Amish 15-year old girl ....

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Now Standing Wolf, it was negligent on his part but, comeon, what are the chances of hitting ANYTHING but a spit of dirt there? And the result was not intentional obviously. That's an accident. I'm just saying...

237 grains at 700 fps -- that's a .45 ACP at a longer-range shot.

Jeez -- this is awful.

Do Amish celebrate either Hannukah or Christmas I wonder.

:(
 
In addition to the remaining horizontal velocity after drag is accounted for, there's also the descending velocity...
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Both drag and gravity are included in any ballistics calculation (by definition). ;)
 
There's just no way randomly shooting a gun up in the air and causing a death can be explained away as a routine accident. Doesn't matter if its in the city or out in the Sahara desert.

There's just no excuse.
 
Gravity is certainly taken into account when determining the trajectory, however my understanding is that ballistic calculators calculate remaining velocity at a given range by simply reducing the the muzzle velocity by velocity lost due to aerodynamic drag.

That makes perfect sense for practical shooting--that is shooting where one actually plans to make accurate hits on target--because the bullet isn't in the air long enough to build up a lot of vertical velocity. However, for truly extreme ranges, as are involved in this situation, it's necessary to sum in the vertical velocity induced by gravity as well as simply accounting for the loss due to aerodynamic drag.
 
JohnKSA, what would terminal velocity be for a dropped (not fired, but dropped from a great height) ball be? I would think that would still be the max velocity at extreme range.
 
For a smooth lead sphere of 0.54 caliber, the terminal velocity would be about 427fps. For a 0.45 caliber ball, about 390 fps.

If the ball is coming straight down then terminal velocity is the whole story.

If the range is not extreme and the muzzle orientation at the moment of firing is close to horizontal then all you need to be concerned with is muzzle velocity and aerodynamic drag.

If the ball is descending on an arc, that means it has BOTH a residual horizontal velocity component and a vertical velocity component. If it had no horizontal velocity component it would be falling straight down, not following an arc.

The horizontal velocity component is based on a vector decomposition of the initial muzzle velocity and the decrease in that velocity vector due to drag.

The vertical velocity is either terminal velocity or some velocity less than terminal velocity if the bullet hasn't fallen far enough to achieve terminal velocity.

The TOTAL velocity of the impact will be the vector sum of the vertical and horizontal velocity components. That will be the square root of the sum of the squares of the two velocity components. It will be greater than the largest of the two components but smaller than the sum.

If we assume that the projectile is a 0.54 cal lead sphere with remaining velocity of 400fps and it's descending at it's terminal velocity (427fps) then the total velocity at impact will be about 585fps. Since the weight of a 0.54" lead sphere is 237 grains, the impact energy would be 180ftlbs.

While it would be possible to set up a ballistic calculators to take all that into account, there would be no practical reason to do so and it would add considerable complication by attempting to calculate the terminal velocity for a variety of projectiles. Since the projectiles are not descending straight down (they're not oriented in the direction of travel), finding the ballistic coefficient of the projectile (unless it's a ball) would be somewhat complicated.
 
There really are only two (significant) forces acting on a bullet after leaving the muzzle: gravity and drag. You literally add the two Forces together in computing bullet state (position and velocity) at any time thereafter... even in the simplest of problem solutions.

(Honest:), one of the most elemental equations-of-motion calculations done by freshman physics types is the calculation of trajectories combining gravity and drag.)

It can get a little messy because the drag coefficients change as velocity changes, but then that's why God created Excel and the IF-THEN statement ... to give even poor men access to finite-difference calculations. :D
 
That land looks as flat as a flitter, or maybe a slight rise here and there- that's shotgun hunting country.
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Minnesota has a shotgun w/single slug zone and muzzle loading firearms are also allowed in that zone because of the reduced max range.
This is such a sad story for all but I also find fault with the shooter.
The Muzzle loader can be unloaded without discharging (firing).
The powder charge needs to be wet'ed after being de-primed and then the breach plug removed or the ball pulled. I have pulled the ball out of my muzzleloaders many times but I do also discharge the firearm when in a good place to do it.
Prayers for all will be Prayed.
 
he could have fired into the ground or into a tree

theres no excuse for firing a gun into the air.

"Hmm... I need to empty my weapon... where to fire? I always wanted to shoot the sun!"

he could have dug a nice hole into the dirt instead of some poor girls head.
 
There's no indication of whether it was a round ball or a conical slug in anything I've seen.

If it was a conicial, I'd think it would be far heavier and would have far greater energy and velocity on impact.
 
havent really read anything about the ballistic match was confirmed with the rifle yet or not, but it seems unlikely to me that a bullet from a muzzleloader would even go 1.5 miles sure they can go a long ways but even a modern sabot with over 2000fps muzzle velocity drops fairly quickly.
 
Even if roundball, ~240gr hitting you in the head at 400fps would inflict significant damage. But the normal skull is pretty hard, ...so all sorts of worst-case combinations of direction, impact point, head position and specific location/bone thickness had to play out.

It started w/ an act of man.
But ended as an act of God.

Were I Amish, that would be the hardest part of of it all.


.
 
Criminally Negligent Homicide, IMO. people who do unquestionably stupid things with guns that result in death/injury of others should be punished harshly.

Almost every year, on the last day of muzzleloader season and after it gets too dark to shoot a deer I "unload" a muzzleloader into a tree chosen for the task. Plan ahead a little, maybe? When I get in the woods I look around at trees and find one I plan to shoot if I don't shoot a deer.

Absolutely, positively no excuse for intentionally discharging a firearm into the air. I don't care if you're in the middle of a million acre national forest in the Colorado Rockies. You just don't do it.
 
Unless other evidence arises which places the blame elsewhere, this is not just a horrible tragedy for this young girl and her family, but another incident that reinforces the anti-gun crowd's attitudes about the dangers of private gun ownership. The only way it would have been even worse was if the gun was a handgun and the shooter held a concealed carry license. My prayers are with the family of the victim; losing a child is unbearable, losing one without any reason is even worse.
 
Everything in the universe had to line up wrong for this to become a fatal occurrence.
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True. He could not have made that shot had someone been paying him a billion dollars. But an "accident"?

The idea of firing a shot into the air won't hurt anything has certainly been dis proven here.
 
he could have fired into the ground or into a tree
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Minor point only. When I was a kid, one of the kids in my neighborhood was out shooting at a tree. Came straight back and killed him.

Given the choice between the two, empirical evidence shows that dirt is safer. Just sayin.
 
doofus47 said:
When I was a kid, one of the kids in my neighborhood was out shooting at a tree. Came straight back and killed him.
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That seems.... improbable beyond belief. What kind of gun was he shooting and what kind of tree?

I have put THOUSANDS of rounds into trees and never seen ANY indication that any round of any type from handguns, shotguns and rifles will not penetrate any and all trees.

Just this summer, our "target tree" tipped over from being cut in half by bullets. Many, many hundreds of rounds, from distances of a few feet to hundreds of yards. We have shot into everything from Black Cherry, Hemlock, Oak of several varieties, Birch....

I simply can not imagine a bullet bouncing off a tree, say nothing of returning with enough force to kill a person.

Frankly, I would consider shooting the ground to be far more dangerous. Rocks are a LOT harder than trees and you never know if there's one 1/4" under the surface.
 
That seems.... improbable beyond belief. What kind of gun was he shooting and what kind of tree?
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Ever see what's inside trees? (other than the bullets you found)
I saw a horseshoe inside one once. Big old regular nail it on a horses hoof, horseshoe.
Somebody must have nailed it on the tree who knows when & the tree just grew around it.

None of the local sawmills around where I live will touch any "city grown" trees. Too much metal stuff in them. People are forever nailing things to trees.

Mobile sawyers will sometimes slice lumber from city trees, but, you agree up front to pay for any damage to the blades.
 
I'd be willing to bet that there's a lot more unknown metal in the ground than in trees. And yes, I've seen what's inside trees... my FIL made a living selling wood for awhile and my father and I have cut down more than a few. Enough to build a rough-cut 20x30ft cabin and several years worth of firewood, actually.

So far, I've seen nothing dangerous in a tree.

Besides which, we're talking about shooting a tree out in the woods where you hunt, not "city trees".
 
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