Did a Stray Bullet on New Year's Eve Kill a Child at Church in Atlanta?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion centers around the tragic incident of a stray bullet killing a child during a New Year's Eve mass in Atlanta. Participants explore the implications of celebratory gunfire, the physics of falling bullets, and the broader societal issues related to gun safety and rights. The conversation includes technical considerations about terminal velocity and the potential lethality of falling bullets.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Technical explanation
  • Debate/contested
  • Meta-discussion

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants express shock and sorrow over the incident, emphasizing the need for accountability in celebratory gunfire.
  • There are discussions about the physics of falling bullets, with some suggesting that terminal velocity could be around 300 to 400 feet per second, potentially lethal.
  • Others question the circumstances of the bullet's trajectory, suggesting it may not have fallen straight down but could have been fired at an angle.
  • Some participants reference past experiments, such as those conducted on the show Mythbusters, to discuss the validity of anecdotal evidence versus controlled experiments regarding falling bullets.
  • Concerns are raised about the reliability of eyewitness accounts and police reports in establishing the facts of such incidents.
  • Participants reflect on the broader implications of gun safety and the societal responsibility surrounding gun ownership.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants generally express concern over the incident and the dangers of celebratory gunfire. However, there is no consensus on the physics of falling bullets, the validity of anecdotal evidence versus experimental data, or the implications for gun rights and safety.

Contextual Notes

The discussion includes various assumptions about the physics involved, the reliability of different types of evidence, and the emotional impact of the incident on the community. There are unresolved questions about the exact circumstances of the bullet's trajectory and its lethality.

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Say what you like about God - at least he has a fun sense of humor.
 
mgb_phys said:
Say what you like about God - at least he has a fun sense of humor.
Oh man. So do you.
 
This is always grim news, and it happens every year. I am so very sorry for the family who grieves for this child.
 
Absolute idiocy, you don't fire weapons for fun in populated areas. I hope they find the person that was shooting.
 
I thought God would be blamed for this :)
 
Evo said:
Absolute idiocy, you don't fire weapons for fun in populated areas. I hope they find the person that was shooting.

You don't fire a weapon ANYWHERE when you don't know where you're aiming the bullet.
 
kote said:
Remember that conversation in PF chat about people shooting guns on New Year's Eve? A falling bullet from one of those shots fell through the roof of a church and killed a four year old boy at mass in Atlanta.
Wow.

http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/dpp/news/Stray-Bullet-Kills-4-year-old-Boy-010110

Is that really possible? Sounds a bit like dropping pennies from Empire State Building...
What is the terminal velocity of a bullet?
 
Debris came down from the ceiling, but I would expect that the bullets were fired in the direction of the church, and not necessarily coming down, although perhaps it's possible. Terminal velocity depends on drag, but perhaps it's 200 mph or more - depending on original angle.
 
  • #10
Terminal velocity is depending mostly on two things. 1. The density of the thing that is falling. 2. The shape of the thing that is falling. Bullets are very dense (usually lead), and they have a shape to allow relatively low friction. The terminal velocity of a bullet could be 300 or 400 feet per second. This could be about 300 miles per hour.

And yes, that is a deadly force.
 
  • #11
Seems you are right. A quick google search came up with a few relevant hits (including an old thread on this forum).
Apparantly there are also other confirmed cases where a falling bullet has killed someone.
 
  • #12
so here's another stereotype that's really true! :biggrin:
 
  • #13
That's why well-informed idiots only fire shotguns into the air. Shotgun pellets coming down pose no danger, which is why [in part] they are used to hunt birds; not to mention that a bird is pretty tough to hit with a bullet. :biggrin:
 
  • #14
Ivan Seeking said:
That's why well-informed idiots ...

:smile:

As for the rest of the story, I think the only thing forum guidelines will allow me to say regarding what I'm thinking is that it's a rather cruel irony.
 
  • #15
hypatia said:
Terminal velocity is depending mostly on two things. 1. The density of the thing that is falling. 2. The shape of the thing that is falling. Bullets are very dense (usually lead), and they have a shape to allow relatively low friction. The terminal velocity of a bullet could be 300 or 400 feet per second. This could be about 300 miles per hour.

And yes, that is a deadly force.
But to break through a roof and a skull it has to have some mass. The story doesn't say the bullet came straight down from the sky, it could have been fired directly at the church, since the roof is slanted and could have ricocheted downward.
 
  • #16
We're talking about a a small child's soft skull, and he didn't die instantly. The accounts I heard made it sound like they were sure it was a falling bullet and wasn't coming from any discernible direction.

I suppose I should have guessed that the physics would be questioned. *sigh*
 
  • #18
It wouldn't have to penetrate the skull to be lethal. Just fracturing the skull in the right place will do it, and as kote points out, that's not so hard when it's only a 4-year-old. Just the debris falling from a ceiling could cause a lethal injury hitting a 4-year-old in the head (or even an adult, depending on the size of the debris and height of the ceiling and where it hits).
 
  • #19
It sadly shows that we need to do more than exercise gun rights, we need to prevent gun wrongs.

Brad, a young boy I knew, had a brother who got a .22 for Christmas many years ago. He pointed it at Brad and playfully pulled the trigger. The bullet pierced Brad's heart.

Apparently the gun dealer wanted to do a favor to the father by loading the gun with bullets as a "surprise." Brad's family did not pursue him legally.

Brad's brother must be permanently scarred.
 
  • #20
diazona said:
They did this on Mythbusters once...
http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2006/04/episode_50_bullets_fired_up_vo.html
On the show they reported finding several confirmed cases as well (even though their own experiments were inconclusive).
How can a confirmed case supersede a controlled experiment? If they test it and it proves to be a myth, then there's something fishy about the "confirmed cases". That's taking anecdotal evidence and eyewitness testimony over a scientific experiment. If you disregard the scientific experiment, you're saying there's something flawed with the experiment. And why would you say there's something flawed with the experiment before you say there's something flawed with the "confirmed cases"?
 
  • #21
leroyjenkens said:
How can a confirmed case supersede a controlled experiment? If they test it and it proves to be a myth, then there's something fishy about the "confirmed cases". That's taking anecdotal evidence and eyewitness testimony over a scientific experiment. If you disregard the scientific experiment, you're saying there's something flawed with the experiment. And why would you say there's something flawed with the experiment before you say there's something flawed with the "confirmed cases"?

Mythbusters' inability to create the exact circumstances of a known event does not falsify the known event. No experiment can "prove" it did not happen.

And, while I love the show, I am leery of concurring that they can be called "scientific experiments". Certainly, I won't be questioning too many police reports based on a Mythbuster's ep.
 
  • #22
Mythbusters' inability to create the exact circumstances of a known event does not falsify the known event.
What was flawed about their experiment?

And it's a "known event" how? How do we KNOW?
No experiment can "prove" it did not happen.
No experiment can "prove" I didn't just get visited by a dragon.
And, while I love the show, I am leery of concurring that they can be called "scientific experiments". Certainly, I won't be questioning too many police reports based on a Mythbuster's ep.
Their experiments are based more on science than police reports, which are based on a number of different things, including eyewitness testimony.
 
  • #23
leroyjenkens said:
What was flawed about their experiment?
I didn't say anything was flawed about it. But no experiment can factor in every variable. The precise angle, the precise impact point, the exact thickness and bone-density of that victim's skull, the exact cause of death (how do you prove a crash-terst dummy did NOT die of ruptured blood vessel). The variables are endless. Their experiment would have to test every conceivable variable and show that all of them failed.

Again, all their experimenting cannot falsify an event. The best they can do is call it implausible.
 
  • #24
leroyjenkens said:
What was flawed about their experiment?
How do you disprove the occurrence of freak accident happening?

And it's a "known event" how? How do we KNOW?
In the case of the OP? You doubt it happened?
 
  • #25
leroyjenkens said:
What was flawed about their experiment?.
They assumed a literal terminal velocity, ie a round fired vertically upward that reached a maximum height (zero veolcity) and came straight down.
Imagine you fired a round at 45deg it would have a much higher velocity when it hit the unfortunate target.
 
  • #26
I didn't say anything was flawed about it. But no experiment can factor in every variable. The precise angle, the precise impact point, the exact thickness and bone-density of that victim's skull, the exact cause of death (how do you prove a crash-terst dummy did NOT die of ruptured blood vessel). The variables are endless. Their experiment would have to test every conceivable variable and show that all of them failed.

Again, all their experimenting cannot falsify an event. The best they can do is call it implausible.
You're right. But there's also a lot of variables in the "confirmed" cases. The best you can do is call them plausible. They don't know the bullets hit the people with only the force of gravity, which is what the myth is.
How do you disprove the occurrence of freak accident happening?
You can disprove the details of the freak accident. We know the boy was killed by a bullet coming through the roof. That's not what you disprove. You disprove that the force of the bullet was completely gravity.
But the link doesn't say that the bullet went straight up and straight down, neither does the video.
In the case of the OP? You doubt it happened?
The "known event", I assume, was referring to people being killed by falling bullets. We don't know the only force on the bullet was gravity.
They assumed a literal terminal velocity, ie a round fired vertically upward that reached a maximum height (zero veolcity) and came straight down.
Imagine you fired a round at 45deg it would have a much higher velocity when it hit the unfortunate target.
You're right. That's what I think happened to the church boy. But the myth is that a bullet solely under the force of gravity could kill someone, which is what they tested. Just like the penny experiment they did.
But of course, people can die from anything. If they have a piece of skull that's missing from their head and the bullet falls through the hole, or it hits them in the eye, it could kill them.
You can't say for sure that anything won't kill somebody. But just like people have life threatening allergies to peanuts, you can't say that you shouldn't eat peanuts because they're deadly.
 
  • #27
From the link posted by diazona:
G Mohler, told them about a case in Menlo Park where a woman sitting in a lawn chair was struck in the leg by a bullet that was fired into the air 1 1/2 miles away during a 4th of July celebration. Mohler recovered the bullet from her leg and the police were able to match the ballistics to a shooter.

Mohler also told them about a case of an elderly man in Alameda who was talking to his wife underneath a plastic corrugated roof in his carport. His eyes rolled up and his wife thought he was having a stroke. When they got to the hospital they found out there was a bullet in his brain and, unfortunately, he died.
They figured out what was different from their original assumptions: the bullets in Dr. Mohler's cases weren't fired straight up into the air. They were fired at an angle, which meant that they remained spin-stabilized and on a ballistics trajectory.
For the first time ever, they deemed this one busted, plausible, and confirmed. All of their tests, from the pig's head to the 9mm firing to the balloon, showed that a bullet fired perfectly straight up into the air is not lethal. However, it is also very difficult to shoot perfectly straight up into the air and, with the cases cited by Dr. Mohler, they have confirmed that people have died from bullets falling from the sky.
 
  • #28
It is possible.

If the gun is pointed straight up, the total magnitude of the velocity vector upon impact will be the terminal velocity.

But, seeing as nobody was hanging onto a steeple and shooting up into the air from the top of the church, it is obvious that the gun was not pointed straight up, but at an angle.

when a bullet is pointed at even a tiny angle from vertical, there will be a small amount of the initial velocity vector going into the horizontal, and the horizontal velocity vector is for the most part, conserved. therefore it is not gravity that kills people when bullets fall, but the actual horizontal component of the intitial velocity vector.
 
  • #29
Even if the bullet was fired straight up, it can still return with enough velocity to wound or kill you. According to retired general JS Hatcher's book on ballistics, the velocity of a returning bullet varies a lot but in general the velocity is greater than 200 fps.
 
  • #30
I guy I work with doing ironwork dropped a 3/4-inch nut. It some poor guy about 120 ft or so below us and shattered his wrist. If a large caliber bullet fell from several hundred feet, it could do a fair amount of damage.
 

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