On the night of the top of 2017, Texas Democratic Rep. Armando Martinez emerged from a house, suddenly feeling like he was hit with a heavy hammer.
He was taken to hospital. It turned out that a stray bullet fired by revelers of the New Year fell on his head and pierced the top of his skull in the upper layer of his brain, requiring surgery to remove it, according to CNN.
Martinez, who has recovered from his injury, has become another victim of the senseless bullets fired during the celebrations, where the celebrants release bullets into the air that inevitably falls to the ground and sometimes injures the people.
There are no good statistics on how many times this happened in the United States, but there have been many news reports of deaths caused by reckless glee over the years.
In an article published in The Trace magazine in 2015, two incidents of child murder were revealed by the reckless bullets in each.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a 2004 study showing that on the night of Rosh Hashanah 2004 and the first day of the year, reckless ceremonial bullets caused 19 deaths and one death in the United States.
36% of the victims were injured in the head, 26% in the legs and 16% in the shoulders. The Miami Herald of 2017 indicates that more than 20 people were killed in Iraq in 2003 by political fire.
What is the maximum height that a bullet can reach?
Regardless of the puzzling question of why some people do such a reckless practice, which sometimes causes deaths, you might also wonder what actually happens to the bullet being fired directly up. To any height up? What makes it fall to the ground? When and where to descend?
These are not necessarily simple questions to answer.
Specialized researchers have spent a lot of time studying the performance of lead fired horizontally, because this information is useful for improving the accuracy and range of shooters.
But when it comes to shooting straight into the air, there is not much data, because soldiers and police do not like it and do not need it, even hunters and shooting enthusiasts do not.
Gen. Julian Hatter had the curiosity and time to research. He had several experiments in Florida, shooting bullets from various weapons - ranging from guns to machine guns - and trying to measure the time the bullet took to return to the ground each time, in it.
In 1947, he said that a 30-caliber bullet fired from a straight-up rifle would reach 9,000 feet (2743.2 meters) in 18 seconds and then return to Earth within another 31 seconds. During the last few thousand Feet in the downward phase will achieve a "nearly constant" speed of 300 feet (91.4 meters) per second.
But James Walker, a doctoral researcher in mathematics who is director of engineering dynamics at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, says the height of a bullet fired straight up depends on the type of weapon, ammunition, and bullet weight .
The pistol, for example, can not be shot by the bullets that reach the machine.
When fired horizontally, once left to the nozzle of the weapon fired, the bullet begins to slow down due to air resistance and gravity, and the speed of a rifle bullet can drop to its initial half speed when it reaches a height of 500 meters, Walker says.
To estimate the maximum height of the bullet, Walker refers to a graph from the site Closefocusresearch, a ballistics company, showing that the 25-gauge ACP pistol could reach a maximum height of 287.2 feet (697 meters) 06 Rifle to more than 10.105 feet (3.080 meters).
But the bullet will fall on the ground afterwards
But no matter how high the bullet hits the air, it will inevitably fall on the ground.
Two important things must be noted at this stage:
First: The maximum height is not important to calculate the final velocity of the bullet when it falls on the ground, as the bullet will reach a fixed final speed based primarily on its shape and intensity rather than its maximum height.
Second, the bullet is unlikely to fall in the same position as the launch, even if the launch is vertically upward because the wind may change course, Walker says.
This makes it difficult to predict where the bullet will reach.
Returning to Texas, MP Martinez sought to protect citizens from senseless bullets by introducing legislation that would lift penalties for firing a firearm without a deliberate aim, that is, shooting ceremonial bullets.
So far, Martins has not been lucky to pass his legislation, but the man intends to try again in 2019.
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