This may seem a little light for GQ, but I do want a factual answer for this. Whenever I’ve seen celebrations that involve firing weapons into the air, usually after some sort of military victory or coup, I always wondered where those bullets landed. I assume they don’t achieve escape velocity and go out into space, so they must come down somewhere.
Additionally, has anyone ever been killed by raining bullets?
This has been covered many times in GQ, a search may turn up some of the old threads. It’s been a while, I believe.
But the answer is they come down all around. People are hit every year in the US from falling bullets, in other countries where the celebrations are more extensive, many people are killed.
The Master speaks. 
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=241380&goto=newpost
Found it in the archives. Thanks to all. t-keela, I’m a little worried that so many bullets seem to be falling on Nigerian polio victims, but that’s another thread…
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
To bad they don’t all find there way to such a fine place!
I have to wonder about the veracity of this, or of other similarly reported events like this. Wouldn’t the bullet have to travel absolutely, perfectly, straight up to come back down upon the shooter? How would the shooter do this? Any degree of tilt whatsoever would fire the bullet at an angle. The bullet would travel so far that even a fraction of a degree would greatly scew the course. Let’s pretend the earth is flat and the bullet goes to 300 feet of altitude fired at an angle of 1 degree. So… that’s 300.05 feet of travel. Yeah, minor, but bear with me. That means there’s almost 5-1/4 feet of travel along the earth, at the bullet’s peak travel, assuming it when perfectly straight and not in an arc. Certainly it will fall in an arc, and I can’t do the math… would that add another 5-1/4 feet? So the guy’d have to move more than 10 feet. How fast does it take for the bullet to go up and back down?
Dang, trying to work on this excercise makes me realize there’s too much I don’t know. How far will a bullet really go up? What about wind? Oh well.
If you read the story again, you’ll see that it didn’t come back down on the shooter, it came down on another person at the rally.
t-keela might have meant this.
My apologies if this is not the case (either way, this is C-man’s take)
I’m still searching for the cite for this, but I remember reading about a small child who was killed in the Baton Rouge, LA area from a bullet falling. Tragic.
I live in the boonies where we traditionally fire our guns on New Years. On one of the past New Years when there was no wind, my friend fired his 12 gauge into the air, about a half minute later we were all showered with hot buckshot. Not deadly, but it definately didn’t feel good. And I have seen where rifle bullets have come back down through roofs. Additionally, to answer your last question, there was an incident in my area where a child (sorry don’t feel like looking it up) was killed by a rifle bullet on “reentry”. Try looking it up, happened sometime between 2000 - 2003 in northeast/central Oklahoma, to the best of my recollection.
you’ll find a lot of rebels use blanks when firing in the city; not all the time, but usually
Not usually, because of wind. Even if there’s no wind at ground level there’s a good chance of wind at higher altitudes. For instance, I used to launch model rockets a few years ago. In order to get them to land closest to you as possible, you would have to estimate the wind and then adjust the launch angle accordingly. Most of the time they would land probably within about 1/4 mile of me, and sometimes further. However, one day a rocket landed within 10 feet of the launch pad, and it was a breezy day. The same thing can happen with bullets fired in the air, it’s just sheer (un)luck.
Yep…That’s the one :o
Sorry about the link. I hope nobody was offended at the wrong turn into the pit.
What can say? I guess I’ll blame it on the hamsters.
yea, that’s the ticket…the hamsters did it
That Dante is a funny guy, huh? 
Where do the bullets land? Why, on the ground of course.
(Now which of those smileys represents ducking and running?)
What happed can be simulated with an older(better) computer. One of the games we used to play before this Pentium shit and when dos was boss was a q-basic game called Gorillas.bas. I sure would like to have it on this p-4 laptop as it is a true educational game. I believe the input would be ;
Angle 90 velocity 360 w/no wind.
Anyone know how to run this game on a new puter? could probably download necessary file in 6 seconds @ 52.0K (my connection speed)
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Try this link. http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a950414b.html
OK this involves a bow and arrow, not a bullet, but my dad told me about a kid on his street that took his brand new bow and arrow set outside to play with it, shot it straight up in the air, watched it fall down, right into his eye. This was back in the day when kids were allowed to play unsupervised with weapons, but still, a bullet would do the same thing. Worse, actually, because that kid only lost an eye.
Assuming an airless planet, a bullet fired directly up would come directly down. If you stood still for a couple minutes in this situation (time depends on muzzle velocity of bullet) it would come down through the line drawn through the barrel, usually also drawn through the right side of the shooter’s body.
A whole lot of things come into play in real life : imperfections in the bullet (increased air drag on one side), imperfections in the barrel, imperfections in the aim, and the effects of wind (many different vectors to add to the bullet there). There are probably more. I wouldn’t be outside or under anything that wouldn’t stop the bullets at point blank range in the city where those bullets were fired.
Found my cite : http://2theadvocate.com/stories/012104/new_vigil001.shtml. The child that died was hit by a bullet someone else fired.
Somehow this question has been sidetracked to whether it’s possible to kill yourself after shooting a gun straight up into the air. I believe the few stories I’ve read about have involved an innocent bystander getting hit.