this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2025
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[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 6 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Years ago, 90s or before, they were having a big pro golf tournament in my city. One of the players went to a local Walmart, and just before they entered the store, they were shot and badly injured.

After a LOT of investigation (they'll do that for famous people, not the rest of us), they discovered that a couple of guys were target shooting in the woods next to the Walmart, and one of their bullets had cleared every tree, branch, and impediment between them and Walmart, a long distance away. I seem to remember that they were nearly a mile away.

They were so far away that even when they saw the story of the shooting on TV, it didn't occur to them that they could be responsible, because they were so far away.

[–] BanMe@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

I'm in Little Rock, AR and on holidays or special occasions, people just go fire guns off into the air from their doorsteps or back yards. I have a (well off) neighbor who has admitted to opening a window and firing some rounds off with her boyfriend.

When you tell them "You know, some of those bullets come down and kill people, including children lying in their beds" they get real pissy.

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 1 points 1 hour ago

I know of that happening, too. A few years ago, a guy near here was killed by a bullet on New Years Eve. After an investigation, they determined that it came from the sky, from some moron firing his gun on New Years Eve.

Mythbusters did a piece on the lethality of shooting guns into the air. If you shoot it straight up, and it falls straight down, air friction will reduce it's terminal velocity, make it tumble, and while it would hurt you, it probably wouldn't kill you.

The problem is that it is nearly impossible to fire it straight up. It is almost always going to be in some sort of arc, so it is never really in a position for terminal velocity, friction, and tumbling to mitigate its lethality. So it just travels normally, and eventually hits someone.