How far will a 9mm round travel?

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kramden

New member
Lets say you have a perfectly flat stretch of land. You take your M&P9 (doesn't really matter) hold it level and fire it. Using any target load of your choice how far will the round roughly travel before hitting the ground? No "hot" loads just paper punching grade. I know bullet weight would change things a little. Any real world info. out there? Thanks
 
MandolinMan said:
Google 9mm ballistic chart. Here's two for starters:

https://www.mcarbo.com/9mm-trajector...ory-chart.aspx

http://glock.pro/glock-pistols/9191-...ou-zero-6.html
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The first link is helpful, but doesn't actually respresent the criteria in the question because it's set for a 25-yard zero -- which means that initially the bullets are launched on an upward trajectory, they don't leave the muzzle level.

The second link does appear to correlate with the question. So the only open variable is how high the muzzle is about the ground. If fired at eye level, we could probably round off the 1-1/2 yards above the ground plane, and the second chart would tell us the bullet would travel about 175 yards before hitting terra firma.
 
The first link is helpful, but doesn't actually respresent the criteria in the question because it's set for a 25-yard zero -- which means that initially the bullets are launched on an upward trajectory, they don't leave the muzzle level.
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I don't recall the OP specifying how his M&P was sighted in. Either way the difference is a few inches at most.
 
kramden said:
Lets say you have a perfectly flat stretch of land. You take your M&P9 (doesn't really matter) hold it level and fire it. Using any target load of your choice how far will the round roughly travel before hitting the ground? No "hot" loads just paper punching grade. I know bullet weight would change things a little. Any real world info. out there? Thanks
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That’s not a test that’s helpful in the real world. Nobody ever shoots for distance that way: If you’re trying to get any kind of range, the firearm will always be angled upwards.

But this is a fairly simple problem to calculate if you’re not trying to be exact. If you assume a perfectly flat ground (and remove minor variables like the differences in air resistance), a bullet fired flat will take the same amount of time to hit the ground as a bullet that’s simply dropped on the ground from the same height. So, to answer your question, all you need to know is how fast the bullet is going and how high your gun is off the ground.

To make things simple, let’s give the 9mm round an average velocity of 1000 FPS and say the gun is being held 5 feet off the ground. Gravity accelerates objects at about 9.80665 m/s^2 on average, so that means the bullet will take 0.557503 seconds to hit the ground. That means the bullet will travel just under 558 feet (186 yards), which is pretty close to the 175 yards that Aguila Blanca came up with.
 
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It takes about half a second for the bullet to hit the ground(5.5 seconds based Theohazard's post) if fired parallel to the ground from 5 feet high. So at this point all you need to know is how fast the bullet is traveling.

Most 9MM rounds are going to traveling around 1,000 to 1,2000 feet per second. That's means in half a second the bullet will travel around 500 to 600 feet. This same formula works for any cartridge. .30-06 traveling at 2,800 FPS will travel about 1,400 feet before hitting the ground. This is a estimate but it works out to be pretty close. To get an exact figure you'll need to know many more variables.

There are many variables involved like the exact height of the fired bullet, the ballistic coefficient of the bullet and how quickly it is losing velocity. All this assumes flat ground and an initial parallel trajectory. If you angle the trajectory up to 30 degrees you can supposedly get a .22 to travel a mile. This means the bullet will be in the air for a couple of seconds.
 
Doing more research it seems 180-200 yards is fairly accurate. The reason I'm asking is simply from a safety standpoint. Thank you.
 
kramden said:
Doing more research it seems 180-200 yards is fairly accurate. The reason I'm asking is simply from a safety standpoint. Thank you.
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Considering angling the gun even slightly up will make it travel a lot farther than that, your safe distance should be a heck of a lot farther than 200 yards. The range of a 9mm bullet fired at a 45 degree angle is 2,400 yards.

https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2002/DomnaAntoniadis.shtml

I've worked at two different ranges, and it's amazing how often shooters will shoot the ceiling by accident. I've seen people shooting handguns who focused on the front sight but didn't realize you were supposed to line it up with the rear sight, so the gun was angled up at a very steep angle.

If the people shooting are all experienced, it's unlikely they'll accidentally shoot their handguns at an angle as steep as 45 degrees, but you still want to account for someone shooting off a round at an angle.
 
I've seen inexperienced shooters unload a whole magazine into the ceiling at my indoor. It's almost comical when they pull the target and wonder where all the bullets holes are. They usually don't believe you when you tell them they are blasting away at the ceiling.

Unless your limiting the shooting to very experienced shooters it is not a good assumption to think people will not be shooting way off into the distance.
 
It sounds like the OP is concerned with safety at an outdoor range. The problem is not how far a bullet will fly if fired horizontally, but how far it can travel st its maximum range. Life would be so much simpler if everyone obeyed the rules, but that can't be counted on, so (unless there is another way of stopping bullets) the impact zone has to be a lot longer than the bullet range in horizontal firing.

Jim

Jim
 
The reason I'm asking is simply from a safety standpoint.
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The criteria you stated is not a valid way to evaluate safety.

As pointed out, if the muzzle were elevated at the time of discharge, the range could increase tremendously--to over 1.5 miles.

But that's not even the main consideration, in my opinion, given that it is quite common to construct a range based on the assumption that the elevation of the gun will be controlled by the shooter to prevent overshooting a backstop. You need to account for the possibility of ricochets. The implication in your question is that when a bullet hits the ground it immediately stops moving--nothing could be farther from the truth. In reality, ricochets are very common and a pistol bullet can travel a very long way after ricocheting before finally coming to rest.

It is absolutely critical/essential that there be some sort of a backstop behind the target. Relying on flat terrain to act as a bullet stop would likely be considered criminally negligent if there is ever some kind of an incident with a bullet causing damage/injury/death.

If you plan to use flat terrain as a "backstop" then you need to have enough downrange distance to account for the MAXIMUM range of the round, not just to the point where it will first hit the ground. In other words, although the question is stated improperly, if safety is the consideration then the correct answer is that approximately 1.6 miles of empty downrange distance is required if you plan to shoot a 9mm without any backstop other than flat terrain.
 
The question the OP asked was " How far will a 9 mm round travel" , I'm looking at a box of 22 LR ammo and on the side is " WARNING: Range 1.5 Miles" if a wimpy little 22 can travel 1.5 miles I'm sure a 9 mm can also.....I'm going to say 1.5 miles.
Gary
 
MandolinMan said:
I don't recall the OP specifying how his M&P was sighted in.
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Kramden said:
Lets say you have a perfectly flat stretch of land. You take your M&P9 (doesn't really matter) hold it level and fire it.
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Since he specified that the ground is "perfectly flat," I think we also should assume that this is a theoretical exercise and that holding the barrel "level" means perfectly level and parallel to the perfectly flat ground.

MandolinMan said:
Either way the difference is a few inches at most.
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While I agree that the difference probably isn't significant to the level of orders of magnitude, it is certainly going to be a lot more than a few inches. Just fire up any interactive ballistic calculator and compare the trajectories for zero distances of 10, 25, 50 and 100 yards.
 
A 124 gr 9mm FMJ at 1090 fps, fired level, will drop five feet about 250 yards in JBM. Probably less in real world, I know No 7 1/2 shot does not carry as far as the Journee Formula says.
 
Firsthand for a P229 w/ 4” barrel, I walked numerous 115gr rounds past the 1 mile steel target at a recent fun shoot. So did numerous others.
 
There seems to be a decent amount of information suggesting that the maximum range of a 9mm pistol bullet is somewhere around 1.4 miles.

https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2002/DomnaAntoniadis.shtml

NRA Firearms Fact Book. Yew York. Second Edition. 1983.

"a 9 mm 120 grain bullet fired out of an average sized handgun at 45 degrees elevation will travel about 2300 meters before falling." 2300meters = 1.4 miles

Carter K. Lord. Maximum Range of Ammunition. National Law Enforcement & Corrections Technology Center. January 1998.
"9mm Luger 124 gr RN 1120fps 2400 yards"
2400yards = 1.4 miles

I think it would be better to err on the side of caution.
 
whatever source you want to hang your hat on, I always cringe when i read or hear about someone who has a "backyard" range, and it's less than a mile to the next property/highway. and not just in a straight line, but in a widening cone from the point of fire.

it's not the rounds that hit the target and backstop that are the problem, it's the ones that miss. sure, you are a great shot, until you try to speed up and fire off a round before you are back on target, and it goes over the backstop. where will it end up?

take a look at the link i posted above, it has some interesting diagrams towards the end. does your backyard look like that?
 
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