Is firing a gun straight up in the air dangerous?

Question

What about a hi-powered assault weapon, similarly?

Answer 1

Very! What goes up must come down!

Answer 2

Someone wrote <>

This is clearly incorrect.

Thew writer notes that the height the bullet reaches is relevant, but claims that the strenth of the gun is not. However, the height is a fuinction of the strength of the gun.

If there was no air resistance then a trivial calvculation would show that the speed when the bullet hits the ground is the same speed it has when it leavers the gun. However, there is air resistance, so the speed when it hits the ground is less. However it is dependent on on the speed leaving the gun, and it is fast eniough that people have been killed by bullets falling on their heads.

Answer 3

Mythbusters did this in one of their shows. Here's a brief on what they found out.

1. The theory that shooting it straight up and having it come straight back down and hit you is viturally impossible. The effects of the wind, the bullet path, the wavering 'downward' path makes it impossible for the bullet to land at the same place from whence it left.
2. The speed of the bullet when it left the gun doesn't have anything to do with the speed in which it travels back to earth as long as it reaches a specific heigth. Like anything else falling to the earth the speed is based on the pull of gravity and the areodynamics of the object falling. Thus whether you dropped the bullet from an airplane or shot it straight up, the impact to the ground would be the same. Therefore the strength of the gun doesn't really matter.
3. The maximum speed at which a falling bullet reaches is not enough to create enough force to create an impact injury that would be (in most cases) life threatening. It could certainly cause some amount of injury but not enough to penetrate the bones and body structures to kill.

Shooting a bullet at a high angle ( <80 degrees) is a totally different story and is extremely dangerous.

Hope this answers the question.

Answer 4

It is actually not dangerous at all. The fact that a bullet has such a small mass means that it has a very low terminal velocity. While a bullet fired from an assault rifle has a muzzle velocity of somewhere in the neighborhood of 1500 ft/sec, a falling bullet falls at a much, much lower speed due to air resistance. Bullets will also tend to tumble as they fall rather than fall straight down as they have lost the rotational component of their motion which stabilizes their trajectory (called rifling). These two facts combined make a falling bullet far less dangerous than one would think.

Answer 5

What goes up, must come down. Most people don't think about that when they shoot guns into the air, because they do so at angles so they never see the bullet land. The slightest angle will cause it to travel far, coupled with any wind that happens to be blowing.

Eventually it does come back down, but not nearly as fast as it was fired. Once it reaches the peak of its ascent, it will reach terminal velocity coming back down. Terminal Velocity is the max speed an object can reach while free-falling, because once it reaches a certain speed, the friction from the wind will be enough to counteract gravity and prevent it from accelerating any faster. How much terminal velocity is depends largely on the shape/texture of the object. If it came down, it would certainly hurt, but I doubt it would do as much damage as a direct gunshot wound.

Answer 6

Yes, I think it is. The bullet can hit someone on the way down.

EDIT: To the long poster below:
Although I mostly agree with you, you said the power of the gun doesn't matter. It does. If the gun is more powerful then the bullet travels higher therefore it is given more of a chance to reach its maximum speed.

If the gun's power really didn't matter then there should be no difference between shooting a potato gun or a rifle.

Answer 7

Myth-busters did an episode on this. It was also answered on Y!A several times last week.

If the bullet was fired straight up, it should tumble on its way down, so it air resistance will limit its top speed. So it should hurt you, but it will probably not be dangerous. At least that's the theory.

If you fire it at an angle, it should come down at the same speed that it went up. A ballisticly traveling bullet is dangerous and could kill someone.

Answer 8

Well, you could hit a bird or an airplane, but the chances are small. The bullet has to come back down, and it could hit somebody on the head, but that is also unlikely, and it wouldn't kill anybody. Contrary to a common belief, bullets do not come down with the same speed they went up, thanks to air resistance. They come down with the same speed they would if they were dropped, which is not real fast. An ordinary handgun or rifle bullet dropped on your head from the air would smart, but would not split your skull.

Answer 9

The escape velocity of the earth is 7 miles per second, way above the speed of the fastest bullet. I don't know what the terminal velocity of a bullet is on the way down, but "terminal" is still probably the operative word.

Answer 10

Yea! What goes up must come down. Do you know without a shadow of doubt that it will not hit someone? If you had to ask this question, you may need to take a firearms class. This is for you safety as well as for others.