If a person is in the water, and someone fires a gun at them, lets say the average hand gun, how far will the?

Question

bullet travel in the water before it becomes harmless to the person in the water.

Answer 1

God I hate when anyone cites "an episode of myth busters" to answer anything. That's not science, it's entertainment.

There is no blanket answer to bullet penetration and lethality in water. It all depends on the construction of the bullet, speed at impact and angle of impact. You can certainly count on it retaining a great deal of energy for a foot or so for large caliber pistol bullets, more for smaller diameter projectiles with greater mass.

In my own personal experience a .45ACP fired into a water trough at about a 45 degree angle passed through two feet of water and struck the bottom hard enough to slightly deform the bullet nose without noticeably effecting the concrete surface of the trough.

Answer 2

There was an excellent episode on this subject on Mythbusters long story short eighteen inches of water is enough to protect one against even a .50 caliber round, but a shotgun slug fired on the perpendicular could prove fatal a a depth of more than three feet. I personally suspect that this is due to the fact that water cannot be compressed and the much higher velocity of most rounds causes them to dissipate much of their energy upon contact with the water whereas the relatively slow shotgun slug moves the water aside allowing greater penetration.

Answer 3

Check out the Myth Busters series. They did one with all kind of firearms, and all either broke up on contact with the water or didn't penetrate nearly as far as most of would have guessed.

You might be able to get a clip from the Discovery Channel.com

Answer 4

5 inches

Answer 5

Handguns and rifles have a problem water. The bullet is thrown off by the friction of the water, so hitting someone reliably who is in the water is next to impossible. Not impossible, but almost.

(And the Mythbuster series failed miserably, in my view. They fired too close to the water. At that range the rifles they used would naturally have disintegrated, since they barely traveled a yard and a half before hitting the water surface.)

Answer 6

8" to 12" the impact of the bullet against the water causes it to be harmless rapidly.*

Answer 7

This was done on Mythbusters several months ago. I don't remember the exact distance that the bullet traveled in the water before became harmless but it was a surprisingly short distance. I seem to remember it as being something like 3 or 4 feet. They did some underwater photography of the bullet hitting the water and it very rapidly slowed down and then just dropped harmlessly to the bottom of the pool.

Answer 8

The Myth Busters are good at one thing. Making things look flashy. As far as gun go they know nothing absolutly nothing. I can not count how many times I heard them mispronouance m-1GARAND not Grand.

They were shooting into water from two to three feet away. This about bust there myth busting. How often are you shooting into water from 3 feet away? NEVER. That is just one of I do not know how many gun myths they have screwed the hell up. So for my life I will not trust two yahoos from the PRK.

I would not want to be getting shot at in the water at any depth. So do not try this at home.

Answer 9

Are you trying to find out how close to the surface YOUR target needs to be, before you shoot ?

For myself, if some fool were to try shooting me in the water , if i survived, i wouldn't make the same mistake that they did.
the only thing that would be between me & that person, would be air & not too many feet of that.

Answer 10

mythbusters did a show on this type thing and it did not go far but just don't be stupid and try this