Who shoots 22s up up and away

H4831 said:
NO, NO, NO. If you are hurt, or in some other dire straight, you must just lie there and quietly die, because if you signal for help by shooting in the air, you are putting people in so much danger!
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Oh ok, so it's the same situation as a home invasion. ;)
 
H4831 said:
IGo out with a boat on a glassy lake with a 22 and a box of shells. I will bet you can't drop one bullet close enough to you, to be visible when it hits the glassy water, with your fifty trys!QUOTE]

I have done this with a buddy. Each over our first shots went plop into the lake. Every other one too. Took us only one shot, not fifty to get it in the little lake. In fact we shot about about 10 each and every one hit the lake. So how much do you want to bet?

That said, yeah I have shot .22s up at squirrels. I figured where the bullet would go if I missed etc.
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H4831 said:
I know. We live in a world where the scare tactic is used for everything.
But I have never heard anything so ridiculous as being afraid to shoot a 22 rimfire straight up, because it might come down and hit you!
The odds would be something like one in several milion that you could drop a 22 bullet on yourself, and if you did, it would be about the same sensation as being bit by a fly. No, probably not that bad.
Go out with a boat on a glassy lake with a 22 and a box of shells. I will bet you can't drop one bullet close enough to you, to be visible when it hits the glassy water, with your fifty trys!
Years ago the US military wanted to see how long a 30-06 bullet stayed in the air. They went out to a platform on on a hight tide flood area and set up. They used scientific leveling defices and calculated any upper air wind speeds. After about three days of trying such things, and never getting one bullet to hit the water where they could see it, they gave up and went to a machine gun! With the machine gun they had success.
They also determined the damage a bullet may due on returning to the earth. They concluded that a 700 grain bullet from a 50 calibre gun could be lethal.
A normal, heavier hat, would protect a person from injury from the 150 grain fmj 30-06 bullet from a 30-06.
You people who are afraid to shoot a 22 in the air, how could you possibly stand the dangers of getting out of bed and driving to where you shoot?
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Shooting in to the air just shouldn't be done, regardless of any study. I give you Beirut as an example. There is a long standing tradition of shooting in to the air with rifles to celebrate and people die there on a regular basis as a result. What goes up must come down. I know that in the Beirut example we are probably dealing with a round which weighs 120+ grain area, which is significantly heavier than the 22lr in this discussion. I don't know how much energy would be in a 40 grain 22lr when it hits at terminal velocity (free fall) but I would NOT want it hitting my head, that's for sure.
 
lord-humungous said:
For me the concern would that shooting at anything more than horizontal to the horizon doesn't provide me with a known backstop so to speak. If I keep my .22 roughly level, I will be able to see what I hit. If I shoot it at a 45 degree or greater angle skywards, it could actually travel that "mile" that they warn us about on the back of the box.

So, no I wouldn't shoot a squirrel in a tree with a rifle because I won't know where the devil the bullet is going to land. And even if it has zero energy when it arrives, I'd still be pissed off if an errant bullet landed in my picnic.
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Yeah, funny you should mention a bullet ruining a picnic..... there is a club up on the Bruce peninsula that was shut down for months after someone found a round in a picnic table in a trailer park some distance away.
 
The Mythbuster's "proved" that a falling bullet was not dangerous until they met with a surgeon who treated several victims of bullets shot in the air. He showed x rays of people with bullets in their skulls.

Basically, if shot straight up (90 degrees to the ground) the terminal velocity of the falling bullet will not be high enough to cause damage. However the bullet shot at an angle (say 10 degrees off vertical) will still have significant horizontal velocity when it comes back down and this can be enough to kill people. If I take a 308 and shoot it at a 45 degree angle and measure what is happening when the bullet hits the ground I will find that it might only be traveling at terminal velocity DOWNWARDS but still moving at several hundred feet per second HORIZONTALLY... Ouch...

Jeff
 
Canadian Bush Wacker said:
I am changing my name to dancing with bullets! I have done it with everything from arrows, pellet guns, 22's ,243's, 303 fmj, and a box of tracers, But I stopped after using the 12 gauge rilfed slug gun! after six of those in the sky! You feel the thumps in the ground when they come back!

Hey, anyone want to go for tree rats, I got a new 410 sxs I want to try!
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That's intelligent.
 
I've head shot grouse out of trees with a .270, and shot crows out of trees at 300 yards with a .223

None of this occurred in downtown Beirut, so nobody was hurt...
 
im with H4831 as well. hell some times when bush push hunting we shoot hundreds of 22s up in the air just to make noise.

If i was in the city maby ide worry... but in the woods..... ya not likely.


were are u guys posting this stuff from? must all live in the city or something.
 
So I guess you guys would cringe if you saw me shooting at clay pigeons in the air with a 22?

I wouldn't do it facing town or near civilization, but out in the bush where there's no roads, I don't worry about it.
 
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