Tires as backstop unsafe?

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Cowboybebop

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Did some shooting recently and used old car tires, stacked on their sidewalls, as a place to staple paper targets.


After shooting a few hundred rounds of FMJ 40 S&W and 10 mm out of pistols I noticed that none of the rounds penetrated the tires! There was not a single hole anywhere to be found. So much for shooting the tires out like you see cops do on TV.


So is it stupid to use car tires as a backstop? Do bullets have the potential to come back to the shooter?
 
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I find it hard to believe that none penetrated, maybe you just couldn't make out the holes?

In any case, if they are not going through, they are being deflected somewhere else and yes at some point they could come back at you. Bring one into the garage, shut the door, put on your safety glasses and shoot it with a BB gun.
 
Disclaimer: I design tires for a living. . .

Tire rubber will show a surprising degree of self-healing around a small hole like that, so you may have been hard pressed to find the entry wound. I've seen a .40 S&W fired into a truck tire by a fellow shooter and tire designer. The entry wound was almost invisible (and this to people who make a living looking at tires), and there was not exit wound.
 
We have a stack of heavy equipment tires behind the target area at our range. These were off of equipment used in rock quarries, like 24 ply or more. Occasionally one of them will throw a bullet back at you. Its not a problem unless you are very close, like at combat ranges. You can see lots of bullets stuck in these tires.
 
I use tires as erosion control for my backstop of my rifle range. They are actually built into the backstop and filled with sand and work great. However as edwardware noted, they can appear to not show damage. That is not unusual at all.

We do not use the tires for backstops for handgun rounds.
 
Older shoot houses

All the older shoot houses were built out of nothing but tires.

I have not heard of them failing,in all the years they were being used.

I do believe the tires were filled with sand,that would be my choice and I see that as being very sound.
 
Not trying to instigate anything here, but we have two diametrically opposed views on this subject. Since it's a matter of safety, it doesn't exactly give me the warm and fuzzies.

Tires either can reflect rounds back at the shooter(s), making them a downright awful choice as backstop material; or they cannot, making them a superb backstop material.

Does anyone have any firsthand experience with a rubber tire backstop resulting in a ricochet/reflection back at the shooter? Considering only one unfortunate round is needed to cut a life short, one occurrence is enough... But IS there one guaranteed confirmed occurrence?
 
Expired bowling pins is another "not so good" of a choice.
If you hit 'em straight on, the soak up the lead.
But if it's off to the side even a little bit, it'll ricochet.
(learned that the hard way) :eek:
 
I have them stacked and filled with sand as a backstop for over 20 years now without ever a problem with a ricochet.

v-fib
 
Yup we've had tires filled with dirt for years. At 200 + we have old rubber blocks from railroad crossings. Stuff is about 10" thick and 2x6' per panel.

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Back in the day (before we had $) most of the live fire shoot houses in the mil were made from tires. We fired 5.56, 45, 9mm, 12 gauge, and even frags (which could bounce back- lob in underhand please). My local PD has a tire shoothouse they built from defective tires gifted to them from the local goodyear plant (was kelly)Overseas, many ranges have tire walls as backstops today. Never saw an issue.
 
I remember the club North of Rio Rancho NM had tires. Early 90's I think.

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So much for shooting the tires out like you see cops do on TV.
Shooting through the sidewall involves only 1/4" rubber and rayon/nylon fabric. That should be easy to do.

Shooting through the tread involves penetrating a lot more rubber, plus several layers of steel web (belts). I can imagine that this would be far more difficult to penetrate, and could easily ricochet.
 
22-23 years ago my wife was shooting my .357 mag at stacked tires filled with sand, felt something hit my flannel shirt and there was a mushroomed bullet laying on the ground beside me.
 
Good range design would be Tires filed with dirt for a backstop. covered with about 2 feet of dirt. The dirt will stop most projectiles. The tires will stop the odd few that make it into 2 feet of dirt
 
Tire shoot houses: https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs...=yhs-mozilla-002&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-002

Just because you can doesn't mean you should - in the military it's used for live fire training, soldiers wear protective gear and eye pro, and the special operations community will lose one soldier to direct friendly fire about every year.

If you are going to fill them with dirt it then goes to do you need the tires at all - and will you be building something that violates local ordinances on their proper disposal? That issue has radically changed in the last twenty years.

No, there aren't diametrically opposing views here, the issue is that ANY backstop can produce a ricochet and proper engineering isn't commonly used by Joe Propertyowner - because he's not a ballistician, environmental scientist, or legal expert.

Those who experienced bullets coming back at you - what kind were they and were there better choices? Jacketed bullets are notorious for fragmenting jackets and spraying them all over a range, much less gilding solids bouncing off pipe stand target racks, etc. The increase in shooters setting up targets at 5-7 yards is also promoting more instances of rounds striking shooters. If you have a 25 yard range, set the targets up 7 yards from the line instead of pushing them back to the berm. And make the target stands out of something that bullets shoot thru - unlike the newer versions that use steel fence posts.

You need standoff from ricochets regardless of what it's made of.
 
I used to shoot at tires until I had a .38 bullet come back and hit me in the chest. Left a fair bruise too.
 
Had a buddy shoot an old tire on the ground with a .380, it bounced back an wized by his head. Velocity unknown but it does not take much to get serious injuries to the face or head.

I would imagine that dirt filled tires would have dramatically less "spring" effect, the dirt would back up the tire making the bullet more likely to penetrate the tire and be captured either in the sand or in the layers of the tire.

where In a deflated tire a low velocity, low sectional density bullet would have a larger likelihood of not penetrating, instead deforming the tire until it's forward momentum stops, at this point the stored energy in the tire would send the bullet in the returning direction as the tire returned to tire shape.

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