Scary stuff. People shooting guns in the air are idiots. Glad you are okay.

There is usually a horizontal component to it. Meaning people don't shoot straight up, they shoot at, say a 45 degree angle. That horizontal energy /speed is not scrubbed off enough by the time it comes down. That's what's deadly.

The projectile in the OP was not going very fast, but fast enough to penetrate the first layer of metal. Easily could have killed someone if that was the cranium for example, instead.

G

My point is that the bullet is not traveling anywhere near muzzle velocity as was stated by the poster in the post I quoted.

Does that bullet look like it was falling nearly straight down, or horizontally? And does that sheet steel look thin enough to be penetrated by a bullet falling at close to 200 mph? I think the answers to those questions are the take away here.

I have to admit, my family has occasionally fired guns on 4th of July/New Years, but always shotguns with birdshot. When I was a kid, I remember shooting off a shotgun at midnight on new years eve with my father and grandfather. There was a massive wave of gun fire at midnight. The about 30 seconds later is sounded like it was raining. It was all the shot coming down.

Absolute idiots. Glad you and yours are OK!

Haha!!

It happens more that most people would imagine. Even though discharging a firearm within city limits is already illegal, we have a law here specifically addressing the phenomenon of randomly shooting guns "up in the air".
It was enacted back in 2000 after a 14 year-old girl was killed from a falling bullet. They named it after her (Shannon's Law), and it is now a felony if you are caught doing so.

MMy dad would fire his gun on New Years or Jul 4th when I was younger, but he always fired down into the ground for just that reason.

A bullet cannot return to earth with the same velocity and energy as when it is shot into the air.... at some point the bullet stops... and velocity is zero, then the bullet starts to fall to earth... mass, gravity and wind resistance are components of the equation..

You would need to know the mass, and fps the bullet left the barrel at, then calculate the altitude where gravity and wind resistance would case the bullet to stop, then from that altitude with v=0 use gravity and air resistance to calculate velocity when the bullet returns to altitude=0 or 5' for the A pillar..

And given enough altitude it would likely reach terminal velocity which would be significantly less than muzzle velocity. But still enough to ruin somebody's day.

We were in Acworth.

When I lived in-town in Atlanta gunshots were the norm and on the 4th and New Years it was pretty much like a war zone after dark but I personally never had any damage.

I got a better look at the hole this afternoon but the car is still in the shop so I can't measure it. It isn't as big as it looks in the pictures. I can't get my pinkie finger in it, a little bigger than a pencil.

http://stonemountain.11alive.com/news/news/96640-fight-against-celebratory-gunfire

What a story! Glad everyone is okay!

Can falling bullets kill you?

Is the bullet still in there? Any faint rattling?

Small diameter, like a pencil - 223 maybe?

Again, that only matters if you fire it straight up. If you are at any significant angle, it will follow a normal point-on trajectory, and maintain quite a bit of velocity.

I did some playing around with a ballistics program, using a 230 gr .45 ACP, fired at about a 30º angle, (trajectory ~190" high at 10 yards) will land 1800 yards away, with a downward trajectory of close to 60º (remember, bullet trajectory is not linear, drop increases more as velocity drops) at about 260 FPS. The bullet will drop ~43 feet in the last 10 yards of flight.

Flight time to 1800 yards is 16.6 seconds, the apogee would be 1120 yards away, with the bullet 1160 feet above the muzzle, at 300 FPS.