A stray bullet that injured a NASCAR fan in her motor home at Texas Motor Speedway may have been from a rifle of a target shooter, police said on Tuesday...If it hit a berm first, I don't see how it would have had enough energy to still go that far. Let's see how this one develops.
The man told detectives on Tuesday that he fired five or six rounds from a .50 caliber Vulcan single-shot rifle near a rifle range about five miles from the speedway from about 10 a.m. to 11 a.m., police said.
It looks like her husband didn't waste any time in blaming the gun.
[Via Lane]
I don't think so. 5 miles? Even at a 45 degree angle, it doesn't add up. I'm good at physics. With an average 50 BMG round at sea level, I come up with about half that. I think Obama and Company are coming after the .50's. Don't worry, it's so the terrorists won't get them.
ReplyDeleteBut the terrorists who work for the gov will be exempt, of course.
ReplyDeleteI have fired many .50 cals. and 5 miles is a stretch by about 2 and 1/2 miles. Even if it hit the mound and bounced on past it still would be hard to believe it could travel 5 miles.
ReplyDeleteNot to mention that at 5 miles it would be traveling so slow that it could not go through much of anything let alone enter the human body.
Once emotions get involved, reason flies out the window.
ReplyDelete"HE SAD FACT IS CAR DEALERS AND CAR SHOWS HAVE NO IDEA WHO THEY ARE SELLING THESE THINGS TO, OR WHAT LEVEL OF EXPERIENCE THEY HAVE WITH DRIVING A THREE-TON WHEELED DEATH MACHINE" would make a perfectly comparable argument as to why we should ban all automobiles bigger than small Japanese cars.
I dunno. To deny it was this person @ 5 miles is to say they were either firing closer to the impact or there was another .50 cal shooter in the area.
ReplyDeleteNo matter how it happened, one of these punched a hole through someone and their RV. How the heck did it get there?
My .22LR boxes say they will go 1.25 miles, I always assume that range is with artillery trajectory around 45 degrees, not hitting anything but air.
I have zero experience with .50 cal, I will leave the math to the physics folks.
At least someone manned up enough to admit it might have been his.
I personally believe in this case it is AD by DA with weapon not aimed at anything but sky.
5 miles? REally? C'mon!
ReplyDeleteAdm. Husband E. Kimmel was standing at his window on 7DEC41, well WITHIN the five mile range talked about here, a round from either a .50 cal of ours or a round from a Jap plane came through the glass hit him in the chest and bounced off. Remember he was closer than five miles.
ReplyDeleteHe stated, "It would have been better if it had killed me." As it was, it didn't even bruise him.
Five miles? Really? C'mon!
If the bullet that struck that woman came from the gun of the man at the range, it arrived by U.S. Postal Service.
whole damn thing is just too convenient-it just happened to hit the trailer of an anti gunner ready to instantly create an anti-.50 website-'real gunguys' are using this as a call to ban .50s on their 'freedom states alliance website-don't know how they'd do it but i'd look into whether she was really wounded by the round, the condition of the round and whether the moss's know the shooter, who they're quick to credit as being a decent guy on their website-yeah, right, some guy shoots my wife I'm going to tell everybody how good he is and blame his gun-especially if he's a .50 shooter and i hated .50s-this whole story just smells.
ReplyDeleteI want to know how, after traveling 5 mi., it entered through the roof and the wall (must be one of those majik self-guided boolits) at the same time, had the energy to shatter her arm, and then stopped in the opposing wall???? In an RV??? Are you kidding, if it had enough energy left to shatter her arm a +600gr 50 bullet would have gone clear through the wall. This story is sooo full of holes!
ReplyDeleteUnless it was staged. -s-
ReplyDeleteThis needs to be fought.
ReplyDeleteSomeone with land (at least five miles in one direction) needs to team up with someone with a .50 BMG rifle, fire the same ammo used in Dallas, and prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that there is no way a .50 BMG round injured a woman from five miles away.
We know what the alternative is...
BLM land should fill the bill.
ReplyDeleteNeglecting air resistance, shooting at a 45 degree angle, and using d = v^2 / g gives: (3000 ft/sec)^2 / 32.2 (ft/sec)^2 = 279503 feet = 52.9 miles. Of course air resistance has a _huge_ effect on the result but it is not immediately obvious that a bullet could not travel 5 miles.
ReplyDeleteRef: trajectory; .50 BMG
"Anonymous" needs to study physics a little more.
Neglecting air resistance is the key. 105mm howitzers can reach 5mi, but only using a ballistic trajectory. Granted, the muzzle velocity of the 105 is lower (almost half) of the .50BMG, but the 105 fires a 14.97 kg projectile, vs. the 52 gram .50BMG. Since drag force =~ Cd*A*p*v^2 for high velocities, a measure of mass / frontal area is useful to determine how much the projectile is affected by drag. The higher this number, the less affected the projectile is (f=ma, so f will be a proportional constant with m varying and a increasing or decreasing)
ReplyDeleteusing m/((d/2)^2) we find 5.43 g/mm^2 for the 105 shell and 1.28 g/mm^2 for the .50BMG. Which means the .50BMG is decelerated by drag four times as much as the 105. Even if the .50BMG starts out faster, it's going to lose velocity a LOT faster than the 105. So 5 miles (towards the outer edge of the 105's range) is incredibly for the .50 BMG.