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Errant Bullet Travels 1.5 Miles, Kills Amish Girl

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Boy, there sure are some here who are out for blood.

Better hope and pray none of you EVER make a mistake of any kind whether firearm related or not.
 
Jcwit, that ... "mistake" took the life of a 15 year old girl. You don't fire a gun off into the air, you just cannot gaurantee where the round will go or whether or not it will hit anything.
No one versed in firearms safety should disagree about that....I should think.....
 
Point missed entirely!

Mistakes whether intentional or otherwise cause harm and injury and even death daily.

One more for the road?
I'll only talk in the cell while driving for a second?
I'll only go over the speed limit while there's no traffic?

The list can go on and on forever----I should think------.
 
In rural Ohio?? Uh...everybody. Probably be easier to find out who didn't have one.
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What century is rural Ohio in? Is it also normal to fire a rifle there at 10PM? :rolleyes: Like I said, it couldn't be hard to narrow down the potential shooter list.
 
Rural Ohio, of course, like the rest of the world, is in the 21st century, when muzzle loaders are very popular. Ohio, like neighboring Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky, is very fertile deer country, and muzzle loader season sees thousands of them harvested.

In that part of the country, venison packs freezers for a good part of the year, and much of it was taken with black powder.

As part of your shooting education, you should understand that "muzzle loader" does not mean "flintlock". Modern muzzle loaders are sophistocated, accurate, and, as evidenced by this tragic accident, effective.
 
Mythbusters debunked the firing of a gun perpendicular to the ground and killing or hurting anyone...
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I saw that episode and it proved no such thing.

For one thing, they never recovered any rifle bullets so they collected zero information on the lethality of descending rifle bullets.

Second, their assumption of non-lethality depended on the bullet tumbling on descent. Hatcher's testing proved that at least some bullets don't tumble on descent but remain spin-stabilized and descend base first. That makes them much more efficient projectiles and that will increase the speed of descent (terminal velocity) by more than a factor of 2--increasing impact energy by more than a factor of 4.

Finally, as pointed out, it's quite hard to fire a gun perfectly perpendicular to the ground. If it's fired upward but not perpendicularly then there are two other factors that must be considered.

First of all, the bullet will almost certainly remain spin-stabilized and will probably come down nose first. That increases terminal velocity and impact energy even more than what would be expected from a spin-stabilized, base first descent.

Second, at least some of the horizontal velocity imparted to the bullet will still be present when the bullet descends and will increase the total impact velocity. The resulting impact velocity will be the vector sum of the terminal velocity and the remaining horizontal velocity.
 
Even the Amish are heavily armed here. My brother met one that owned a Beretta 92. Seems fireams technology is not afowl of their religion. They like guns, just not war. They love to hunt.
 
For one thing, they never recovered any rifle bullets so they collected zero information on the lethality of descending rifle bullets.
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You must have seen a different Myth Busters than the rest of us. They did indeed recover bullets that had been fired vertically (out of a Garand). They did it out on a dry lake bed. And none of them had returned to earth with enough energy to cause anything more than bruising wounds. And although their wind tunnel tests involved tumbling bullets, the bullets that fell to the lake bed showed no signs of tumbling, and were recovered from perfect little .30 caliber holes.

They even calculated the speed of the falling rounds and fired them at pig heads at the same speed. They didn't break the skin, let alone penetrate the skull.

This was agonizing for them, for you could tell that they desperately wanted a different outcome. In the end, they quibbled about the results, and reached a conlusion that was obvious from their data: bullets fired perfectly vertical pose little danger, but as the angle diverges from ninety degrees and gets flatter, lethality jumps dramatically.
 
Squirrel hunting with .22's is pretty common. There is a case where you're shooting upwards. Suspect a .22 would be considerably less lethal.
 
kb58....Ohio does not allow rifles for hunting, many people use muzzle loaders for hunting because you can get a 50-cal round that is accurate to 200-300 yards if you are skilled enough to take the shot. Even with open sights, ML's are good for 100 yds.

ML's are cheap too, you can get a modern in-line for $100-200 and shoot them for about $0.15-0.25 per round.
 
Sad for everyone.

( ... many here have had Ooooops-Moments in their lives ... and it did not kill anyone.
Punishment only punishes someone who is already punished by what he did....)
 
I am very much surprised that he has not been charged with involuntary manslaughter. Here in Ohio, a guy was charged with involuntary manslaughter for losing control of his little pickup and getting into a wreck (no alcohol or drugs involved).

At this point, they probably have not matched the projectile ballistically to the weapon, if at all they can. If it is a sabot, there will be no rifling engraving on the bullet at all, so they can't match it to the rifle. All they have from what I read is that he said he shot into the air. It was not deer gun season here. I am wondering what he was doing that ended up with a loaded firearm (muzzle loading or not). Maybe practicing as the next gun season was on the weekend following the accident. But if he was practicing, why did he load one up and leave it in the rifle?

So other than him saying he shot a gun into the air there is nothing to hang the charge(s) on yet.

They will have to calculate out the angle of wound entry -vs- the distance and location of the person who said he shot and see if it was ballistically possible for him to have done it.

Otherwise, it could have been a poacher who was shooting around dusk. There is lots of poaching that occurs in that area.

But it was negligence if it is matched. Someone above mentioned about frozen ground. So far this winter, we have only had 1 or 2 nights that was cold enough to skin ice on a water bucket. The dirt around here is not frozen

2000 fps (or a bit more) is a reallistic figure for the new(er) inlines, there are not that many ball and cloth cutting muzzle loader traditionalists here. The inlines are 200 yd guns, they can retain upwards of 1500 ft-lbs of energy at 200 yds. So even though being limited to one shot, using an inline ML as opposed to a shotgun stretches the distance out a bit.

My wife and I are down that way a lot and have some acquaintances within the Amish and Mennonite community. The Amish suffer a lot from "the English". The folks around here (read that city folk) drive like fools in Amish country and end up having lots of accidents with the buggies. The area has been turned into a tourist trap, hence the tragedy of the mother.

I am also surprised that there hasn't been more of these types of accidents. When I used to hunt that area, you could here firearms being used that definitely were not shotguns, muzzleloaders or straight walled pistol cartridge firearms. There were gunshots that sure sounded like a large centerfire cartridge. You could tell be the degree of the boom.

Additionally, in my opinion, discussing the legal aspect of this tragedy as well as the logistical aspect of it is pertinent. After all, those on the forum who "Take The High Road" simply wouldn't walk out back and fired a round into the air. Other wise there would have simply been one or 2 posts showing ballistics and that would be it.
 
"Squirrel hunting with .22's is pretty common. There is a case where you're shooting upwards. Suspect a .22 would be considerably less lethal."


Who in their right mind fires a .22 into the air? You shoot squirrels on the ground unless you have a mountain for a backstop behind the tree.

Read the .22 LR ammo box - 1 and 1/2 mile range. Less lethal? Maybe, but less lethal is still lethal. Just less.
 
You shoot squirrels on the ground unless you have a mountain for a backstop behind the tree.
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Uhhhh.....squirrels live in trees, at least around here.

I don't typically squirrel hunt. Suppose you could go to shotgun if you don't mind picking shot.

After reading some of the borderline hysterical replies here, I think I'd better sell all my guns. Might accidentally shoot one somewhere other than inside a totally enclosed concrete building and have a stray bullet.
 
You must have seen a different Myth Busters than the rest of us.
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I watched the same one you saw, but I was specifically looking for their results from the rifle to see if what they found agreed with Hatcher's testing. So it stood out when they never found any rifle bullets.
They did indeed recover bullets that had been fired vertically (out of a Garand). They did it out on a dry lake bed.
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They did, indeed FIRE bullets from a Garand but they never recovered any of them. The only bullets recovered were from the pistol testing.
This was agonizing for them, for you could tell that they desperately wanted a different outcome.
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It was agonizing because they knew that descending bullets can be fatal. They had documented instances of people being killed by descending bullets. So they knew that their results weren't telling the whole story.

Had they recovered some rifle bullets they would have likely duplicated Hatcher's results and gotten a result more consistent with what they knew to be true.

Here are the results from their website.

http://mythbustersresults.com/episode50

In the case of a bullet fired at a precisely vertical angle (something extremely difficult for a human being to duplicate), the bullet would tumble, lose its spin, and fall at a much slower speed due to terminal velocity and is therefore rendered less than lethal on impact. However, if a bullet is fired upward at a non-vertical angle (a far more probable possibility), it will maintain its spin and will reach a high enough speed to be lethal on impact. Because of this potentiality, firing a gun into the air is illegal in most states, and even in the states that it is legal, it is not recommended by the police. Also the MythBusters were able to identify two people who had been injured by falling bullets, one of them fatally injured. To date, this is the only myth to receive all three ratings at the same time.​

Note that they say that the bullet will tumble. This was based exclusively on the recovered pistol bullets since no rifle bullets were recovered. Hatcher's testing conclusively proved that at least some rifle bullets will remain spin-stabilized and fall base first.

Note also that they specifically note that they are aware of descending bullet fatalities.
 
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bthest86 said:
Yeah but squirrels spend a lot of time on the ground too.
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Typical practice in eastern KY where I grew up was to hunt them with shotguns in the early part of the season when they were in the canopy harvesting hanging nuts. We hunted with rifles after the leaves were off and they were primarily on the ground gathering fallen mast.

My wife asked me about this because she heard the story on the radio. She asked me if shooting a muzzle loader was the only way to unload it. When I asked why she wanted to know she told me the radio report she heard indicated he was unloading it, presumably after an unsuccessful hunt.
 
I know muzzle-loaders in the old days could be unloaded with a special ramrod with a cork screw or barbed prong at the end. Of course you had to douse the gun in water to drown the powder for obvious reasons.

I guess the easiest way would be to just shoot it.
 
Well, call me a bad guy that's lucky, I guess, cause I have spent alot of my youthful years shooting squirrels out of trees with a .22 caliber rifle in SE Oklahoma.... Yes, they do spend some time on the ground and I've taken them that way too. But, I've shot more in the trees than I ever have on the ground.... The tree served as the back stop on the majority of occasions. However, I'm more than certain that more than one shot went airborne and into the surrounding woods.

Just saying

The Dove
 
You were lucky if you shot into the air. Even if you hit the squirrel and the limb or trunk, a round limb or trunk will deflect a bullet god knows where. You were lucky you didn't hit somebody, or some livestock, or a car or house window. Or maybe you did and never found out. The boxes I had as a kid said 1.5 miles on them.


As far as this comment goes...

"Uhhhh.....squirrels live in trees, at least around here.

I don't typically squirrel hunt. "


I almost don't know what to say to this. So I'll take a deep breath and just assume you responded without thinking.

I grew up hunting squirrels and was taught by good squirrel hunters over 50 years ago. The only safe way to shoot a squirrel up in a tree is to get up on one side of a hollow and use the other side as a backstop. In other words, your shot is level across the hollow with the tree in the middle.
 
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