Bullets fired into the air - a health hazard?

November 10, 2006 1:53 AM

Don't bullets fired into the air hurt or kill people when coming down?

I haven often wondered what happens to those bullets that get fired into the air say, as a warning or in celebration of something by gun-toting folk. They must come down somewhere and even if they are not as fast coming down as being fired they must surely hurt if not kill, no?

Are there any accounts of people getting hurt or killed as a result of shots fired in the air, or am I getting this wrong and they simply bounce off of heads?

posted by Glow Bucket to science & nature (39 answers total)

Straight Dope says probably, while CNN says yes. These links and more found by Googling "falling bullets."
posted by chrominance at 2:02 AM on November 10, 2006

It's a big enough problem to be the focus of a UN campaign.
posted by Cuppatea at 2:10 AM on November 10, 2006

Probably most authoritative (via): Ordog GJ, Dornhoffer P, Ackroyd G, et al. "Spent bullets and their injuries: the result of firing weapons into the sky." J Trauma 1994; 37:1003--6.

Probably more fun to watch: relevant Mythbusters ep.

In short, falling bullets: bad. Google: good.
posted by booksandlibretti at 2:19 AM on November 10, 2006

Oh, and in case you like your anecdotes nice and fictional, CSI did this once. In a more bizarre twist, a physics prof at the University of Michigan made that episode the focus of a final exam question. (PDF)
posted by chrominance at 2:19 AM on November 10, 2006

As booksandlibretti has said, this was covered on Mythbusters a while back. If I recall correctly, they found documented cases of people injured and even killed by falling bullets but their experiments showed that a bullet at terminal velocity was unlikely to do much damage. Maybe asavage will jump in and confirm this.
posted by medium format at 2:20 AM on November 10, 2006

Thanks and apologies for not using Google before.
posted by Glow Bucket at 2:21 AM on November 10, 2006

In his book Dark Back of Time, the Spanish novelist Javier Marías tells the story of the death of a minor English writer named Wilfred Ewart, who is supposed to have been killed during the 1922-3 New Year's celebrations in Mexico City by a falling bullet which penetrated his right eye (although there are other circumstances which hint that he might instead have been shot deliberately).
posted by misteraitch at 2:22 AM on November 10, 2006

... but it's this kind of information that I won't get via google. Thanks again!
posted by Glow Bucket at 2:24 AM on November 10, 2006

I have met a policeman who supposedly killed a dog in this way. When I was at junior school in Australia a policeman came to talk to us abuot all things policey. I remeber being fascinated by his gun as the police in England don't have them so I asked about it. He said he'd only fired it once, in the air, but that later on he discovered that his bullet had killed a dog when it fell in another party of city. We were kids, so I don't if he was just telling a good story, but, as above, it seems entirely possible.
posted by patricio at 3:24 AM on November 10, 2006

There's that scene in The Mexican where a guy dies from that. So it must be true.
posted by zardoz at 3:59 AM on November 10, 2006

The problem doesn't come from bullets fired straight up but at an angle. A bullet that goes straight up has its speed drop to zero at one point and it will only ever speed up to its terminal velocity, which will be relatively low.
But when fired at an angle, only the vertical component of the bullet's speed will drop to zero, while the horizontal component can still be quite high when the bullet falls back to earth.
Taking some of the examples above, the guy wouldn't have been hit in the eye if the bullet was coming straight down, and I remember the CSI stray bullet (and there was a similar case on Homicide once) came from a few blocks away and travelled a long arc before hitting the victim.
posted by cardboard at 4:08 AM on November 10, 2006

Is not the terminal velocity dictated by air resistance, and won't that resistance be the same whether the bullet is falling straight down or at an angle? If there is any truth to the going-faster-when-not-fired-straight-up argument, I'd think it would be in thinking the bullet didn't reach T.V. when falling straight down.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:14 AM on November 10, 2006

When I was a kid, my uncle was hit in the neck, just below his ear, by a 22 that had been shot into the air on the Forth of July. We were sitting in the High School bleacher watching the fireworks when he grabbed his neck thinking that he got hit by a cinder. He went to the first-aid tent and they put some ointment and a band-aid on it. The next day, he noticed a lump on his neck and went to the hospital, where they extracted a 22 caliber bullet. From what the police said, they thought that from the angle it had to have been shot from the next town over, so maybe two miles away.

The conclusion of this is that my uncle was not seriously hurt as the bullet just lodged under the first layer of skin and didn't hit any major blood vessels or nerves. He did think that it was a message to him from God/Krishna but that's another story.
posted by octothorpe at 4:30 AM on November 10, 2006

Is not the terminal velocity dictated by air resistance, and won't that resistance be the same whether the bullet is falling straight down or at an angle?

No. You can view the horizontal and vertical forces independently. If you fire at an angle, half of its momentum will be horizontal and half will be vertical. In the vertical plane, it is in freefall, just like you'd shot it straight up. In the horizontal plane, it's as if you fired it in a straight line sideways with half as much gunpowder, because gravity does not affect it.

(Yes, I'm using completely incorrect terminology)
posted by cillit bang at 4:55 AM on November 10, 2006

When I lived in California, there was a law passed criminalizing accidental handgun deaths. It went into effect at midnight on New Year's eve. A man in San Jose was the first person charged under the law when his grandson was fatally struck by a bullet than he had just fired up in the to celebrate the new year.

So, yes.
posted by plinth at 4:59 AM on November 10, 2006

In the vertical plane, it is in freefall, just like you'd shot it straight up.

Nah. If it's in freefall, it will tumble around and present a large cross-section to the wind, slowing it down. If it's still in a ballistic trajectory, the bullet's spin will keep the pointy end into the wind so it will present less surface area to the air and go faster.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:27 AM on November 10, 2006

Here is a recent story from my city about a young man who was severely injured by a bullet that penetrated his skull on the Fourth of July. He was with friends who didn't see anyone or hear a gunshot close by; he just suddenly dropped to the ground while walking home.
posted by junkbox at 6:07 AM on November 10, 2006

When I lived in Albuquerque, a young woman downtown celebrating her birthday was killed this way. No links, sorry.
posted by sugarfish at 6:10 AM on November 10, 2006

As mentioned above (and in the Mythbusters episode) almost any angle that isn't perfectly straight up in the air can have extremely dangerous consequences. The Mythbusters episode on Bullets Fire Up showed that the bullets shot perfectly straight up in the air would fall sideways downward and never made more than a one-inch deep hole in the ground.
posted by terrapin at 6:15 AM on November 10, 2006

Similarly, on NYE in 1998 in Philly. He lived, though his walking and speech have been badly damaged.
posted by desuetude at 6:18 AM on November 10, 2006

I found a bullet on our front (concrete) steps on New Year's Day this year. I assume it had fallen from the sky. The copper jacketing was dented, but the bullet was mostly intact. I don't know much about ballistics--does that mean it was falling fast enough to have been dangerous?
posted by MrMoonPie at 6:19 AM on November 10, 2006

Anecdotal. I know, but worth my time to write.


I was walking down Lamar Boulevard in Austin, Texass, near the old Threadgill's on the January 1st sometime between 1996 and 1998.

On the ground I noticed three things:
A bullet (.30 cal, FMJ, smashed flat at nose at approx. 45 deg. angle)
A conchoidal chunk of concrete (about half the size of my hand)
A hole in the sidewalk


It was pretty neat looking, but I was damn glad that I wasn't standing there the night before when it landed.

The damage to the nose of the bullet and the fact that it was intact led me to believe that it was going pretty slow.
The angle of the damage made me think that it was still ballistically stable when it hit.
The hefty size chunk of concrete removed made me think it still had enough power to hurt someone.
The location of the concrete chunk and the shape of the hole showed that the round came from the east (East side of town, I-35, or maybe even further east, I have no idea.).
posted by Seamus at 6:32 AM on November 10, 2006

I found a bullet on our front (concrete) steps on New Year's Day this year. I assume it had fallen from the sky. The copper jacketing was dented, but the bullet was mostly intact. I don't know much about ballistics--does that mean it was falling fast enough to have been dangerous?

Wait, I'm confused by your description. Are you saying a complete cartridge was on your steps? Copper jacketing sounds like the casing of a bullet. A fired round would not have the casing still attached to the projectile. Wiki link
posted by JigSawMan at 6:46 AM on November 10, 2006

Another example in this very funny short article about bad things happening.
posted by Mocata at 7:02 AM on November 10, 2006

In New Orleans, this has been a big problem in the past. A young woman was killed by a falling bullet on New Years Eve several years back. She was standing on the riverbank in the French Quarter. I will try to find a link.
posted by JujuB at 7:13 AM on November 10, 2006

Here's the link "http://www.nola.com/newslogs/tpupdates/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_tpupdates/archives/2006_01_03.html">
posted by JujuB at 7:18 AM on November 10, 2006

In 1998, I interviewed a woman for Newsday that had been hit in the abdomen by a falling .22 fired some distance away. Off the record, the surgeon told me the victim was lucky to suffer no organ damage because all her fat stopped the bullet before it went too deep. Sorry no link, but it's on Lexis.
posted by hhc5 at 7:47 AM on November 10, 2006

One of my favorite Vonnegut books centers around a fictional account of this phenomenon.
posted by M.C. Lo-Carb! at 7:59 AM on November 10, 2006

JigSawMan: see this
Regarding cardboard's reference to CSI above, that show has zero credibility with me, as the first and last episode I saw opened with an "explanation" than humans exhale carbon monoxide.
posted by exogenous at 8:48 AM on November 10, 2006

Kirth Gerson, consider the extreme example of a bullet fired only a tenth of a degree up from horizontal. It has little upward velocity so it will not take long to reach its peak and start descending, but it will still be traveling at dangerous bullet speed horizontally.

Speed-when-it-hits-the-ground is a continuous function of the upward angle, so you'll get some inbetweeny values when you shoot it more upwards.
posted by aubilenon at 8:55 AM on November 10, 2006

There's a tradition of blasting away at midnight on New Years Eve in some LA neighborhoods (and supposedly, they always aim towards the west). To combat this there's an annual prevention campaign and this blog entry from a couple years ago has photos of the biillboards.
posted by Rash at 9:03 AM on November 10, 2006

Historically this has been a serious problem in New Orleans - to the point that a few years ago there was a major public service campaign on billboards and bus stops informing people that "Falling Bullets Kill."

Quick fact: supposedly, Louis Armstrong first learned to play the cornet in the New Orleans juvenile delinquent home where he was sentenced after firing a gun into the air on New Year's Eve.
posted by peppermint22 at 9:12 AM on November 10, 2006

Translating aubilenon's point into a thought experiment:
A bullet fired horizontally will kill or injure anyone in its path up to the point where it hits the ground. Same is true for a bullet fired with the gun raised one degree from vertical. As you continue firing with the gun slowly moving to vertical, the bullets will follow increasingly higher arcs, but land increasingly closer to where the gun is. The bullet's speed upon landing will be slower and slower, up to the point where you fire vertically and the landing speed equals "terminal velocity", in which the speed is limited by the air resistance. The exact terminal velocity would depend on the shape and weight of the bullet (and probably the atmospheric conditions). In this article, .30 caliber bullets were fired upward at 2700 feet per second, and landed at 300 feet per second. Those that hit a wooden platform created nicks 1/16 inch deep, which is a good indication that they would not have killed anyone. But, reversing the thought experiment, as the gun is lowered gradually to horizontal, the impact velocity would increase gradually toward 2700 feet per second (although the horizontally fired bullet would slow down due to air resistance as well.) One would not wish to be hit by any of these bullets.
posted by beagle at 9:47 AM on November 10, 2006

Thank you all for those stories. I guess living in Germany is much safer in that respect.
posted by Glow Bucket at 9:49 AM on November 10, 2006

Vincent DiMaio is forensic pathology's guru on firearms and gunshot-related injuries. In one of the conferences I've attended he presented a couple of his cases of this phenomenon. So, yes, it really does happen.
posted by i_am_a_Jedi at 9:52 AM on November 10, 2006

A lot of it likely depends on the angle and the type of ammunition that was fired.
posted by drstein at 11:23 AM on November 10, 2006

JigSawMan, no, a metal-jacketed bullet, like these. Well, not just like those--it wasn't completely deformed, just smashed in a little on one side of the nose.
posted by MrMoonPie at 1:12 PM on November 10, 2006

Philadelphia has a significant problem with deaths resulting from people firing guns into the air on New Year's Eve. I pretty quickly found these three stories showing that it's far from a myth for us.
posted by scalefree at 5:21 PM on November 10, 2006

Here in Arizona, not so long ago a little girl was killed by a bullet falling from the sky, which struck her head. A law was subsequently passed to make firing a gun into the air illegal.
posted by !Jim at 8:54 PM on November 10, 2006