Deadly Force

[M. Sullivan]

Re. firing at one's feet.....likely up to the prosecutor if charges are filed. Would likely fall under a number of statutes no doubt. Either way, you'd probably be looking at a major civil suit!! Imagine "Billy can't even ride in a car anymore, a small backfire and he pee's his pants.....". Just defending one of these will cost a tractor load of dollars. I've heard of suits over drawing a gun, not even discharging. Not to mention the all too common nut-job who comes back later for revenge of some sort. Just not worth it imo. Call the police--they have the training to deal with it. If you say you thought you saw a gun, response is gauranteed. If they are truly a present danger, you do what you have to do........rather be judegd by 12 than carried by 6.

 

[Von]

Harv,
If I remember right, the force of gravity on an object will cause it to fall at 32 ft. per sec. Of course that is for something that is droped from a stand still. So if the bullet is fired strait up it would stop and then fall back down. Mass will play a small part as will shape and wind. But for here lets say it will fall at the same rate as a hail stone would. Kill you? maybe, hurt like hell, my guess is yes!

 

[cowboydoc]

I had thought that it was 9.8 m/s2

 

[scruffy]

When I worked law enforcement, the rule of thumb was do not even unholster your weapon, unless you intended upon using it....specifically in defense of your own life, or the defense of another persons life....then shoot for the body mass to cause maximum stopping power. The hand, leg, arm, head, etc. was not a good point to shoot at. Why? Many factors come into play, adrenilan, time (usually split second), ability, etc. Many 'gun battles' can have 40 or more rounds fired, without any injuries. Are the officers such bad shots? No, but circumstances are such, that you would have to be involved in one to understand fully.

 

[Bird]

Scruffy, I expect that's the same thing they teach everywhere. At least it was in Dallas, and in the FBI National Academy pistol course I took.

Bird

 

[GlueGuy]

<font color=blue>bullets fired into the air eventually come back down with enough force to kill, don't they?</font color=blue>

I've seen this calculated somewhere, but don't remember where. /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif What I do remember is that the "terminal velocity" of the falling bullet is no where near "muzzle velocity". Most rifles & hand guns have a muzzle velocity of between 1000 and 1300 FPS (feet per second). That's between 680 and 880 MPH. The falling bullet is going to come down at something more like 120-150 MPH, which translates into 176-220 FPS. It will be much slower if it is tumbling (likely if short straight up), faster if it still has enough spin to do an arc.

Possibly not fast enough to kill, but more than enough to really hurt someone. Probably depends almost as much as where it hits someone (arm versus head, etc.).

The GlueGuy

 

[Harv]

Any falling object accelerates at a rate of 32 feet per second squared (32ft/sec/sec) due to the force of gravity. Eventually, the resistance of air friction reduces the acceleration to zero, leaving the object falling at a constant velocity (terminal velocity).

That frictional resistance is the tough one to calculate 'cuz it's dependent on the the size, mass, shape, surface characteristics, rotational motion, etc. of the object. It is safe to say, however, that a lead bullet will reach a higher velocity than a hailstone of similar size, due to the fact that lead is a much denser (heavier per volume) material.

Using GlueGuy's numbers of, say, 130 MPH, that seems plenty fast enough to generate sufficient force over such a small area that it could easily penetrate a skull. Would anybody care to have their toddler catch one like that? /w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif

Sheesh!!! How did this all start? Oh, yeah -- don't fire your gun into the air. /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif

 

[dmccarty]

GlueGuy,

Slight correction... "Most rifles & hand guns have a muzzle veocity of between 1000 and 1300 FPS.."

Most rifles are well above 1300 FPS. A 308 is pushing 2600-2800 FPS or there abouts. If my memory is still working, a .223/5.56mm, aka the AR15/M16 round is pushing 3000-3200 FPS in "standard" rounds.

Most of the general purpose hand gun rounds are in the 800-1500 FPS range. A good many 45 rounds are around 850 FPS and 9MM, ie, 9 Might Make it, are in the 950-1200 FPS range. 40/10mm might get into the 1200-1500 FPS range but I would have to check on those numbers. 44 magnums are up there in FPS. I would have to look in a reloading manual to see how fast those bad boys burn. The numbers I'm talking about are the FPS speced on ammo I have seen in the past/present.

The higher energy levels in rifles is what makes them so darned effective. A common bullet wieght in .308 is 168 grains. Make that bullet go 2600 FPS and you have lots of energy compared to a 185 grain .45 traveling at 850 FPS.

Take rifle out of your sentence and your on target. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif So to speak! /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Later...
Dan McCarty

 

[skent]

When in the service (US Coast Guard) on the firing range, one of the targets used (now remember it's been 26 years ago) for final qualification was a series of 10 rounds into a 7 yard target/rapid fire. I think it was lock and load one clip, start at the whistle, fire 4 rounds, eject clip, lock new clip, fire 6 more rounds in a total of 20 seconds. Thats 21 feet. A little over the length of a pickup truck. There were also timed and slow fire targets involved (total of 45 rounds) and I remember us all saying to ourselves, heck, 21 feet with a .45, one round every 2 seconds. . piece of cake. Not quite. It was Darn hard to do. Very few recrutes got all 10 rounds out before the second whistle.

Now. . . You,ve just gotten jarred out of bed by a strange noise (sleep still in your eyes), maybe you were in the middle of a dream, disorientied, when your blood gets pumping and the target is moving and your not sure of the direction and trying to remember if a family member may be on the other side of a sheet rock wall or if the bullet is gunna bounce off of something and does he have a knife, are you going to aim for a foot or hand when you will be hard pressed to even hit the torso?. . . . . .the FBI goes through a course at Quantico VA called Hogans Alley. They use blanks now (since the targets always got so badly damaged) but it simulates rapid response of Law enforcement trainees. They had something similar in one of the Dirty Harry movies. My dad went through it as a 20 year veteran cop, He said afterwards there were more than a few sleepless nights he thought about it. . . . I pray that none of you (or me) are ever faced with that situation in real life.. . . . .

Steve

 

[Cornfed]

In Washington, you can meet force with force. You cannot escalate the confrontation without reason or you will be at fault. There is also no deadly force in defense of personal property. We fall under the U.S. 9th which is where, you guessed it, California. /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif