Amish 15-year old girl ....

Status
Not open for further replies.
M

mehavey

New member
FREDERICKSBURG, Ohio (AP) -- A man cleaning his muzzle-loading rifle shot the gun
into the air, accidentally killing a 15-year-old Amish girl driving a horse-drawn buggy
[1½] miles away, a sheriff said Tuesday.
Click to expand...
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-12-20-12-41-09

I'm a little skeptical of the postulated circumstances considering the range/velocity/Ballistic-Coeff limitations of most muzzle loaders -- but would like to hear to those who might have a ballistics program/projectile BC info available to them where they are at the moment.
 
Google "Billy Dixon" and the battle of "Adobie Wells"

There is nothing unreasonable about a Black Powder Round still being able to kill at 1.5 miles. A well aimed shot is a different matter, but there was no indication in the article that it was anything but misguided freak accident.

Many people use Black Powder Cap 'n Ball rifles and pistols. They often keep them loaded (without the cap) until ready to use. If they deside at a later point to clean the gun, then it needs to be unloaded. For muzzle loaders that means firing the gun.

#4 kicks in. Be sure of your back ground. That is the problem in this case. Simply discharging the firearm into a safe dirt bank would have prevented this tragic accident.
 
There are muzzle-loading competitions regularly held at 1,000 yards.

Back in 1992, Mike Ventirino was involved in an experiment at the government proving grounds near Yuma, AZ. They were using radar to determine the range of certain black powder cartridges. A 550-grain .45-caliber projectile at a muzzle velocity of 1,322 FPS, fired at a barrel elevation on 35 degrees impacted 3,575 yards away (a bit over 2 miles).

If I remember correctly, in 1879 at Sandy Hook, a .45-70, in an aimed shot, hit a 6-foot target at 2,500 yards.

A well-designed projectile pushed by blackpowder at a relatively low muzzle velocity can indeed be deadly at very long ranges.
 
I saw this elswhere also.
A lot unanswered in the story.
At that distance how did anyone connect the shooter with the incident?
But, if it happened as related, the shooter was an idiot and should get the full force of the law.
 
Teen Shot In Head By Muzzle Loader From Afar

The teenage Amish girl who was found dead from being shot in the head was not easy to explain at first. But the updated story indicates that it was caused by a muzzle loader being discharged from over 1 mile away.

The updated story:

Errant Bullet Travels 1.5 Miles, Kills Amish Girl

http://www.wlwt.com/news/30038612/detail.html#ixzz1h64qvbCs

The initial story:

Amish Community Stunned by Shooting Death of Girl

http://www.fox8.com/news/wjw-amish-community-stunned-by-girls-shooting-death-txt,0,4175223.story
 
I'm a little skeptical of the postulated circumstances considering the range/velocity/Ballistic-Coeff limitations of most muzzle loaders
Click to expand...
The newer sabot's can vastly improve the ballistic coefficient.
 
A 550-grain .45-caliber projectile at a muzzle velocity of 1,322 FPS, fired at a barrel elevation on 35 degrees impacted 3,575 yards away (a bit over 2 miles).
Click to expand...
Lead balls launched from BP muzzleloaders may be lacking in ballistic coefficient, but they make up for it with momentum. :D

FWIW you may have heard people complain that it's "impossible" to hit things at long range with muzzleloaders, but this isn't because the firearms aren't capable of lethal long range shots (see above); it's because most modern shooters aren't accustomed to bullet drop that's measured in yards at long range. :rolleyes:
 
What a freak accident if true! I read the original report and was upset. Now I feel so sorry for the victim, her large family, and the shooter if this is how it happened.
:(
 
An easily averted tragedy. It should go without saying that we must always be aware of who and what is downrange, but I guess that it's always worth bringing up.

Randomly pointing your rifle in the air to clear it is just about as bad as purposely pointing it at somebody to clear it. I know that I'm preaching to the choir, but...see paragraph one.
 
I was going to write in, not making excusses for the shooter mind you, but only to say I could see someone in a very rural hunting area shooting at a slightly elevated angle without thinking.

Then I looked up the spot the girl was shot on google maps, now I think he should be arrested. There are houses everywhere and in all directions. Only a completely negligent person would fire in in the air in any direction.

attachment.php


The A shows the spot where the girls body was found, go to the map and zoom out, houses everywhere and in all directions. :mad:

Don't get me wrong, looks like there is plenty of room to shoot and hunt there, but not to fire indiscriminately in the air.
 

Attachments

  • Picture 9.jpg
    Picture 9.jpg
    97.3 KB · Views: 891
Having gotten to a ballistics calculator (actually several of them), a .54cal 237gr roundball doing 1,400 at the muzzle would have 400fps left at 1½ miles.

That's almost exactly what you'd get from a traditional (old pressure) 240gr 45Colt.... at a full 1,000 yards.

Everything in the universe had to line up wrong for this to become a fatal occurrence.
 
Threads merged.
Having gotten to a ballistics calculator (actually several of them), a .54cal 237gr roundball doing 1,400 at the muzzle would have 400fps left at 1½ miles.
Click to expand...
That's only part of the equation. In addition to the remaining horizontal velocity after drag is accounted for, there's also the descending velocity generated by gravity. The actual velocity is the vector sum of the two components and could be significantly more than 400fps--my back of the envelope indicates that the vector sum could tack on up to another 150fps depending on a number of variables.

If the projectile was a sabot round, the 400fps figure is probably considerably low and the resulting total velocity could be nearly 700fps.
 
That land looks as flat as a flitter, or maybe a slight rise here and there- that's shotgun hunting country.
__________________
Click to expand...

I hunt flat ground full of farmsteads and have never seen anybody hunting anything but birds with a shotgun. Have not seen or heard of anybody plugging anybody with a rifle. Across the river in Iowa, they hunt deer with shotguns, and this year on opening day, they managed to kill two hunters ..... with those oh-so-safe shotguns...... seems to me, it's the folk behind the guns, not the guns themselves, that allow accidents to happen.

It's pretty simple: Rule 4- Know your target and what is beyond it. If it is not safe to fire, then don't.
 
That's certainly true, however shotguns can minimize or eliminate the chances of something like this happening.

With #6 shot or smaller, a shotgun load shouldn't go more than 450-600 yards and should be safe past about 400 yards.
Up to #2 shot, a shotgun load will peter out by 550-650 yards.
00 buck should only travel about 1050 yards.
Even a typical 1oz slug load, shouldn't travel more than about 1850 yards.

The girl was killed at a range of about 2600 yards.
 
I could have been a sabot load though, we don't know. If it was it might have had quite a bit more remaining velocity.
 
shotgun vs. rifle:

Shotguns have a shorter lethal range than rifles. But empirical statistics show that accidental shootings actually decrease with rifles allowed in previously shotgun only hunting grounds.

I don't have the actual numbers at hand, but I have seen the government figures in PA and NY that back that up.
 
"Accident?" What kind of a so-called "accident" is negligently discharging a firearm into the air?

Here's the fourth rule as I learnt it and have taught it for years: "always be sure of your target and what lies beyond it." There's a reason for that. A girl died because some guy didn't pay attention to a simple rule.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top