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I’m waiting for the next seemingly inevitable object lesson: it’s insanely illegal, federally illegal, to shoot at flying objects, for what I would have hoped w

I’m waiting for the next seemingly inevitable object lesson: it’s insanely illegal, federally illegal, to shoot at flying objects, for what I would have hoped were obvious reasons. But it seems we’re still really rather dumb as a collective.

hansvm 2y ago
> obvious reasons It's maybe worth mentioning that the obvious reasons almost entirely have to do with the things you'd hit in the air, not once the bullet descended. If everyone on earth suddenly shot upward at around 80 degrees from the ground, you'd expect approximately zero casualties on average from the bullets falling and lethally striking surface objects (there would be a number of welts and bruises as well as minor property damage, but even that is less likely than you might suspect).
- CydeWeys 2y ago
  People are routinely killed by falling bullets. It turns out that the vast majority of idiots firing blindly into the air don't know or care to shoot only straight up, and it would be the same problem for whichever idiots were trying to shoot down drones.
  - hiatus 2y ago
    > People are routinely killed by falling bullets. Do you have a citation for that? I can't find any numbers on people getting hit by falling bullets, let alone fatalities. Things let celebratory gunfire don't seem to be comparable since people tend to congregate outside for celebrations resulting in larger groups of potential unintentional targets.
    - alphan0n 2y ago
      Here you go: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/201323 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/201323 Celebratory gunfire incidents were included, but only make up 4.6% of the total. In approximately one year: >Altogether, 317 persons received stray bullet injuries; >142 (44.8%) were female, and 176 (55.5%) were outside the age range 15 to 34 years. >Most individuals (258, 81.4%) were unaware of the events leading to the gunfire that caused their injuries. >Many (129, 40.7%) were at home; most of these persons (88, 68.2%) were indoors. >Sixty-five persons (20.5%) died, 18 (27.7%) of them at the shooting site and 55 (84.6%) on the day they were shot. >Fourteen persons received nonfatal injuries by secondary mechanisms.
    - toss1 2y ago
      I have not logged the citations, but I distinctly recall reading on the order of one-two news reports per year of people being killed by falling bullets in multiple different countries, including US, Brazil, and several middle eastern countries. Also, injuries and one fatality were confirmed by Mythbusters in [0]. Read the account for Episode 50, which was the only myth to receive all three ratings (Busted, Plausible, and Confirmed) at the same time. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2006_season) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2006_season)
      - alphan0n 2y ago
        Some data on stray bullet fatalities just in Rio: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1284427/stray-bullets-victims-rio-de-janeiro/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1284427/stray-bullets-vi...
        hansvm 2y ago
        I'm not sure that's at all the same thing with the extremely high rate of violent crime involving guns in Brazil. Pointing a gun straight at a city background, missing your specific target, and still injuring/killing somebody is very different from pointing a gun at the sky and having the 170 ft/s bullet fall, manage to hit that same highly populated region, and cause problems.
        toss1 2y ago
        The point is that all sky-pointed bullets are NOT going only 170ft/sec. Yes, it is reasonably established that bullets fired straight up do not regain their initial velocity on the way back down. But, at less-than-vertical firing angles, they can retain a lot of their initial 4-figure-fps velocity, and how much is very dependent on particular trajectory, wind, bullet composition, and initial angle. Dependent enough that it's specifically outlawed in many states. So, don't go glibly firing off skyward celebratory shots (over)confident in your understanding of the physics (or implicitly advocating it). You might be willing to take the risk, but no one else is willingly undertaking the risk you are creating.
linotype 2y ago
It’s really not the collective. It’s every town and cities loonies that now have formed a small but vocal subset of the population thanks to the Internet.

hansvm 2y ago

> obvious reasons It's maybe worth mentioning that the obvious reasons almost entirely have to do with the things you'd hit in the air, not once the bullet descended. If everyone on earth suddenly shot upward at around 80 degrees from the ground, you'd expect approximately zero casualties on average from the bullets falling and lethally striking surface objects (there would be a number of welts and bruises as well as minor property damage, but even that is less likely than you might suspect).

CydeWeys 2y ago
People are routinely killed by falling bullets. It turns out that the vast majority of idiots firing blindly into the air don't know or care to shoot only straight up, and it would be the same problem for whichever idiots were trying to shoot down drones.
- hiatus 2y ago
  > People are routinely killed by falling bullets. Do you have a citation for that? I can't find any numbers on people getting hit by falling bullets, let alone fatalities. Things let celebratory gunfire don't seem to be comparable since people tend to congregate outside for celebrations resulting in larger groups of potential unintentional targets.
  - alphan0n 2y ago
    Here you go: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/201323 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/201323 Celebratory gunfire incidents were included, but only make up 4.6% of the total. In approximately one year: >Altogether, 317 persons received stray bullet injuries; >142 (44.8%) were female, and 176 (55.5%) were outside the age range 15 to 34 years. >Most individuals (258, 81.4%) were unaware of the events leading to the gunfire that caused their injuries. >Many (129, 40.7%) were at home; most of these persons (88, 68.2%) were indoors. >Sixty-five persons (20.5%) died, 18 (27.7%) of them at the shooting site and 55 (84.6%) on the day they were shot. >Fourteen persons received nonfatal injuries by secondary mechanisms.
  - toss1 2y ago
    I have not logged the citations, but I distinctly recall reading on the order of one-two news reports per year of people being killed by falling bullets in multiple different countries, including US, Brazil, and several middle eastern countries. Also, injuries and one fatality were confirmed by Mythbusters in [0]. Read the account for Episode 50, which was the only myth to receive all three ratings (Busted, Plausible, and Confirmed) at the same time. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2006_season) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2006_season)
    - alphan0n 2y ago
      Some data on stray bullet fatalities just in Rio: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1284427/stray-bullets-victims-rio-de-janeiro/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1284427/stray-bullets-vi...
      - hansvm 2y ago
        I'm not sure that's at all the same thing with the extremely high rate of violent crime involving guns in Brazil. Pointing a gun straight at a city background, missing your specific target, and still injuring/killing somebody is very different from pointing a gun at the sky and having the 170 ft/s bullet fall, manage to hit that same highly populated region, and cause problems.
        toss1 2y ago
        The point is that all sky-pointed bullets are NOT going only 170ft/sec. Yes, it is reasonably established that bullets fired straight up do not regain their initial velocity on the way back down. But, at less-than-vertical firing angles, they can retain a lot of their initial 4-figure-fps velocity, and how much is very dependent on particular trajectory, wind, bullet composition, and initial angle. Dependent enough that it's specifically outlawed in many states. So, don't go glibly firing off skyward celebratory shots (over)confident in your understanding of the physics (or implicitly advocating it). You might be willing to take the risk, but no one else is willingly undertaking the risk you are creating.

linotype 2y ago

It’s really not the collective. It’s every town and cities loonies that now have formed a small but vocal subset of the population thanks to the Internet.