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Comment by shpxnvz | Hacker News Reader

It's not as dangerous as people tend to imagine.

A bullet will lose sufficient velocity so that it no longer lethal relatively quickly. As an example we can use FBI specs for maximum range of the NATO standard issue M855 cartridge for 5.56mm , which is 3600 yards. Ballistics show a trajectory with 2200 foot drop at that range and a final velocity of 490fps with a retained energy of only 33ft/lbs (about 3% of muzzle energy). To attain impact at 3600 yards requires the rifle to be elevated at about 11 degrees. In reality, the bullet is likely to lose enough rotational velocity that it will destabilize much earlier, which will even more rapidly decrease velocity and power.

So, put simply, for this cartridge shooting in the air at an angle greater than 11 degrees relative to the horizon would not be particularly dangerous.

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I was at a New Year's Eve party one time when a bullet pierced the roof of an awning covering the back porch. The impact was loud enough that we heard it over the music and cheering ringing in the new year.

The roof was constructed of corrugated aluminum. Not the strongest stuff in the world, but the bullet passed through two sheets of this material on its way in. We estimated the entry angle at around 40-45° by looking upward through the holes, aligning the light that shined through them (the following day).

Having seen it first hand, I would dispute the assertion that shooting in to the air at a high angle isn't particularly dangerous.

Did you recover the bullet? Measurements of the bullet would hint at the cartridge used, which would let us calculate how and where the round was fired.

There are certainly cartridges in production that carry dramatically more kinetic energy than the example I used, but the more powerful cartridges tend to be more rare.

Note that as velocity bleeds off the trajectory degrades faster and faster, resembling an upside down exponential curve. The angle of impact is much greater than the angle at which the round was fired; more so as distance increases.

We couldn't find it. It entered the roof near the edge, continued through the screen, and in to the ground outdoors. We did a lot of digging around, but ultimately were unable to recover the round.

The holes in the aluminum roof were round (ruling out a tumbling rifle round) and were definitely larger than .22 caliber. Most gun discharges on occasions like New Year's are handguns, so it could have been any number of handgun rounds in the .35-.40 caliber range. It wasn't large enough to have been 45ACP or .44 Mag. It could have been a .30 caliber rifle round, but given the estimated angle of entry, I would have assumed it would tumble by then. To leave such a clean entry/exit hole would seem unlikely for a tumbling rifle round.

A round with with those characteristics, while far from preferable as a weapon (not at all a "reliable" or "clean" kill) remains capable of killing in a very unlucky shot or causing a serious but nonlethal injury.

One doesn't refrain from hunting deer with 22LR because the 22LR (at about three times this energy) isn't dangerous, but because it is difficult to get a shot that produces an instant kill with > 90% probability, and one is more likely to chase and possibly lose a deer that is slowly bleeding to death. Hunters that are insensitive to the deer's suffering and willing to give chase will accept a 50% probability and brag about it later.

Cartridges are dangerous in terms of intentions. For example during istanbul unrest, tens of people lost their eyes, suffered from traumas in the head because of the cartridges shot from short distance intentionally. You can find video of police celebrating upon shooting a protestor in the head with cartridge on youtube. You can find a picture of the janitor after being shot directly in the eye with cartridge, on the following site http://delilimvar.tumblr.com/page/7 . Nothing man made are dangerous at all, but intentions make them so.

> angle greater than 11 degrees relative to the horizon would not be particularly dangerous.

unless there are buildings, of course.

Oh yes, of course. I've never heard "shooting in the air" used to describe shooting directly at a building, though, so I was making an assumption there.

something tells me the police shooting at drones are not going to care either way.

someone in AZ got killed by a bullet fired in the air. They made it illegal and named the law after her.

So no. It can very much still be fatal

The ballistics calculations don't lie.

For this story you heard... what cartridge was used? What bullet weight? What muzzle velocity? Where was the gun pointed? Do you have any actual information to share?

It's called Shannon's Law.

There is plenty of information about the law but I can find very little specific information about the actual incident besides a news report stating that "police believe it was fired straight up within a mile of Shannon's home."

This doesn't tell us much unfortunately. From Hatcher's testing done in the 1920's he found terminal velocity of a bullet fired straight up which does not destabilize is about 300fps, which with a fairly heavy .30-06 bullet results in about 30ft/lbs of energy. He noted that it was typically accepted that 60ft/lbs of energy was required to produce a disabling wound.

Of course, even at 30ft/lbs is it possible though statistically improbable that a falling bullet could strike in such a way as to cause serious injury or death.

It's very hard to get good numbers on injuries and deaths from this phenomenon, but the evidence points to it being an extraordinarily uncommon occurrence despite the fact that some cities, such as Dallas, report up to 1000 complaints for celebratory gunfire per year.

Note that I am not claiming it is a good idea.

The list of things that "can be fatal" is massive. 1 person dying does not instantly make an activity particularly dangerous.

If I put on a blindfold, and start randomly shooting around in various directions, I might not hit anybody. 0 fatalities! Does this make my actions "not dangerous?"

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