from a neighboring community."

Those sentences don't mention deaths, which I specifically scoped my response to. Of course falling bullets can hurt people. I expect they would leave quite the welt.

Fair enough. They do cover the lethality of falling bullets. They seem to be fairly deadly. Most falling with enough force to pierce the skull. I'm not sure about their methodology.

Their methodology is probably off because it doesn't seem to account for bullets tumbling. Bullets spin and that spin keeps the pointy end forward. If they're fired straight up and then fall back down they're going to end up tumbling. That makes their air resistance much higher and therefore much slower. It will also reduce the severity of impact. Instead of getting hit by the pointy end you're probably going to be hit by a bigger surface area.

A dead 11 y.o. young boy outside a school and a now 95% paralyzed 7 y.o. girl are two examples off the top of my head which happened in Greece within the last five years. The bullets fell on the upper part of their heads. In the latter case, the mother said she heard a sound similar to piercing an egg's shell. In the latter case the murderer was actually found.

People drinking and driving generally don't kill other people. Many times they just manage to get home or take part in a small accident.

Point being, what's your point?

It's easy to find and mention deaths from drunk driving.

The article could have mentioned deaths from falling bullets (if there are recorded instances). At the moment, it gives the impression that there are no instances.

Of course it kills. There are plenty of instances in the middle eastern and Arabic media where the phenomenon is more common.

For example https://news.walla.co.il/item/785137

Whether or not it tumbles or remains ballistic is the biggest factor here. Surprised the article just failed to mention it.

> While the return velocity is dependent upon a number of factors, firing angle is extremely important. Bullets fired at an angle maintain their angular ballistic trajectory and are less likely to tumble, allowing them to pick up more speed on the way down.

It doesn't go into detail, but it does mention it.

In the methodology section: "...firing angle is extremely important. Bullets fired at an angle maintain their angular ballistic trajectory and are less likely to tumble, allowing them to pick up more speed on the way down."

I wish that part had been better examined and explained. Perhaps the authors are trying to say that there's a chance that a bullet will NOT tumble, the probability strongly influenced by firing angle but always nonzero, and they're just talking about the subset of non-tumbling bullets? It would be helpful if they were more clear—given the moralistic tone of the entire piece, leaving that part vague weakens the argument.

Random question: do blanks not have enough recoil to feel satisfying for a celebration/commemoration? I don't know much about guns.

You need either specific blank firing guns or a blank firing adapter to partially obscure the barrel to allow blanks to generate enough pressure to cycle a weapon, so they wouldn't be particularly useful to the average celebratory AKM owner. Blanks are also expensive and difficult to find compared to live ammunition. They are also a lot less satisfying to fire, TBH.

Blanks are more expensive than regular ammo? That's not what I would have guessed. Why are they more expensive?

Comparatively niche and low-volume product.

A lot of ammo is military surplus of one form or another, and the military doesn't have quite as much use for blanks.

Interesting! I’d always assumed the yellow objects UK soldiers seem to have on the ends of their rifle barrels when simulating an engagement were to catch an accidental live round, but perhaps they have the purpose you suggest.

Yep, they're the blank firing attachments. A live round will take them right off.

> drunken partiers continuing to fire off shots as they're lowering their guns without thinking

This is important. I'm not a gun expert, but I feel like if the safety is off, you should be aiming the thing. Aiming keeps your focus on where the bullet may travel if you pull the trigger.

I did a short stint in the US military, but I wasn't infantry. It would be interesting to see how they train "muzzle discipline" and under what conditions the safety should be taken off.

I saw some videos from the invasion of Ukraine where muzzle discipline was a problem. This is a training issue, but even the US military isn't immune to this. If you Google "Veterans React to 10th Mountain Division Room Clearing Video" you'll see the same issues, called "flagging." I'm assuming US infantry doesn't get much training in room clearing operations (maybe a special operations thing,) but it seems like "flagging" should be something they are taught to avoid regardless. I don't recall that being part of my own training though.

It's a bit unsettling to be thinking about people with ADHD carrying loaded weapons all around you.

> It's a bit unsettling to be thinking about people with ADHD carrying loaded weapons all around you.

Umm, I've got ADHD and carry regularly. I just have safety rules that I follow habitually. I no longer shoot with certain people (that don't have ADHD) because they don't follow those rules and I got tired of correcting them.

For the army this was absolutely taught and enforced in basic and reinforced throughout deployment. I don't even like toy guns pointed in my direction.

I'm disappointed they didn't also look at the odds of hitting someone, aside from what happens if it does. If it's landing somewhere random within an 800 ft radius, and there are 100 people within that range, how likely is it to hit one of them?

I feel like you don't need a study for that, just some relatively simple math (don't ask me for it, I suck at it). However, anything above 0 is too much to be allowed.

Machine guns were commonly used in an indirect fire role during the First World War, as the parabolic trajectory allowed machine gunners to target soldiers in trenches.

Now I assume most people aren't using firearms chambered in .303 or another full-size rifle cartridge, but there's obviously various combinations of calibre + azimuth where shooting into the air is dangerous.

> This article is trying to focus on falling bullets, but the only death it mentions […]

Yes, because only deaths are important and/or traumatic for those involved:

> Health Secretary Enrique Ona said Tuesday that the 413 wounded and hurt included a child who was hit in the head by a stray bullet fired by an unidentified person at the height of New Year's revelry in suburban Caloocan city in metropolitan Manila.

> The 7-year-old girl is fighting for her life.

> "The bullet's still embedded in her head," Ona told a news conference. "It looks like she may not be saved."

* https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/400-injured-philippin...

Perhaps the issue is not finding reports, but that there are too many to single out:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebratory_gunfire#Notable_in...

It's almost like reporting on that the sun rose this morning: obviously happening.

Are you saying it's safe to be struck by a tumbling bullet falling down?

No, he wrote that its not lethal.

Exactly. The post is meaningless and unhelpful, clarifying a point that is unimportant. It's like being pedantic but doesn't even correct something from the article.

Perfectly straight up vertical this is true. But anything that is not 90 degrees, the rifling of the barrel keeps the bullet spinning.

And here is something crazy - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFDEGq7yVNc

Every bullet fired can, potentially, kill. Do not fire at anything you do not want to kill. First lesson I got before getting a BB gun; first lesson I give others before teaching them to shoot.

Someone who can't absorb the idea that their actions will have consequences is not safe with a gun or any other weapon.

I find gun safety education and training notably absent from the gun control debate in the states. Shooting guns in summer camp and boy scouts they really drilled into you to take the thing seriously and NEVER point the barrel at anything you don’t want to kill. Now as an adult I have been around gun owners on multiple occasions who casually swing around their AR15s with the barrel passing over me and act as if I am dramatic by telling them to please not point a deadly weapon at me.

Yes, it's unfortunate that (thanks partly to SCOTUS) the Second Amendment doesn't come with prerequisites or confer responsibilities. Owning a gun should be a privilege like driving a car, IMO, not a right. Certainly not a Constitutional right.

What you're describing is how 2A works currently, it's not like it's a wild west, the regulations around gun ownership are crazy strict. Gun owners would rejoice if guns were regulated as loosely as cars. The only thing the gov't can't really do is outlaw them completely everywhere.

You need a reality check my friend: https://www.statista.com/chart/20047/gun-carry-laws-in-us-st...

In all of those states you need a license to drive a car, but you don't need squat to walk into a shop or a gun show and walk out with weaponry in a lot of places in the US.

https://brilliantmaps.com/buy-gun-map/

This is true but horribly misleading, you don't need a permit/license to buy a gun because you're effectively granted one (which can be denied) at the time of sale. You still have to fill out 4473 and pass the NICS check. There's no point to issuing people permits/licenses because all the information that would be on it is checked on every sale.

A system where you could get a firearm license and only renew it every few years would be less strict than what we have now.

Except for the gun show exclusion and family transfers, yes? There are enough holes in the system that you can;'t reliably ask someone holding a gun to show you the permit they received at sale. All cars must be registered, so failure to show registration is a clear infraction.

There are major gaps in the system. People aren't always flagged, you can have someone else buy the gun or gift it to you, or you can just go to a gun show. Imagine if you didn't need a drivers license because you're driving your friends car.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/19/us/gun-background-checks....

Concealed carry is regulated pretty strictly. Handgun ownership is regulated less strictly, but in some states still pretty strictly. Simply purchasing a gun, especially things like bolt action rifles, shotguns, etc. is basically unregulated outside of the automated NICS check. No waiting periods, no training requirements, no persistent/renewable licensure, no insurance requirement. Much less regulated than owning a car, let alone driving a car.

I say this as someone who owns multiple handguns, an AK47, and a shotgun. I shoot probably three times a month at my local range. I've got my eye on a gorgeous P90 a friend is thinking of selling. But gun ownership regulations aren't even remotely strict unless you're looking at NFA items. Almost all the existing regulations are around carrying and transporting.

I've love to see stricter ownership regulations like mandatory recurrent training and liability insurance, coupled with loosened carrying/transporting regulations like disallowing local laws more strict than state laws, disallowing force-of-law no gun signs like they have in Texas and Chicago, etc.

All of this is true. Yet many firearms enthusiasts are still disgruntled by the current situation because they interpret the intent of the 2nd Amendment as arming the people at or near parity with the government, as a bulwark against tyranny.

And the current state of regulations very much prevents the "at or near parity" part there, very few (0?) American civilians have legal armor piercing ammunition, anti aircraft weapons, anti tank weapons etc. Meanwhile every podunk city has a militarized police with hardware that would be the envy of many 3rd world dictators, to say nothing of the Feds/various 3-letter agencies/secret police etc.

It's good advice but not enough. The whole article is about how not pointing the gun at someone can still kill.

- "Hey, don't point that gun at anything you don't want to kill!"

- "I would never! I'm pointing the gun towards the sky, you can't kill the sky! Har har!"

Ballistic trajectory. They’re still pointing the gun at someone, it’s just outside of their line of sight.

(Untrained) Folks forget that bullets are affected by gravity too.

1. The gun is always loaded

2. Don't point at anything you aren't willing to destroy

3. Booger hook off the bang button until you are ready to bring the heat

4. Know your target and what's behind it

Even with misinterpreting 2 as "I'm pointing at 'nothing'", well you still need to know what is behind that nothing.

(3) is "finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot", seeing as (0) is "this is not a joke, this is not for fun, guns are not for anything but killing".

If you're teaching kids gun safety, the spirit of your delivery matters at least as much as the content.

Good point, but there's also the fact that when someone inserts "booger hook" into a life and death serious lesson, it makes it more memorable.

As a liberal and a gun owner, I think it's an intentional stance by both sides. Conservatives dislike gun safety training because unless it's in carefully controlled settings (i.e. controlled by conservative groups) because they're afraid it will be used to push a "guns are bad/guns are evil" narrative. Liberals don't like it because it's pretty hard to teach effective gun safety without actually handling and shooting firearms, and when people experience that they have a tendency to a) realize that guns aren't as scary and evil as they had been led to believe, and b) think that shooting sports are kind of fun.

In the milieu from which I hail -- conservative, small town in Missouri -- gun safety was taken very seriously and you would have been thought of as a dumb redneck if you didn't get it. Always treat the gun as loaded, never point it at anything you don't wish to kill, never rely on the safety, keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to fire, etc, etc. These were drilled into my head as a child, along with never, ever, under any circumstances should you be anywhere near the gun safe without an adult present.

Also, anecdotally, I once went to the range with someone who didn't grow up around these rules, who carelessly drew his weapon across the body of someone at an adjacent stall and was immediately and forcefully reprimanded and humiliated (deservedly) by one of the attendants.

People do take this stuff seriously.

IME at least people who are really into guns are also very serious about gun safety. The problems mostly tend to come from those guys who bought an AR or pistol because it seemed cool who only take their guns out of the case once or twice a year. Unfortunately in a country the size of the US there are a lot of people in the latter group.

WRT to training, I'm of the opinion that if we as a country are going to maintain a relatively unrestricted right to bear arms (which I'm in favor of), the responsible course of action is to have broad gun safety training. Personally I'd make it part of the high school curriculum, just like english or algebra. That's where I start to hear objections from conservatives - they're totally in favor of people seeking training, after all those people probably already have an interest in guns and they're most likely seeking training from a pro-gun source, but they're concerned about broader required training being hijacked by anti-gun groups. And they probably aren't wrong, but I don't think we should ignore addressing the problem just because some people would abuse the solution.

Also from small town Missouri here. You're description is certainly accurate for people going to a range, but I've seen (and participated in) impromptu shooting ranges in someone's back acre, and most people I've observed had no idea how guns work outside of movies and are perfectly willing to handle a firearm while drinking alcohol. _Some_ people do take this stuff seriously. But I think they're in the minority.

Guns are fun and holding one in your hands isn't particularly frightening. Watch a child get shot in the face and tell me they aren't evil though.

Does a child being stabbed in the face make knives evil? Or a child being crushed by a car make vehicles evil? Guns are inanimate objects and I don't really understand the desire to assign them attributes like "evil." There are absolutely evil people who use guns to do evil things, but the same can be said for many other objects.

This is a twisted line of argument and you know it. Of course I don't think guns are literally animated by evil spirits or something similar. It's an easily understood metaphor that nearly anyone would recognize and understand, are you claiming you don't?

It's also wack to pretend that guns are just one kind among all the objects that can exist and not special in any particular way. Again it's not likely that you believe that. Guns are set aside in that they are designed exclusively for one person to cause misery and death to another, and are spectacularly good at it, and are suited for virtually no other purpose.

A knife with poison on the tip, or barbs on the blade, intended to maim and kill and unsuited for other uses? Yes, that would be evil, as a gun is. Hunting rifles and target shooting guns? Yes those are tools for another purpose that can be misused for harm, as a cooking knife or a car can. But these aren't the things we're talking about are we? I'm not a fool, or incapable of judgement and nuance, so don't try to condense this view as if I am.

Guns are exceptional, in how well made they are for their purpose, how terrible that purpose is, and how frequently they are applied to it. The fact that other things have some or all of these qualities doesn't really change the calculus.

Really shows how little thought people put into the consequences of their actions. Literally half a second of thinking would reveal it is a stupid and dangerous thing to do, yet here we are. The selfishness is the most galling part.

I'd guess that at least in America drinking is pretty commonly involved so anyone spending half a second thinking wouldn't have made it past alcohol+guns.

Responsible gun ownership should prevent anyone from bringing a gun in a situation where they will be drinking, or leave the gun in a safe place before staring to drink.

Sadly, a lot of people in the US own guns to make a political statement and have little interest in safe & responsible gun ownership.

Would it really be that hard to just implement some better checks/requirements for people before they are able to buy a gun? Genuinely asking. It seems it's possible to do the bare minimum for letting people drive but somehow not for letting them buy guns. I mean just a little bit of training should make sure that they know not to drink and be anywhere near their guns.. or to have their guns stored somewhere safe and e.g. unreachable by kids, etc. and not easy to grab.

The problem in the US is the gun culture. Guns are a political statement more than a tool, and any restriction attempt in the name of safety goes directly against that statement and will just reinforce and justify more of such "statements".

Checks and requirements will only go so far. People can sit through training and forget it the next day if they don't care, which they don't if they just got the gun to make a political statement.

Fixing the culture so that people who have no business owning guns stop buying guns is the long-term solution. Then, the only people who will buy them are those who legitimately need them and are interested in safe & responsible firearm ownership.

As someone on the other side of this debate, yes, it is "that hard".

The US has a long history of government using "background checks" and "tests" as a form of discrimination, for example how poll tests were used to discriminate against African Americans in the South. As recently as June 2022, New York State was unconstitutionally denying gun permits to average citizens while simultaneously granting them to rich celebrities and politicians, hence the recent ruling by the Supreme Court in NYSRPA v. Bruen. Unfortunately, it doesn't make a lot of sense to compromise with people who continue to act in bad faith (Claim they want to improve gun safety, but really just want to ban guns).

Never mind that the most prominent group of gun wielders, law enforcement officers, get themselves exempted from every gun control law. If we reform the police to where the average traffic or patrol cop is reliably not armed with a gun, only then would it make sense to talk about introducing restrictions on the wider civilian population. Such reform would be a mere condition of employment, and thus not involve constitutionality issues.

For what it's worth, taking a gun safety course made me realize I am not the type of person that will ever strap one to my hip to go about my daily business. And I'm an avid DIYer for basically everything, but calling the police after a break-in made me understand that clearing a building is a job I will never want to do myself. It's a nuanced issue, but I know that governments must ultimately be subservient to the people, and therefore the onus is on domestic-facing institutions to disarm before asking the people as a whole to do the same.

> I am not the type of person that will ever strap one to my hip to go about my daily business.

I do strap on my pistol to go about my daily business, which could mean grocery shopping, going to the bookstore, walking the dogs. I know roughly what my capabilities are and set my ROE accordingly. I did take safety courses, concealed carry course, and practice occasionally. IMHO going about armed is functionally equivalent to wearing a seatbelt.

Oh, and I did have to draw my pistol just a few days ago - while walking the dogs got into a tense situation with hazardous wildlife. Fortunately backing off and shouting/barking was all we needed to do...but it doesn’t always go that way.

The problem is that, not having a criminal record, and other easily "testable" things, is actually NOT a good proxy for having the emotional intelligence and responsibility and CONSISTENT RIGOR to never do something even a little dangerous with a gun.

In fact we see the same thing with regulation around cars. It turns out being able to parallel park is a bad proxy for someone not being stupid with a two ton machine, and plenty of licensed drivers still end up driving distracted, or using their phone, or drinking and driving AND DEFENDING IT.

Humans in general are very irresponsible creatures who like to blame others for poor choices they make. Why are we so confused when it comes to guns? So many firearm related incidents involve "responsible gun owners" until, oops, turns out they weren't responsible.

How do you LEGALLY VERIFY someone is permanently responsible?

> Responsible gun ownership should prevent anyone from bringing a gun in a situation where they will be drinking

It's illegal to posses a gun while you are under the influence.

I think it depends on the state. Some prohibit drunkenness, others, you can't even be in an establishment where alcohol is served.

I'm still a bit stuck on the "hey lets bring our guns to this celebration!"

Hey y'all, we're getting married! Don't forget to stop by the ammo store!

I'm still stuck at the part of "let's buy/get a gun".

Disclaimer: I'm from somewhere in the EU.

Also from the EU.

Guns can be a fun sportive/recreational tool. They are of course dangerous and deadly when misused, but so can be a lot of other recreational tools.

The main problem is the US’ gun culture and that a lot of people buy them either because of fear-mongering or to make a political statement, with safe use & enjoyment being a secondary concern. Having so many guns out there in the hands of people who are poorly trained at using them safely & harmlessly is the problem.

In a location with a healthy gun culture, or no specific culture associated with them, a gun would be considered as boring as any other dangerous sports equipment, there would be less problems - there would be a lot less guns around but the ones that will remain will be in the hands of passionate users who actually have the skill, training and mental state to enjoy them safely and responsibly.

The biggest problem in the US, which no one ever talks about, isn’t long arms at all but easily concealable pistols.

I'm not necessarily talking about violence where someone is determined to use a gun to kill someone. I'm talking about the general problem of there being way too many guns out there than they should be, owned by people who have no interest in safe & responsible firearm ownership, which leads to dangerous bullshit such as celebratory gunfire. This is a separate problem that will remain even if gun violence is resolved.

Don't go that rabbit hole :-) Long guns with exeption of mass shootings are reposnonsible for fraction of a violence. In fact 95% of gun violence is USA is focued in less than a 5% of area of major cities. If You subsctract gangs shootings USA is closer to EU in terms of gun accidents/crimes that you would think.

Here is Polish article, with a lot of data about gun violence distrubution in USA: https://www.hoplofobia.info/kartograficzna-analiza-przestepc...

And some USA native info: https://www.hoplofobia.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Antho...

> They are of course dangerous and deadly when misused, but so can be a lot of other recreational tools.

Sorry to nitpick, but I strongly disapprove of this sentence because it hides the fact that guns are weapons, and generally speaking most "other recreational tools" are not.

Of course guns are dangerous and deadly, they're guns. If other recreational tools were as readily dangerous and deadly as guns, access to their usage would be a lot more restricted.

Which also implies the "when misused" description is deceptive. What are guns designed to do? Like, when looking at their affordances[0], what was a gun originally made to do? SMBC had a nice take on it[1].

Of course it is true that we're not supposed to kill people, but "misused" here expands to "someone used a thing explicitly designed to be good at killing people, and in the process got someone killed, which means they misused it". Depending on intent that is perhaps "morally" correct, but otherwise it shifts attention away from the part where guns being dangerous and deadly is inherent to what makes them guns.

And don't get me wrong, I fully agree with the rest of what you're saying. I totally understand when people have a fascination for weapons and agree there should be space for passionate, responsible enthusiasts. But that's exactly why I'm a bit hung up on this: to me, a responsible enthusiast would never undersell how dangerous guns are, and part of the cause of a messed up gun culture is not respecting that danger.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance

[1] https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-01-28

EU shooter here for context.

> I totally understand when people have a fascination for weapons and agree there should be space for passionate, responsible enthusiasts.

Well, thank you for letting us live !

Where I live, it's not exactly easy to legally get a hand gun and you can only do so after you proved that you're responsible, sane, and respect the safety rules. It's a process that can take a year, with multiple tests that you have to renew along your life. The behaviour described in this article would lead a shooter to lose his right to detain a handgun (I speak about detention, there is no right to carry guns here).

Long story short, don't fear shooters that are having fun at your local gun range, they wouldn't do anything that stupid and they know damn well the dangers.

People in suburban cities getting guns illegally is a completely different matter though, and the shootings there are completely out of control, including shooting automatics while riding a bike or firing at buildings. And yes, pathetic clowns doing the "celebratory gunfire" thing.

> Long story short, don't fear shooters that are having fun at your local gun range, they wouldn't do anything that stupid and they know damn well the dangers.

And I'm not! Apologies if I came across that way. I'm only nitpicking on the language used when discussing guns here. I want the discussion of guns to be as respectful of (the dangers of) guns as responsible gun owners are with actual guns.

I understand: it's not akin to other recreational activities. It needs extra care and education. I guess in many places the culture comes without the education and it's a bad situation.

>Long story short, don't fear shooters that are having fun at your local gun range, they wouldn't do anything that stupid and they know damn well the dangers.

Lol wut? My entire family is "responsible gun owners" who repeatedly engage in harmful gun culture stuff, keeping guns around young kids, mixing alcohol and drugs with firearms, and NOT STOPPING EACH OTHER FROM DOING THAT

I have no trust in people who say "no no no the responsible gun owners are fine" because they always claim that the people who did dangerous things were "no responsible gun owners" when stuff inevitably happens. It's a tautology to try and pretend like the people doing all the stupid things aren't very similar to the people who say we should trust them.

Still, many recreational tools are quite deadly. There are a number of weapons being used recreationally. I have personally used bows, axes, and swords for example. But also non-weapons are deadly: all kinds of power tools for example.

And as long as people don't casually walk down the street with a chain saw or keep one under their pillow I don't really see the problem. The problem with guns is that people do handle them in unsafe ways (at least in the US). Switzerland for example has lots of guns, but people handle them differently than in the US.

I have to say, bows axes and swords are significantly less deadly then actual contemporary weapons. With power tools, you cant harm someone who is not standing nearby for example.

You can be quite irresponsible with sword and still cause significantly less damage or potential for damage then someone who is almost responsible with a gun.

In the case of the US, shooting people isn't even considered "misuse" of a firearm. The USA is the only developed country where it's socially and legally acceptable for civilians to own and carry firearms for the specific purpose of shooting people (ostensibly in self defence).

>> They are of course dangerous and deadly when misused, but so can be a lot of other recreational tools.

>Sorry to nitpick, but I strongly disapprove of this sentence because it hides the fact that guns are weapons, and generally speaking most "other recreational tools" are not.

It is the nature of humans that we are good at repurpose things. Exactly the same can be said about about almost anything like cars/bikes/boats. Initial design was not for recreation and fun but we repurpose them and even start to build exactly for that. Te same goes for firearms - race guns exist and they are design from ground up to shoot paper and steel :)

Your country has a military and is probably approximately democratic; your culture supports and funds arming thousands of people.

The only discussion now is which people.

Arming thousands of people who genuinely live in war zones and have an active reason to have guns for safety. Which is very different from the average EU gun owner.

If you’re in the US and your marriage involves guns you’re a redneck or thug.

The only time I’ve ever seen a gun at a wedding was a police officer working the event.

"gender reveal party accident" is my favorite stupid news.

The psychological disappointment of our species condensed into 4 words. What an interesting rabbit hole. But pretty disheartening, too.

All of the infographics on that site don't show bullets being fired, they show whole cartridges. It's also talking about bullet weights and speeds, and completely skips the concept of "energy" (i.e. Joules) which is what actually matters for this analysis. Additionally, they seem to assume that the trajectories are always perfectly ballistic, and that the projectile never begins to tumble or otherwise present any sort of wind resistance. It just screams that the people involved in the process have never actually been anywhere near any firearms.

This makes it extremely difficult for me to believe that any sort of intellectual rigor went into any of it. Not that I believe firing guns in the air is a good idea, mind you, but this is lazy.

They address this at the end of the article

> Our calculations account for air drag and the effects of gravity.

You make a good point about the infographic showing a cartridge being fired, but as far as I can tell there is only one infographic on the page that actually shows this. These factors make me suspect that you didn't actually read the article to the end before criticizing it. "Intellectual rigor" indeed.

I don’t own or use guns and I’ve never done this but I would think that dangerousness is what makes it exciting and “celebratory”.

Fireworks are more fun than flashing lights, because they’re explosives. They’re fun just to buy and handle, to feel the paper and smell the chemicals. It’s fun to set up them up in a backyard and light the fuses and then run clear before they go off.

Rolling the dice on maybe killing or maiming an innocent bystander is fun?

It’s dangerous for others, far moreso than fireworks where the main danger is hurting yourself.

Depends on where you live I suppose. Due to the risk of causing bushfires, fireworks are banned in most of Australia.

> Fireworks are more fun than flashing lights, because they’re explosives.

This is not objective; e.g.: fireworks are fun to me because of the light show and explosives are not a factor at all (I'd prefer aurora to fireworks).

Think about the 21 Gun Salute. A tribute used at funerals for fallen warriors. My understanding is it’s an old old ceremony. Given the somber event, I suspect the “danger” of the act had little to do with it. I think firing artillery and arms has has long been associated with reflective notable events (both celebratory and depressing).

Notably, the army is smart enough to use blanks for ceremonial purposes, which it doesn't seem like these people know how to do.

Friends of mine, having romantic dinner on their terrace, had bird shot land into their dinner plates. Bird shot is so small, it's no more deadly than raindrops when it falls back down, but it's a startling seasoning for a nice dish. The bird hunter who'd shot was in sight, they caught up with him, and he just didn't deem it to be a problem...

Fun fact: bird shot is the only item you’re allowed to *remove* from your mouth when dining with the Queen of England.

How would one dine with her? Is she a zombie now?

As a shooter myself, I find this behaviour completely irresponsible. Even more so when alcohol is involved. Guns have no place at a party, full stop.

The irony is that this doesn’t seem to be “aimed” at the celebratory gunfire community at all

Nobody is talking about celebratory ground shooting which is even more dangerous to everyone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI9qRmWCEJw

TODR > Logic dictates that indiscriminately firing a gun into the air is probably not a great idea.

I'm sold. I'll never fire that gun I don't own into the air randomly like a psychotic toddler again. But I will feel better about staying inside on all those crazy PTSD inducing holidays to avoid stray bullet rain.

Side rant, why are holidays that are oriented around celebrating events credited to military personnel perfectly designed to exacerbate some of the most common chronic psychological ailments of military personnel?

Asking for a friend.

A roof might provide some resistance, but would it necessarily protect you from bodily harm?

By the time a bullet comes through your roof from a steep ballistic trajectory, probably yes.

Memorial day fireworks are absolutely a dick move.

My personal theory on celebratory fireworks for national events is that they are specifically intended to create a long lasting association between the sounds of war and the feeling of patriotism. When war breaks out, and someone is used to fireworks already, then the sounds are a bit less scary and maybe they even feel some psychological response of patriotism, planted by the various firework shows they've been to in past holidays. Of course once someone has actually seen war firsthand then they are going to have an entirely different set of psychological responses to those sounds.

I think it’s because loud sounds and big explosions are cool to hear and see

If this is true it'd be brilliant. I was prepared to adopt your theory myself, but figured I should at least google it first and that brought me to this: https://www.history.com/news/july-4-fireworks-independence-d...

It says John Adams wrote:

“The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America...I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival…It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

It seems he was advocating for celebratory gunfire! The article goes on to say: "[fireworks] would become an increasingly important part of the festivities in the years to come, as public safety concerns caused cannon and gunfire to be gradually phased out of celebrations."

Doesn't disprove your theory (cannon and gun fire would probably be even more effective than fireworks) so I'm adopting it. I'll be sure to spread it around the next time I'm attending a fireworks shew! It also suggests we should have learned our lesson about celebratory gunfire centuries ago, but I guess some people are so slow that even after all this time they still haven't caught on.

I think 'Gun' in the John Adam's quote refers to cannons.

That's likely true.

However, it is worth considering that loading firearms of that era without a projectile was trivial, requiring no special materials or advance preparation (just wadding), and was arguably easier than loading them with one. The amount of powder could also be adjusted. Celebratory gunfire with them would have been different, and would have had different safety considerations.

Definitely an interesting headcannon^W headcanon. Of course, celebration has always been associated with loud noises - bells, drums, cheering, clapping, whistling - so logically anything with explosions is an extension of that continuum.

Agreed... For a very long time you would not get me anywhere near celebrations with fireworks or gunfire, and if I was exposed, it was not a pleasant experience for anyone. Took some time, but things are far better now. Still prefer not to be around, but no longer a huge negative experience.

Why not fire blanks? One must be a real idiot to be firing live rounds into the air.

Just as all guns are loaded, all blanks are real bullets. (Metaphorical truths, you live longer if you act like they are true)

Blanks can kill too, by the way.

Why not just use fire crackers?

Because firecrackers can kill too.

Nothing is any fun anymore.

Blanks are complicated. Many types of weapons rely on pressure in barrel to cycle the action, without a bullet this pressure doesn't go high enough. So blank firing guns are likely modified in one way or an other.

That is why you put a stop on the muzzle - the red thing with a hole in it you might have seen or even used if you were in the military - so that enough pressure is built up to cycle the action. Another function of the stop is to catch any small bits of plastic from the blank rounds which might otherwise be ejected at eye-piercing speed.

You probably ALSO don't need to mag dump into the sky, so a blank not being able to adequately cycle your weapon probably shouldn't be a big issue?

I was going to say, where do you even find blanks and I bet they're more expensive than normal ammo but no, you can easily order them online like this random example: https://greencountryammo.com/9mm-BLANK-Ammunition-DAG-100-ro... and they're only 2/3rds the cost of target ammunition.

> One must be a real idiot to be firing live rounds into the air.

Yeah, and that's exactly the kind of person who would point a gun with (hopefully) a blank at a friend and pull the trigger as a joke. Unfortunately for the friend, that concussive force still might kill them.

The better approach is to keep guns out of the hands of untrained, non-professionals. And since most people don't have a professional need to shoot guns, that means most people shouldn't ever touch a gun.

Well they do that around here.

Still want to gentrify my neighborhood?

All the celebratory bullets keep flying over into my neighborhood, so yeah.

I’ll never forget watching the nightly news and seeing a report of a child being killed by a stray bullet that was shot into the air by someone far away. They were being held by their Dad.

Broke my heart.

I wish there were more PSAs about not firing guns into the air. The bullets always have to come down somewhere.

Anyone have a source on the first graphic? 95% of incidents recorded by the gun violence archive having occurred on July 4th, December 31st or January 1st is an extraordinary claim. If that is true this puts gun violence statistics in the US into a whole other light.

That's only including celebratory gunfire incidents, and only in the United States.

Wow that isnt clear at all in the way the callout is phrased.

Fascinating - but not really a solvable problem if I am going to be cynical about it. Too few data points spread out across different geographies means there are other problems with higher social impact.

> not really a solvable problem if I am going to be cynical about it

Seems like it's a trivially solvable problem. In fact in almost all of the industrialized world it's not a problem at all. You're just saying that you don't want it solved, which is a statement (in the US) as much about political identity as it is about practical policymaking. But it's not about "solvability" at all.

What is the trivial solution?

Don’t have guns.

Don't have celebrations.

Don't fire guns into the air during celebrations.

(Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.)

Even not using live ammunition in the guns that you're firing into the air during celebrations would be enough to avoid this particular problem.

this tbh. me and some buddies will sometimes shoot blanks on auto, like if we're out at a ranch doing a barbecue for the 4th or something. away from people, zero risk, people who are drunk don't get handed the guns. still had a neighbor who was driving by so she could hear it and pitched a fit like, ok karen.

edit: hn is ratelimiting me again so here's my response to @chroma comment

yeah buddy i'm totally aware of the 86 ban but if your family has stuff before then and moved it to a nfa trust then you're cool. cause it wasn't all that expensive before supply was capped. and the cool part is if you got a bunch of full auto AR lowers you can make a shitton of different configurations and they're all still the same thing legally.

literally all you have to do is get a el cheapo thing to screw on the barrel and it cycles fine, sometimes have to tune the gas system but if it's built for the exact model then not much. one guy sometimes brings a m10 and has a closed barrel he fabbed himself for shits and giggles.

and no, we all reload so blanks are actually less expensive than a full round.

we do a shoot too but sometimes it's fun to shoot off in the air? like usually at the end after we finish up fireworks.

why tf are you so pressed about it anyway?

I don't believe you.

First, because the supply of civilian-owned machine guns was frozen in 1986[1], a mediocre full-auto gun starts at $10,000.

Second, blanks won't cycle a gun designed to fire actual cartridges. You need a blank firing adapter or a gun made to fire only blanks.

Third, because of economies of scale, blanks are significantly more expensive than real ammo. A few mag dumps would exceed $100.

I have a hard time believing that you and your buddies would get blank firing adapters for your ridiculously expensive machine guns so you could burn money even faster than if you were at the range. If everyone handling the guns is sober and you're in a place where the sound of gunfire is acceptable, why not just... set up some targets? It'd be cheaper, more fun, and more believable.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_Owners_Protection_Act#...

and no, we all reload so blanks are actually less expensive than a full round.

we do a shoot too but sometimes it's fun to shoot off in the air? like usually at the end after we finish up fireworks.

why tf are you so pressed about it anyway?

p.s. would have commented separately earlier but i keep getting ratelimited

Ban people.

Los Angeles has “trivially” solved this.

They did two things.

First a large public outreach and education campaign to “don’t do that”.

Second, in the areas where this commonly occurred they halted ammunition sales for, I think, a week before the event (notably New Years and 4th oh July).

I don’t even think the NRA bothered to fight that one.

At the time it had a very notable effect on the volume of gunfire before and after the program went into effect. There was telling news video doing a before and after, and the reduction was significant.

We’re any follow up studies done on the effectiveness? I have no idea. Is it still effective (the was done 30 years ago), I also have no idea. But at the time, it seemed to have some impact.

And as far as solutions go, it was pretty trivial. Fundamentalists will grouse but c’est la vie, but its scope was really limited.

In the US most of the solution is going to be education, especially as we take in more and more people accustomed the practice. Really, it's not hard to turn public opinion for/against something, but it does take money and time. If we, as a culture, spent half as much time talking about gun safety and shaming people who fire indiscriminately into the sky as we do talking about "pumpkin spice" and shaming people for their natural bodies we'd be set.

It's not 'trivially solvable' because a huge portion of the population will strongly resist the change you're advocating for. Social, political & cultural constraints are a real, serious thing- large-scale civil unrest is very very bad. The rest of the industrialized world didn't have more guns than citizens and a deep culture of gun ownership & resisting the government, hence why your analogy falls apart. You have to work within the social realities of every country, so incrementalism is basically the only thing that really works, as frustrating as that always is for more ideological types to hear

How is "a huge portion of the population will strongly resist the change" (your words) any different from "you don't want it solved" (mine) except that you're projecting the opinion onto someone else?

I understand and agree with the rest of your point (even if you're needlessly and insultingly calling me "ideological" when I think my desires are entirely practical ones). But that's still not the same thing as saying that "there is no solution" or that the problem is "unsolvable". Doing that is making an excuse.

If you are willing to tolerate people being hurt and killed by stray gunfire, then just admit that you are willing to tolerate it and unwilling to see it solved.

>> If you are willing to tolerate people being hurt and killed by stray gunfire.

This is implicitly baked into the 2nd-amendment cause. It's the primary reason this is such a hot-button political issue.

Nothing comes for free. Every benefit has a cost. In the case of guns some part of the population belive (strongly) that the benefits outweigh the costs. The rest (strongly) believe the opposite.

The benefit of gun ownership is the idea that the citizenry can overthrow a future hypothetical tyrannical government [1]. The cost is the many lives lost in the real world now.

While it may be impossible to say, the phrase "if a few children must die to protect our way-of-life, then that's a price worth paying" springs to mind.

[1] the actual efficacy of such a resistance may be questionable (it didn't help the confederacy for example) that's not really the point. The argument is that merely the threat of such an uprising prevents the tyrannical govt from forming in the first place.

Of course the argument may be nonsense. New Zealand has survived tyrany with little to no gun ownership, whereas tyrany in places with high ownership, like say Iraq, is not uncommon - which suggests there are other factors in play.

But the quality of the argument is not material. The fact is that a significant number of people believe that guns are important, and that the cost of guns is worth paying.

Ultimately that is the problem that is "not solvable".

Seems to me that many (most?) successful overthrowing of tyrannical governments have been conducted through mostly peaceful means. Where armed insurrection has taken place the result has been a long bloody revolution and in the rare cases it has succeeded the replacement government has many of the same faults as the one it replaced.

Don't get me wrong, there have been cases where armed revolution has been successful, but in most cases, it's been average people getting out into the streets and saying enough that has made the big difference.

There are not many governments that can continue when the majority of the people are actively protesting against it.

Funny, the same people that talk about needing guns to protect them from a tyrannical government get real shy about actually using those guns against a government they claim to be tyrannical. I'm tired of defending a "right" to protect from "tyranny" when everything seems to come down to a "Not true tyranny (yet)" fallacy.

More importantly, women in the US are literally dying due to tyrannical oppression from their government. Where are the people with guns to fight said government?

Surely if you believe it's trivially solvable and you haven't solved it, that is evidence that you either do not desire to solve it or that it is not trivial to solve.

Like, if you think it's trivially solvable then just solve it trivially and we can all move on.

The problem of falling projectiles from celebratory gunfire is trivially solvable insofar as the solution to the problem is simply to not fire the guns. So in that regard, it is a trivial solution.

The practical problem is that despite risks, people choose to be stupid. I think even an uneducated person knows that a bullet fired into the air will eventually return to the ground.

The social reality is that humans oddly seem obsessed with doing things which are clearly detrimental to themselves or others, in the short or long term. This part of the problem is not at all trivial to solve (I doubt it can be solved).

It is trivially solvable in principle, not in practice. Political constraints are as real as technical constraints, and you cannot make sense of and intelligently affect the world without understanding that. Similarly, political constraints do not simply issue from the stupidity of the people who stand in your way. That is political philistinism.

If fellow gun owners considered idiots shooting guns into the air to be the actual threat they are, it should solve itself. These gun owners have no problem flagging strange black people protesting in front of their houses, why do they have such a problem keeping their friends from being idiots with lethal weapons?

Arizona has Shannon’s Law (named after a girl who died) but enforcement is hard because there are cultural issues at play where people don’t even see this as wrong.

Still hear gunfire in Phoenix to this day, enough to make me not want to be outside on the “celebratory“ holidays and a lot of other people think this way.

They do hunt down people when they can. About ten years ago I was outside a bar after dropping off my passenger and this guy shot 5 or 6 rounds into the sky, apparently mad he got kicked out of the bar or something. The Phoenix PD was looking for him for the next few hours which made my job a lot harder. For my part, once I realized he wasn’t shooting at me I just carried on with my business because, whatever.

The NRA is strongly pro 2nd amendment... Where in their recommended gun safety rules does it imply that firing indiscriminately in the air is acceptable? https://gunsafetyrules.nra.org/

Or are you saying that some citizens breaking the law with a device should be addressed by taking away the legal right to use that device? Cars, shovels, knives, hammers, screwdrivers, bricks hvevbeen misused to kill people. Houses have been use to imprison people unlawfully. Should we ban those too? If not, what's the difference? Other than "I don't use guns and I do use those other things"?

It's a country where in certain parts there is a fairly good chance that a random person walking down the road will be carrying a gun, with no good reason apart from "protection" from other random people walking down the road also carrying a gun.

As you say, not a problem in most parts of the world, let alone western world.

The graphic makes the classic error of depicting an entire shell casing flying along with the bullet. However, it also shows what appears to be a pistol round flying out of a shotgun.

I'm pretty sure their calculations assume a perfect impossible arc.

A bullet coming down is catching the wind and spinning wildly directing force in all directions and likely not getting anywhere near terminal velocity. It's like dropping a penny off of skyscraper. Mathematically it could kill somebody, but in all likelihood it's not going to.

This has been shown experimentally time and time again.

> Mathematically it could kill somebody, but in all likelihood it's not going to. This has been shown experimentally time and time again.

Yet somehow people keep dying tho don't they?

Some quick examples:

https://blogs.bcm.edu/2019/12/31/what-goes-up-must-come-down...

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/least-17-killed-c...

https://www.thetrace.org/2015/07/celebratory-gunfire-july-4-...

Seems like the math says celebratory gunfire is a stupid practice that needlessly kills and injures people and endangers many others since serious accidents also occur in addition to the deaths and injury caused by falling bullets. Plenty of other things make loud noises without seriously hurting or killing people. I really don't see the point in defending this one.

Math called something stupid? More stupid than flying in an airplane, or going to a hospital for surgery? Without a denominator, isn't the math basically silent on just how dangerous a given celebratory bullet is, relative to other behavior?

It doesn't matter how dangerous it is vs flying in an airplane or having surgery since those activities serve a purpose and there aren't equivalent alternatives that don't involve risk. If everyone in the world suddenly stopped flying or getting surgery tomorrow deaths and suffering would increase. If everyone stopped recklessly and needlessly shooting firearms at the sky, deaths and suffering would decrease.

It doesn't matter how many deaths celebratory bullets cause. Any number of deaths greater than zero is too many deaths because celebratory gunfire serves zero useful purpose beyond "I think it's fun and I care more about that than I do about human life and the suffering this activity causes" and alternative options exist for "fun" that don't cause deaths and injuries to innocent people.

If people who were irresponsible with firearms only ever killed themselves I'd be much much less concerned, but the lives of others will always win out over someone who just wants to celebrate with their favorite way to make bang bang noises.

> Seems like the math says celebratory gunfire is a stupid practice

Math says no such thing. It can merely say how likely something is, human values are needed to conclude something is stupid.

> A bullet coming down

You know that every bullet follows a ballistic arc right? Cos you know, gravity being a thing. And there are specific tradeoffs that are made in gun and ammunition design to maximise stability and prevent tumbling (with the exception of rounds specifically intended to tumble, usually in close range anti-human weapons)

So, the Federal 150gr .308 ammo I use, when zeroed for 200 yards, has two zero points, one at ~28 yards (I'm vaguely remembering this, so numbers may not be perfectly accurate), the other at 200 yards, if I've sighted it in right.

At 100 yards, the pill will be about 1.5 inches above my imaginary horizontal firing line, at 300 yards, about 4" below. 400 yards, 11 inches, etc.

It's not tumbling at those ranges, but it's very much descending, and very much lethal.

I mean, that's why we use _rifles_, the rifling imparts aerodynamic stability, and that's also why I'm using 150gr, it's far more stable in windy conditions than a lighter pill. If you go higher in grain, you get more stability, but the arc is necessarily higher, which makes long range shot placement trickier.

(Likewise, why people seeking flatter trajectories choose smaller pills with more powder behind them, my friend's .220 felt like a laser at 300 yards due to the flatness of it's trajectory)

Hence why firing angle is very significant here.

The air speed plus initial stability is what maintains stability. It's the entire reason guns are rifled, to give the bullet initial stability.

If you fire straight up, there’s a point where it reaches an actual zero velocity before heading back down. It’s lost all its stability at this point.

It's quite literally the same thing as dropping a bullet.

Nearly no bullet fired during a celebration is fired directly "up" and even small deviations still end up with a ballistic trajectory that maintains stability.

> Hence why firing angle is very significant here

> The velocity decreases to almost zero.

Tiny nit, but the bullet does reach a velocity of zero at it’s apex momentarily?

Having been fired at 88 degrees from the horizon, the bullet is still moving (slightly) sideways.

"We ran simulations for five of the most common ammunition types in the U.S. at five different firing angles. The answer to the most important question became immediately and abundantly clear." - the most important step is missing between first and second sentences here.

Stop it while you can.

Nice presentations and education do not work on people who simply don't care about the damage they do.

You need to invest in tough unrelentless enforcement.

Here (the Negev) we have these random shootings almost every evening. it quickly gets out of hand.

> Nice presentations and education do not work on people who simply don't care about the damage they do.

I think it can help. Plenty of people in this discussion have been mistakenly under the impression that it's mostly harmless because of "air resistance" or "bullet tumbling" or whatever other nonsense they were told. I think a little education could go a long way.

If nothing else, it would mean we can't say people weren't warned when we throw the book at them for needlessly putting other people's lives at risk.

Put several people in jail for 1-2 years then you will see it will stop very fast. That's how Singapore took care of their drug problem:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/singapore-is-winning...

I don't know if we need to jump straight to Singapore levels of enforcement (not a model I'd like our justice system to take example from generally), but for a certain subset of the population there will have to be consistent and meaningful consequences for their selfishness.

Recklessly firing a firearm is not like throwing bubble gum. It should be treated very severely IMO.

I agree it helps in getting the general public on board with rougher legislation. But I won't get my hopes up regarding getting shooters themselves stop shooting. This will only happen when they realise shooting means being sent to a few years in prison.

Maybe losing their guns would be punishment enough? I'd prefer if the enforcement started out extremely consistent but not overly punitive. Sentences can always get tougher as needed and research shows that after a certain point harsher punishments don't make for more effective deterrents.

> Here (the Negev) we have these random shootings almost every evening.

Interesting, I thought you people were generally pretty well trained and professional with your guns.

I'm referring to Bedouins (just to be clear, I'm not saying all of them do celebratory shooting... But where I live, 100% of those who do these shootings are Bedouins, and it happens almost every day)

Regular reminder that USA is already imprisoning more people per capita then any other country except North Korea.

TIL if I drop a bullet off the top of Burj Khalifa it could kill someone.

Thanks to author of the animation to have included meter metrics (in smallprint)

Anybody got a comparison chart or data for Excel handy to compare the “reality” of celebratory gunfire versus large hail thrown from the sky at our mushy little water meat bags by nature?

I seem to remember a storm here in north Texas at Mayfest in the 90s turning canopies into Swiss cheese…

It sounds like a warzone here in the Los Angeles area every New Years Eve.

They go up as flying bullets. They come down as falling rocks. A falling rock can be deadly. Dont throw pennies off of skyscrapers. But my takeaway from this article is that the danger from falling bullets pales in comparison to the danger of just being near someone firing a gun. Lots of people are killed every day in accidental discharges. Compared to that, a billion-to-one risk of a falling bulllet isnt a big deal.

How many are killed by lightening falling from the sky? At least with these falling bullets one has time enough to get under cover, or even just cover one's head, both of which would protect well enough.

What's with the obsession for football fields as a unit of distance?

most ppl can visualize a football field as a unit of large distance because it's a large thing we've all stood on and regularly see. so it kinda makes sense and is easier to visualize than a mile. good "for scale".

what's with the hate on measuring things in football fields, aside from some hand-waving about it being "unscientific"? like yeah don't use it in a research paper but i don't see a problem with it.

Football field doesn't have a fixed length and can be anywhere between 90m and 120m.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_pitch

To use a pun, these are ballpark figures to give people a general idea, not an exact measure. Also about as heavy as a midsized car. Just gives people a general idea.

Akin to stadia.

Using “ballpark figure” to explain “football field” is my favorite thing today.

I never quibble with these types of comparisons, except for Libraries of Congress when trying to convey the amount of data something can hold.

I have no idea how large the LoC is. My touchstone for data capacity is MP3s (128k/48kHz, of course :)

As far as football fields goes, I’d think it works best because gridirons and pitches are roughly the same size. Almost everyone has had experience with at least one of those, right?

Well, yes. but in the game the US calls football, (hand egg?) the field is fixed size. What, pretty much, everybody else calls football the field is not fixed size.

> hand egg

That's one BIG egg!

Perhaps the sport should be called Prolate Spheroid Carry.

90m and 120m are close enough for communicating an approximate impression of size, which is what the football field "unit" is for. People aren't going to recall either of these sizes precisely anyway, nor accurately estimate the size of anything else about this big. Not without training in distance estimation anyway.

i said football field, not pitch. they're measured in yards and all come to 100 of them. glad to know soccer fields vary in length since that means they're obviously not a good unit of measure and there won't be any confusion :)

Way to live in your little bubble there. I, for one, wasn’t sure if you meant American football or what the rest of the world calls it, and even then I have zero idea how big a field is. To me and probably millions or billions of other people, you might as well have told us it’s as long as an Atlantic right whale or something.

> To me and probably millions or billions of other people, you might as well have told us it’s as long as an Atlantic right whale or something.

I'm pretty sure it's the blue whale that comes closest to 100 yards

Looked it up (Wikipedia) :

"Adult North Atlantic right whales average 13–16 m (43–52 ft) in length"

"the longest scientifically measured individual blue whale was 30 meters (98 ft) from rostrum tip to tail notch."

You're going to need at least three blue whales to get close, I'd throw in a north atlantic right just to be safe.

American here, and I have effectively zero instinctive idea of how large a football field is.

"Bubble" is a bit silly. It's completely normal in the entire United States to get how big a football field is. Say it in any context and people will not look at you funny.

If you're from Europe, sure I get that you might not get it. Although a soccer field is about the same size.

If you're American, maybe you're just sensitive about not like sports? A visceral discomfort around sports is pretty common amongst tech people (now that's a "bubble.")

Nah I just don’t know anything about sports, but every sports bro in America thinks their hobby is universal because of their sports bubbles. People like me gravitate away from sports bubbles, sure, but only because that’s basically all sports bros talk about.

You don't have to be a sports bro to know the approximate size of a football field.

Hell, you don't need to be a sports bro to understand something more specific - say, the difference between a block and charge in basketball. Because sport stuff is just a core part of general American culture. Like primetime TV (even if you don't watch it.)

> it's a large thing we've all stood on

Have we? Is it really that common if you aren't a player/cheerleader? I have stood on an American football field only once and that's because I was helping out a friend capture audio of the game. I've certainly seen them on TV, but that doesn't really give a great sense of distance. I've seen the Statue of Liberty on TV a lot and that's about a 100 yards too.

I think that people keep complaining about it because it's clearly a flawed way to measure something, but people still keep using it because we don't really have something better to replace it with. We just don't have enough things around us that are measured reliably and consistently I guess.

Pretty sure just about every highschool in the developed world has a "football" field

Sure. But I never really just went and stood on one for funsies.

I'm glad it wasn't just me! Although maybe we both somehow missed out on a quintessential high school experience and all the cool kids were hanging out in the middle of a field for some reason.

Which might be 50m long.

no, all football fields are 100 yards long. i think that comes in around 90 meters for y'all euros.

Don't think we had a football field of either kind anywhere. The big sports were basketball and wrestling then baseball third (we had a baseball diamond). We had a 1/4 mile track for the runners. When they taught us soccer in PE class we played indoors on the basketball court.

I've only ever lived in "small town USA" so I guess I didn't consider what a privileged it was to have the space for a field. The current town that I live in (population 10000) has at least 3 or 4 fields. All publicly accessible by anyone for recreation (this probably is pretty uncommon these days with schools becoming more locked down)

This was a town of 10,000 surrounded by wilderness, though, the town just wasn't big into football.

Conveniently, a 400m/quarter mile track of a conventional configuration circumscribes an area of roughly the size and shape of a football field :-)

(Plus some buffer area all around, etc).

In many places in Ohio (where I'm from) it's pretty standard for the 400m track to surround the football field and for the stands to do dual use.

Source: too many years of marching band in HS.

It's also roughly the same size as a high school soccer field so in my town that didn't have football but did have track and soccer, it's still a relatable measurement.

I just looked up Google Maps of my old HS and inside the 400m track there are now both football lines + uprights and soccer lines and goals. Those weren't there when I was in HS.

American here from a very large city. Mine did not, and even if it did I can almost guarantee you I'd never have stepped foot on it regardless.

What size is an American football field? I'm only familiar with football and rugby union fields.

A football pitch and an American football field are close enough in size to be interchangeable for estimating or descriptive purposes. We aren't measuring the height of the bullet to the nearest mm, after all.

100 yards which is probably like 90 meters in euro?

Many people have been on a football field, so they have internalized its bigness. It’s the same thing as comparing smaller objects to a dollar bill, or a quarter.

According to a quick Google search the typical sizes of football fields I've grown up with were either 32m or 44m long. Pro league football fields are anywhere between 100m and 120m long. However if I add "American" to the query, I see 90m and 110m being "the" answer.

So, which is it? :)

Neither. 100 yards. Just under 92m.

We aren't counting the endzones?

What's with the obsession for meters?

It fits neatly with a bunch of other measurements, avoiding the need for awkward conversion factors. E.g. a cubic meter is 1000 liters exactly. A cubic yard is 168.18 gallons approximately.

But that's neither here nor there. Using football fields as unit of measurement is odd. You don't see metric countries resorting to using soccer pitches as unit of measurement.

I've actually seen it quite regularly in vulgarised science pieces. Areas of 1ha (10000m squared) are often compared to a soccer pitch.

Might be a regional thing then. You see square meters and square kilometers used here a lot.

Football fields unit is fine compared to worse unit here. "Tokyo Dome" is quite common unit in Japan TV. I believe majority of people don't know how is it big.

No they're not. Tokyo Dome may not be well known outside of Japan, but at least it's unambiguous: It is the Tokyo Dome vs. a football field. Even football itself is ambiguous.

Assuming we resolve whether "football" is referring to the US, European, or Australian rules variety, each of those sports does have a standard, unambiguous playing field size.

> You don't see metric countries resorting to using soccer pitches as unit of measurement.

Unfortunately Germany does.

> a cubic meter is 1000 liters exactly

This is not a argument for the size of a meter itself, it's simply noting that we've made a system of related measurements using base 10. We could get the same result using "football field" as the base unit of length and make 1 cubic football field equal to 1000 "swimming pools" (volume).

Well yes obviously. Measuring systems are largely arbitrary. The nice thing about metric is that is has been (arbitrarily) designed so you basically only ever run into conversions by multiples of 10. You could most definitely redefine imperial measurements to work like that no problem. But they haven't been in the real world and that makes it a rather annoying system to work with since you run into weird fractions all the time when using it.

Quickly, what's the exact definition of the US foot again?

You know, the precise definition in use for 129 years since 1893 .. the one used to ensure one measured "foot" matched another . . .

12 x 2.54 cm. Exactly.

More interesting, maybe, is the length of the Dynastic Egyptian cubit: pi/6 meters, 52.36cm.

So, measure the Great Pyramid's King's Chamber: 10x10x20 cubits, exactly. Or, as exactly as the Egyptians could manage, somewhere between 3 and 4 significant digits. Very precise, for masonry.

That is thus 5.236x etc. meters. But 5.236 is also, by divine coincidence, 2phi² = 2(phi+1), and also, by even more blessed coincidence, 5pi/3, to five significant places, closer than the Egyptians could measure.

(Recall, phi = (sqrt(5)+1)/2 ~ 1.61803... pi ~ 3.14149265...)

So the King's Chamber, measured in meters, but only in meters, is both 2phi² meters and 5pi/3 meters wide. (Or 5tau/6, if you prefer.) And, of course, twice that long.

Some people are bold enough to suggest that when the meter's length was chosen, the guff about Earth's circumference was a shuck. By another divine coincidence, the Royal cubit of France was also 0.5236 m, equal to the Dynastic cubit, and the corresponding "span" (equal to 1/phi² cubits) was exactly 20 cm.

At the time the meter was defined, the French had not yet invaded Egypt. Could a masonic tradition preserve ancient measure through two millennia after the last dynasty?

Some people insist the diagonal, from one corner of the chamber to its opposite is special. But it is just 10sqrt(6) cubits, or 10.00+2sqrt(2) meters... to three places. Another coincidence.

Numerology is all fun and games today, but to the ancients it was all deadly serious business.

I feel like this might be slightly retconned to fit nicely. From what I've read the Egyptian cubit sticks actually varied in length by a couple of centimeters.

Medieval cubits also varied.

You do have to calibrate to the King's Chamber cubit, which seems defensible. But the numbers do check out: 2phi²/(5pi/3) = 1.000015 is pretty trippy, no matter how you slice it. Likewise 5sqrt(6)pi/3-2sqrt(2) = 9.997.

There's no denying the ancients would be impressed with that sort of thing. Maybe even Newton, too. Of course, none of this proves the Egyptians knew about any of it.

Probably the lesson for us is that numerical coincidences are way more common and less significant than we are inclined to think.

[Also: pi ~ 3.14159265...]

Obligatory e^π - π = 20

You might be interested in the factoid that pi * 10**6s is very close to one year.

Usefully close, anyway. "Pi seconds in a nanocentury".

BTW, pi x 10^7 seconds, a 0.4% underestimate.

Wikipedia tells me the 1893 definition of an inch "was effectively defined as 25.4000508 mm (with a reference temperature of 68 degrees Fahrenheit)", and it was Carl Edvard Johansson's gauge blocks which helped define the industrial inch to 25.4 mm "in both the U.K. (1930) and the U.S. (1933)."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inch

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Edvard_Johansson

The meat of which is the astonishing fact (well, astonishing to some) that the US weights and measures ARE metric .. being literally fundemently defined on the back of a metric base.

All the same, telling people that the USofA was one of the very first adopters of the SI metric system and still bases all its measures on metric will get you a few odd looks.

Science.

I spent 7 years in physics, and physicists often (most of the time, even, in my sub-field) spoke in field-specific lengths.

"The pulse is 1.6 plasma wavelengths long", "the shock front is on the order of 2 laser wavelengths thick", etc

SI dimensions (again, in my sub-field) were treated more as a manufacturing spec for experimental equipment than as a convenient way to discuss phenomena or a good way to communicate the size of something with someone else in the field.

In Japan, it's extremely common to use the Tokyo Dome as a unit of area, one very specific building that most people haven't seen in real life, let alone entered it.

Why is the velocity of a falling bullet > the speed of gravity?

Gravity isn’t a speed, it’s a force.

>Gravity isn’t a speed, it’s a force.

Actually, it's not a force either[0].

It feels like a force, but it's just mass acting in warped space-time.

[0] http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/about-us/140-physics/the-th...

I yield to your superior pedantry :)

But seriously, thanks!

Only if you believe the theory of relativity is correct.

If you believe in quantum mechanics or some other theory of gravity, this isn't true.

>Only if you believe the theory of relativity is correct.

https://bohring.substack.com/p/how-do-we-know-that-general-r...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Why_you_think_that_general...

https://archive.ph/iVZZu

https://www.livescience.com/black-hole-image-shows-einstein-...

Und so weiter, und so weiter...

I can show you plenty of tests "proving" that Newtonian mechanics are correct too. General relativity doesn't correctly predict things at quantum scale.

Gravity doesn’t have a speed. It creates an acceleration due to force. The bullet is accelerating over a great distance until it reaches terminal velocity (where the air resistance counterbalances any gains in acceleration).

The easiest way to think about it is in terms of conservation of energy. All the kinetic energy the bullet has at the muzzle is converted into gravitational potential until velocity hits zero. At that point, gravitational velocity starts getting converted directly back into kinetic energy. If not for air resistance, the bullet would reach the ground at roughly muzzle velocity. However, air resistance on the way up zaps some of that energy and presents a velocity barrier on the way down.

There are two components - horizontal and vertical. For a bullet fired straight up, horizontal component is negligible, as the bullet will spend enough time in flight for it to decrease due to air resistance.

The vertical component is primarily determined by sectional density. Tumbling bullet spends a lot of time flying sideways, so its terminal velocity (where air resistance equals weight) is way less than muzzle velocity.

It's not. The magnitude of the velocity of a falling bullet (in the low m/s) is many orders of magnitude lower than the speed of gravity (which propagates at the speed of light)

By "speed of gravity" I assume you mean terminal velocity[1].

If not fired fairly straight up the bullet can maintain a ballistic trajectory[2], rather than being in a vertical free fall. In that case, the higher speed compared to the terminal velocity is simply because it has yet to shed the speed it acquired[3] when it was accelerated out of the barrel.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_velocity

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistics

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzzle_velocity

Reply on news.ycombinator.com