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Comment by bhaney | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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