when men shoot their guns at a funeral. why don't the bullets fall back to earth and hit somebody?

Answer 1

They have someone suspended from a balloon holding a large net to catch the bullets before they fall back to Earth.

Alternatively, but less interestingly, they fire blanks

Answer 2

I haven't been to a funeral where they shoot guns, but the bullets do come back down somewhere. But there is more open space than there are people stading around so usually no one ever gets hit. But sometimes people and building are hit by falling bullets.

Answer 3

The question has been answered (they shoot blanks.)

Looking at the physics. If a bullet is shot into the air, it CAN kill somebody depending on where it hits them.

A falling bullet will not have the same velocity as it had when it came out of the muzzle due to the fact that air resistance , friction and tumbling slow it down.

Still... it's going fast enough to kill!
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Answer 4

If they are actually shooting bullets out of the guns, then they WILL fall back to earth. They probably would not hit anyone, but more likely than that is they are shooting blanks.

Answer 5

If they use real bullets, not blanks, they do fall back to earth at great speed. I worked in Arabia and we found one embedded in the office floor after it had come through the roof. There would have been little ways this could have been fired direct (unless from an aircraft) and it would have been capable of killing someone in its way.

Simple answer is just lucky noone is in the way

Answer 6

They use blanks now, but quite a few years ago in Mexico 1960s i believe, a chap was hit on the head by a spent round, which apparently gave him a fractured skull. When you realise a bullet can travel over a mile, it must come down with some speed.

Answer 7

I had a friend who worked out in Kuwait after the first gulf war. He told me that the Kuwaitis did an awful lot of running around firing their AK-47s into the air, just for fun.

The bullets do, indeed, return to earth, at a fair rate of knots and if you’re unlucky enough to be in the way, they can kill.

On the rare occasions that it happened, the victim was said to have been killed by “Happy Bullets”.

Answer 8

In civilized countries, they fire blanks.

In not-so-civilized countries, people fire guns at all sorts of occasions--weddings, birthdays, holidays, whatever. For some reason, they think it's a great way to celebrate. They don't fire blanks, so the bullets do come back to earth. It is rare that they hit a person, but it's possible. It is not uncommon for them to come down and damage property (like somebody's roof).

Answer 9

okay this one has been answered correctly a few times already, they use blanks. but i was reading the answers and saw one that said when a bullet reaches its peak it loses all its energy....that is incorrect, when a bullet reaches its peak it begins to fall with gravity accelerating it until it reaches its terminal velocity...but if you have something..say a person...to catch the bullet, at the same height as the barrel of the rifle the bullet would be at the exact same speed it left....if you subtract the wind resistance, and other factors......

Answer 10

When a military funeral party fire a salute at a funeral they use blank cartridges (no bullets) so there is no danger from falling bullets.