Mystery Bullet In Rowlett

[Excaliber]

The Dallas Morning News reports that there's a landfill, a creek bed, a field, and an undeveloped wooded area between the range and the victim's home. There are hundreds or even possibly thousands of locations and angles from which a bullet could have been fired and landed where it did. Someone shooting at a squirrel or other treed critter would be one way something like that could happen. Someone who elevated his barrel enough for the round to cover the distance between the range and the point of impact would most certainly have raised considerable alarm among other shooters at the time.

Although it's still possible that the bullet came from the range, without some person or event to connect it to at the other end, that's just one unsupported guess among many possibilities. I strongly suspect that the bullet's origin will never be fully resolved, and I seriously doubt a lawsuit could establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the range is responsible for the victim's injuries.

This will likely end up as the ballistic equivalent of a hit and run wreck where the responsible party is never identified.

[wninja]

There's no mystery to this bullet.

Lee Harvey Oswald switched out the barrel on his Mannlicher-Carcano
to the .22 flavor before he left the Book Depository.

Being on the 6th floor, he reached Rowlett easily. :-)

SIA

I want a .22 rifle that can shoot long distances into the future too :D

[AJ80]

What distance are the farthest berms at that shooting range?
If 300+, I could see how someone would overestimate how high they need to aim to hit a target 300+ yards away if they are only used to shooting 50 or so yards with a .22, but then again, overestimating THAT much?

[Beiruty]

What distance are the farthest berms at that shooting range?
If 300+, I could see how someone would overestimate how high they need to aim to hit a target 300+ yards away if they are only used to shooting 50 or so yards with a .22, but then again, overestimating THAT much?

There 2 ranges there, pistol and .22 range with berms some 40 yrds away and 100 yrd rifle range. Berms are just at past 100 yrd.

Here is link from google maps : http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source= ... 6&t=h&z=18" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[AJ80]

What distance are the farthest berms at that shooting range?
If 300+, I could see how someone would overestimate how high they need to aim to hit a target 300+ yards away if they are only used to shooting 50 or so yards with a .22, but then again, overestimating THAT much?

There 2 ranges there, pistol and .22 range with berms some 40 yrds away and 100 yrd rifle range. Berms are just at past 100 yrd.

Here is link from google maps : http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source= ... 6&t=h&z=18" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Wow, that map you linked to makes me feel like I'm falling down from the sky upside down.

[jimlongley]

I sent this to the alleged reporter.

We checked; a .22-caliber projectile can travel approximately one mile in a straight line.

Uh, no! A .22 can reach one mile if fired at a 45 degree upward angle, resulting in a high arc trajectory.

Once it is fired, it begins to fall to the ground at 32 feet per second. A six foot person firing the rifle level means the bullet would hit the ground in 1/5 second.

The velocity of .22 rimfire rounds is from 1000-1300 feet per second. So in that 1/5 second, the farthest the bullet could go when fired level would be from 200-260 feet.

Therefore, rifles are not fired level. Sights are adjusted so that the barrel is angled upward to the degree necessary to extend its range as needed by the shooter.

Sights do not allow sufficient elevation to reach a mile. Someone had to aim the rifle upwards at a 45 angle, which means it could not have crossed adjoining properties level. It would have been dropping from its high arc.

Mike Earls

I think my numbers are close.

Gravitational acceleration is 32 feet per second, per second. After one second the gravitational velocity is 32fps, after two 64fps, and after three 96fps and so on. After one second the drop would be about 16 feet, after two, 64 feet, and after three 144 feet. Leaving out air resistance and calculating from a maximum muzzle velocity of 1300fps, that's three seconds for a mile, so the projectile would have to have been shot at an angle of 144/5280, or 144 feet above the "target" a mile away, not really a very high angle. Now if you add in the change of velocity due to air resistance, then the angle increases but even then it will be well below 45 degrees.

You are right about it needing to be fired at a high arc, despite the slightly flawed ballistics.

[Excaliber]

Relative elevation can also come into play.

If the range is at a significantly higher elevation than the victim's property, the drop begins shortly behind the berm, and there are no high intervening obstacles, it would be possible for a bullet that just cleared the berm to travel considerably further than it could over level ground while it dropped to the elevation of its final resting place.

[Lonest4r]

This story worries me because I frequently go to GPSR and would hate to see something like this force the range to close or move. I formerly shot at the Backwoods T.R.A.P.S. until the subdivision that was being built across the street forced them out. If you are building houses near an outdoor gun range you know that issues will eventually arise with homeowners, whether it be noise or the possibility of a stray shot someday leaving that range. I wouldn't buy a house next to a loud busy highway and then complain that they should move the highway, it would be my own fault for being a lousy consumer. What is this comment in the story about neighbors hearing popping sounds at night? Perhaps they mean evening?

[92f-fan]

Assuming the bullet was fired at a high enough elevation to travel the mile +

What speed would it be traveling when it got there ? Would it be enough to penetrate clothing and skin ?

Im no expert and cant do the types of calculations needed to prove or disprove but I doubt it

It would likely simply be falling and tumbling at that point

[Zoti]

Check up his adress on google maps. Unfortunatly, as much as we want it not to be a shot from the range, his house is a straight line from the range.

[MojoTexas]

I sent this to the alleged reporter.

We checked; a .22-caliber projectile can travel approximately one mile in a straight line.

Uh, no! A .22 can reach one mile if fired at a 45 degree upward angle, resulting in a high arc trajectory.

Once it is fired, it begins to fall to the ground at 32 feet per second. A six foot person firing the rifle level means the bullet would hit the ground in 1/5 second.

The velocity of .22 rimfire rounds is from 1000-1300 feet per second. So in that 1/5 second, the farthest the bullet could go when fired level would be from 200-260 feet.

Therefore, rifles are not fired level. Sights are adjusted so that the barrel is angled upward to the degree necessary to extend its range as needed by the shooter.

Sights do not allow sufficient elevation to reach a mile. Someone had to aim the rifle upwards at a 45 angle, which means it could not have crossed adjoining properties level. It would have been dropping from its high arc.

Mike Earls

I think my numbers are close.

Gravitational acceleration is 32 feet per second, per second. After one second the gravitational velocity is 32fps, after two 64fps, and after three 96fps and so on. After one second the drop would be about 16 feet, after two, 64 feet, and after three 144 feet. Leaving out air resistance and calculating from a maximum muzzle velocity of 1300fps, that's three seconds for a mile, so the projectile would have to have been shot at an angle of 144/5280, or 144 feet above the "target" a mile away, not really a very high angle. Now if you add in the change of velocity due to air resistance, then the angle increases but even then it will be well below 45 degrees.

You are right about it needing to be fired at a high arc, despite the slightly flawed ballistics.

The television show Mythbusters (on Discovery Channel) did an episode about bullets fired into the air.

http://mythbustersresults.com/episode50
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBuster ... s_Fired_Up

[MojoTexas]

would terminal velocity come into play at that far? it would seem that one mile away you would be able to catch it in your hand.

i watch mythbusters they did a terminal velocity test on dropping a penny from "empire state building" all in scale of course. but a pennies maximum speed is something like 62 miles per hour. a .22 would weigh less than a penny and have less terminal velocity

which leaves me to think that if the bullet where already started to come downward when shot at a 45degree angle all or most of its energy/velocity from the gunpowder would be exemt????

I think if the bullet were fired in an arc, it would still be spinning from the rifling, and would probably be pretty aerodynamic so that there wouldn't be a lot of drag. It would lose some velocity to drag but not enough to make harmless.

Firing straight up (which the Mythbusters found was very difficult to do exactly), the bullet eventually stops, then starts falling again, which I would guess is when the tumbling starts in. If it's tumbling and stuff, it's going to have more drag and a lower terminal velocity.

I remember the penny episode also...it'd be interesting to replicate that with a .22 LR bullet under the different scenarios.

[jimlongley]

I have been trying to find a ballistic calculator that would determine range and velocity, but the maximum I can find so far is 400 yards, and they predict about 500fps velocity at that range, extrapolating out to 1700+ yards would find the projectile going less than 200fps and it seems more likely that it would bounce off rather than inflicting the kind of harm indicated.

Also, the indicated angle for maximum range would be around 37 degrees, nowhere near 45.

[ScottDLS]

...
i watch mythbusters they did a terminal velocity test on dropping a penny from "empire state building" all in scale of course. but a pennies maximum speed is something like 62 miles per hour. a .22 would weigh less than a penny and have less terminal velocity
....

Oh...please tell me you are joking. I believe it was Galileo c.1634 that proved that all objects regardless of weight, fall at the same rate of acceleration (absent wind resistance). Newton then described the physics in much more detail somewhat later. So, drop an anvil and a coyote from a plane and both will fall at the same speed unless coyote spreads out to have a bigger surface area than the anvil.

A .22 would have less wind resistance than a penny and so have a terminal velocity somewhat higher, but I would volunteer to catch it in my hand at 1 mile.