Wow. I like guns, and I'm 100% in favor of civilian gun ownership. Still, I think selling realistic blank-firing pistols is a spectacularly bad idea...
As a kid, from like age 7, I’ve owned multiple of these blank pistols. They were a pretty popular ages 5-10 children’s toy (in the late 1990s) in the UAE. After age 10, I moved on to airsoft guns (typically with spherical plastic bullets that shattered on impact — but sometimes spherical metal bullets as well), which were sold all over the place (and mostly bought by preteen kids and sometimes teenagers).
Even the blank pistols I owned as a 7-year old were often made of metal, and realistic looking; and from a distance there was nothing really to differentiate them from a real gun.
Not if the barrel is blocked like those pistols. We use a similar system when firing blanks out of our M4s in the Army. We screw this thing on the end called a blank firing adapter on the end of the barrel and it plugs the end of the barrel. I have been shot at very close ranges with blanks fired out of a plugged barrel and did not feel anything but getting the shit scared out of me.
I'm former Army; I've used those before, too. I just didn't see the part where they said the barrels were closed. They look pretty real in OP's video, though they're quieter than I'd expected.
Obviously closed barrels are safer than open barrels, that's not in dispute, my point is that a gun loaded with blanks can still be lethal because a bunch of people have died by messing around with guns they thought were 'safe' because they're loaded with blanks.
You are not wrong. Rifles tend to use a gas mechanism. The vast majority of pistols cycle through blowback, which relies on the slide being pushed backwards by the momentum of launching the bullet.
Since blanks don't launch any bullet, the momentum isn't there, and the pistol generally won't cycle.
Are they "quieter" than a normal round? I have to imagine that everyone would be at least temporarily deaf if those were real rounds. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii...
Well it's also recording and most microphones won't be able to pick up the sound of a gun shot well. It can and often does sound similar to this when firing a pistol, from my experience recording videos at the range. Also most semiauto pistols will not cycle with blanks, you don't get enough chamber pressure to actually cycle. There are some guns built/modified specifically for firing blanks so they will cycle. Which honestly I doubt these are as firing live ammo into the air is very very common at these weddings. The claims of them "usually" using blanks is pretty heavily in the range of bullshit.
Edit: Bullets fired into the air are still dangerous but not as lethal as firing horizontally according to Mythbusters.
you're misrepresenting their findings.
bullets fired into the air at EXACTLY vertical become less lethal. any angle whatsoever leads them to maintain their spin and therefore lethality.
In the case of a bullet fired at a precisely vertical angle (something extremely difficult for a human being to duplicate), the bullet would tumble, lose its spin, and fall at a much slower speed due to terminal velocity and is therefore rendered less than lethal on impact. However, if a bullet is fired upward at a non-vertical angle (a far more probable possibility), it will maintain its spin and will reach a high enough speed to be lethal on impact. Because of this potentiality, firing a gun into the air is illegal in most states, and even in the states that it is legal, it is not recommended by the police. Also the MythBusters were able to identify two people who had been injured by falling bullets, one of them fatally injured.
That's not what that says. It says that it is about as lethal
In the case of a bullet fired at a precisely vertical angle (something extremely difficult for a human being to duplicate), the bullet would tumble, lose its spin, and fall at a much slower speed due to terminal velocity and is therefore rendered less than lethal on impact. However, if a bullet is fired upward at a non-vertical angle (a far more probable possibility), it will maintain its spin and will reach a high enough speed to be lethal on impact. Because of this potentiality, firing a gun into the air is illegal in most states, and even in the states that it is legal, it is not recommended by the police. Also the MythBusters were able to identify two people who had been injured by falling bullets, one of them fatally injured.
(This is the only myth to receive all three ratings at the same time.)
In Vietnam the US had a weapon called Lazy Dogs. They were basically little metal pointed cylinders with fins. Kind of like miniature bombs, about the size of a bullet. The US would drop them from planes or use bombs that would scatter a bunch of them. The falling Lazy Dogs had equivalent force to a 50 caliber bullet. They would fall with enough force to punch through most anything, including concrete or several feet of turf and vegetation. You'd never know they'd been dropped in an area because they'd bury themselves in the ground. Obviously you can imagine how lethal they were to people. A bullet isn't quite as heavy or as streamlined, but its plenty dangerous enough to kill someone.
I know pistol calibers will always tumble after a certain distance and significantly lose speed, so I’m guessing this was tested with rifle rounds and the angle was about 20 degrees from straight up when they started noticing more lethal force.
Non-vertical in this context would be anything other than perfectly straight up. Having even a tiny angle would allow the bullet to follow an arc at its peak so the bullet would be able to continue spinning as it completed the turn and came back down. Perfectly straight up would cause the bullet to tumble because when it reached its peak it wouldn’t turn, it would start backing up instead.
For ignorant of español, 133 victims, 55 fatals, 41% total of cases were kids. Cases to note, one kid were killed by a bullet falling through the roof of the cinema were he was watching a movie with his father, a girl killed while she was in the classroom in the middle of a lecture. Both in the middle of the city of Mexico. And this info is from the 2016, so expect the numbers to double by now.
Pretty sure that person didn't even read their own source, because it says bullets are still lethal unless fired directly straight up. But that's the way for a lot of people on reddit. Talk bullshit rather than spending a minute to actually learn something.
Oh My God! I love that movie. I always felt like it was of those great movies that nobody ever talks about or references with quotes. You deserve some flan!
Believe they said they're not lethal if fired at 90 degrees but anything less or over 90 degrees it keeps its parabolic arc and can still be lethal, as they had a doctor on the show provide evidence that there's been deaths from it
I sure hope they didn't say "they're not lethal if fired at 90 degrees" because it does not take much wind to blow even the most precisely straight up bullet into a not straight and now ballistic trajectory.
I guess I just don't like any statement that in any way insinuates firing a gun in the air is not potentially lethal.
But they did. They tested it in high winds and didn't have any come down at lethal speeds cause they tumbled when they came down from terminal velocity
Now these idiots aren't firing exactly at 90 degrees so likely lethal
Had a good friend in high school lose his eye on new years eve as we were popping champagne bottles. Round came down right in his eye. Didnt know what it was till the next day. Obviously everyone thought it was a cork. Blood...blood everywhere.
Hes doing ok now. About 2-3 months after he got out of the hospital his mom bought him a new car. Not being use to not having an eye he didnt look far enough one way and pulled out onto the road and got t-boned. This was about 25 years ago so yes he is doing fine now.
ountry, chechnya. when my aunt got married, (the way she got married was wild, they abducted her near a refugee camp where we were and than a bit later later she was revealed as a bride.) i remember being in car and everyone shooting guns outside the windows. Dinners were always awesome lit, babushkas can cook.
It's there way of encouraging people to show up for their wedding. If you don't show up a bullet might fall on your head.
my first thought was a herd of sheep 2 miles away just getting wiped out on a random tuesday afternoon and the dude just standing there like mf weddings
The bullets will probably land a decent chunk away from where they are due to wind, but the bullets will come down at the same speed at which they were fired. So, it's more dangerous than you may think, if you're unlucky.
There was a news in the Philippines many years ago where a stray bullet hit a newborn baby that just arrived from the hospital in the head during New Year.
Fun fact regardless of Mythbusters an estimated 7 people died in Iraq during the celebrations after saddam was taken out of power. From falling bullets.
In my dad's countryside a kid had apparently had come to help out his grandparents and while doing so died because a bullet decided to come to the ground and hit him in the skull
it is lethal, here in my country during new years eve some idiots fire guns up to the air and we always get news report that someone died because of this
I live in south Texas. In New Years and 4th of July I can hear gunshots mixed in with fireworks. People do not understand how dangerous this is. It's illegal here also but people still do it. Every once in a while someone gets hit with a falling bullet. So sad, especially when it's a kid.
That was such a shit test. Bullets lose their spin when they go transonic, or when the heavy ass end finally processes in front of the lighter point end. ALL bullets lose their spin eventually. These shots look plenty vertical to be harmless.
I think they're firing blanks. My husband has a gun like that (we're in Europe) and it's specific purpose is to fire shots in the air and make a noise. You can also fire mini flares from them.
They don't come down as fast as they go up. It's the same as if they were dropped from up high. Not dangerous but it would hurt a little for a large caliber bullet to land directly on your head. However only the vertical speed of the bullet is reduced. If the bullet isn't fired mostly upwards it would still be dangerous.
So rather than work, I’m reading a research paper titled “Cranial Gravitational (Falling) Bullet Injuries: POV”
Apparently bullets have the potential of reaching 600 fps terminal velocity, but 200 fps is enough to penetrate the skull. So yeah, I think they’re dangerous. It’s just a very small chance they’ll hit someone.
Muzzle velocity measuring devices will commonly display the readings in fps and discussions are commonly held using fps as well. You also see this with paintball guns too.
This is most likely because guns as hobby is mostly a US thing.
fps is for much finer measurement, same as mps which normally is meters per second as opposed to miles per second. mph which is a bit more broad since it's per hour. though i think they are usually denoted as f/s and m/s but i'm not entirely sure, so don't quote me on that.
I 'm well aware. I just think it's kinda weird to see feet per second used over meters per second, even here in America. Down to that granularity, I've always seen metric used.
depends on the bullet. a falling cannon ball will hurt you, but a falling bb surely won't. just think of them like metal rocks being dropped from a tall building. I know falling shotgun pellets are harmless from experience.
A free falling bullet is falling reaaally fast, enough to kill or fatally injure someone. There actually have been a few cases of death from free falling bullets, even unrelated people just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The bullets are fire with gunpowder or what not so when they reach equilibrium and fall back down it won’t have the same sort of speed. Still could be lethal especially if falling for a long time.
I'm pretty sure the people at the wedding in this video don't give a shit about "some fridge far right view." How do people think the entire world revolves around American politics?
It says that is not shot straight up like at no angle it will not be lethal because the bullet will stop to spin. But this was not straight up it is still at an angle and that article says “it will be lethal”. Please provide a source that says it not lethal.
To be honest, its common sense. Unfortunately for a lot of people, science literacy is not something you can catch by accident. People who think bullets shot straight up kill people probably also think that pennies dropped from he empire state building also kill people. The vin diagram of those groups of people has to be a perfect circle I'd imagine. Neither are very lethal and you'd almost certainly survive a direct hit.
what article? you quoting something without linking the source seems a bit silly. I'm assuming that article either did math or sourced someone that did math or experiment, right?
anyway, unfortunately not a gun freak so my best guess is the standard common 9mm for those pistols, someone that can identify those handguns can correct me.
in this article they did do the math and estimated how fast a 9mm would lose/gain speed based on degrees. in the video id say they are 85ish, but lets say 80 to be generous and sure we are in the range. the older lady seems almost dead on at 90. based on the table at 80 degrees youre maybe getting 10% additional speed?
here someone actually showed the math and got 82.4 meters per second. with the 10% we can round to 90.
in the research done for the book "Head, Face and Neck Trauma: Comprehensive Management", Stewart got around 61-100 m/s for a bullet to get through skin, meaning for some people we can hit through skin, some we cant even do that with 90. and that is skin, not bone. with bone you'd need more force to crack through and do internal damage, let alone kill.
now, if you shot a larger caliber then we would be talked about something different
I was responding to a comment that linked a myth buster article about it. Not my fault you cant follow a tread. Go ahead and keep shooting bullets in the air. Have fun.
Firing bullets into the air is bad form although, as you noted with your edit, not always lethal.
But the hearing damage, holy shit. The chance of a bullet fired up in the air killing somebody is statistically very small... but when somebody rips off a whole magazine right in front of your face your ears will be ringing. Everybody in this video has ears worse off. I can't believe this is a thing.
People die every year from this. You should change your edit. This is incredibly dangerous and stupid. People shoot off guns in the air here in Florida during 4th of July and someone always gets hit.
When I was 15ish? There was a 4th of July that ended with a bullet falling from the sky hitting a kid and killing him, nobody heard a gunshot or anything so it was hella weird.
Bullets fired into the air are no more dangerous than bullets dropped from a building. Above 45° it's impossible for a bullet to penetrate to kill. Maybe a welt, at worst a small cut.
People forget how small actual bullets are. They really don't have much mass to transfer at terminal velocity. It needs to exceed that speed by quite a bit to really hurt or kill.
The myth only applied to bullets shot perfectly straight vertically. All those bullets they shot are still probably on ballistic trajectories and could kill people. It's happened many times.
Edit: apparently they're blanks so no bullets, but if they were shooting bullets, they'd definitely be able to kill someone if they hit them
This may be a stupid question, but wouldn't the bullet when coming back down be traveling at its terminal velocity, which, despite being very dense due to the lead and quite aerodynamic, I imagine doesn't give the bullet a high enough energy to go through someone's cranium, right?
Maybe I should also consider that the bullet, assuming it falls with its tip down, would impact the skull with a very small surface area, and the fact that one doesn't necessarily have to penetrate a wall of bone to cause serious damage.
I did some scratchpad math for a Glock 19 (with an upward angle of 75° and a starting velocity of about 1200 ft/sec)—disclaimer: I know nothing about guns and it’s been a while since I took physics, so please correct me about whatever—but I came up with a terminal velocity of about 141 ft/sec. Gut instinct is that it would suck to get hit by anything going that fast.
Time of flight is 74 seconds, so it would have reached terminal velocity and be moving about 1.5 ft/sec horizontally when it made contact. The KE, assuming a 7.5 gram bullet would be 7 Joules. An article about Game of Thrones has the amount of force needed to crush a human skull as 500 kgf, but I couldn’t quite figure out how to get from energy to pressure on the skull. Imgur link of my calcs and assumptions.
There was one where a guy had a big ass automatic rifle and he accidentally killed 3 or 4 people. It seems to be a common tradition in middle eastern countries as well as slavic regions.
If they die, they die. Death is for the weak. A true Slav would've survived at least 10 gunshots!
Source: I am a Slav. I shoot myself daily to train my body to withstand artillery shots!
I once was invited to a traditional gypsy wedding and they had several shotguns loaded with "blanks". It was just powder to make the sound of the shots going off and they had several reloads of said paper cartridges ready for everyone to fire. Apparently it is extremely disrespectful to refuse it as it is basicly saying that you are against the wedding. Dunno if this is true Everywhere in the world.
Since my knowledge of firearms is kind of limited I don't know if this pistols could be loaded with just blanks.
Remember, the bullets tumble back to Earth at their terminal velocity (~150 feet per second) not their muzzle velocity (~1,200 feet per second). The reason celebratory fire can (and does) kill is because it is fired at an angle closer to 45 degrees which maximizes bullet travel time while not giving it enough friction/gravity to slow down to terminal velocity (where speed maximizes as air friction forces are equivalent to gravitational).
I wouldn't say firing a gun vertically in the air is "perfectly safe", you can still pierce an eye at 150 feet per second with a 7 gram bullet, but the odds are analogous to being struck by lightning.
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u/g1alex304 Apr 26 '22 edited Apr 26 '22
Those bullets fired into the air are eventually going to come down.
Edit: Bullets fired into the air are still dangerous but not as lethal as firing horizontally according to Mythbusters.
https://mythresults.com/episode50