Idiots that shoot their guns off randomly in the air.

[warrior1]

One came down in my spa. I heard the sound last night but I thought it was a bird hitting the window. I found the hole in the top of the spa and the bullet inside. It was either a 38 or 357. Yes, I would have killed me had I been in there last night.

[Wcross]

1. It is disturbing behavior.

They have no concern about other peoples lives. We had a case near me where a man was "firing off his gun in celebration" at a party on his own property. The police were called and the man was killed. Apparently they yelled for him to drop the gun but he turned towards them.

[Alexander]

2. I've been to two parties where idiots broke them up by shooting into the air.

The last one I was at, my friends who lived there got in trouble, despite the fact that they repeatedly asked this gang of Mexican guys that nobody knew to leave.

Finally they did, but as they were leaving, they decided to unload into the air.

The cops were there within a half hour, and my buddies now get to fight it in court.

Another one I was at was literally three houses away from mine. The neighbors, nice enough people, invited us over, in case we were the type to call the cops whenever a party happens. We accepted.

Well, I was plastered all to hell at 1 in the morning, so you can imagine what I was thinking when I saw a guy 10 feet away randomly point upwards and pull the trigger.

It took me a minute to realize what just happened, but the stampede of partygoers urgently trying to leave helped me snap out of it and I got home FAST.

I don't know why people do this shit. Do they think it's cool to break up parties and get the cops called? Are they pissed because they are obviously shady, nobody knows them and nobody at the party really wants them around?

It boggles the mind.

[KG]

3. unfortunately it's a constitutionally protect right for any moron to own a gun,

public safety be damned.

[zanne]

4. But, by law, we have to wear seatbelts...

And we have to wear helmets when we're on a motorcycle. People can't smoke in public because of the danger. There's a public swimming pool across the street from me. they removed the diving board because it's "dangerous". But any yahoo can walk around with a killing instrument in his pocket. Second Amendment, my ass.

[Paladin]

10. That's Just Not True

The Constitution does not afford the opportunity for "any moron to own a gun." Even the most radicalized members of DU's Well Regulated Keyboard Militia will admit that there are tens of thousands of restrictive gun laws on the books, and the Second Amendment hasn't been utilized to overturn any of them. Unfortunately, morons do still get their hands on guns, to the detriment of this country and its people.....

[zanne]

14. Ordinarily, I'd argue with you.

Unfortunately, I had surgery yesterday and I'm on Vicodin.

[Lautremont]

15. I thought you could go into a Wal-MArt and buy a gun in the States.

Have I been misinformed? I'm sure there are some restrictions on murderers having guns, and probably kids have to get a signature from their parents or an older friend, but what other restrictions are there? Oh yeah - you can't be drunk. But what else?

I'm actually serious. I thought just about anyone could get a gun at basically the corner store.

[Reverend_Smitty]

18. I think it varies some degree by state...

I know my state, (NJ) has pretty tough gun laws. I was talking to my uncle who wanted to buy a BB gun and they wanted him to wait 30 days before he could buy it or something like that or maybe they required him to get a gun license first. I'm not sure of the details about it but he just went over to Pennsylvania and bought the same BB gun the same day no questions asked. So it definitely varies from state to state.

[Jamastiene]

28. You can in my hometown, but you do

have to get a permit first. That takes 10 days to process. So, in the state of North Carolina, you must be able to count to 10.

[benEzra]

33. You have to be 18 to buy a long gun, or 21 to buy a handgun...

I thought you could go into a Wal-MArt and buy a gun in the States.

Have I been misinformed? I'm sure there are some restrictions on murderers having guns, and probably kids have to get a signature from their parents or an older friend, but what other restrictions are there? Oh yeah - you can't be drunk. But what else?

I'm actually serious. I thought just about anyone could get a gun at basically the corner store.

You have to be 18 to buy a long gun, or 21 to buy a handgun. You have to have a clean record; people with records of any felonies--even writing a bad check--or certain misdemeanor crimes may not so much as touch a gun, or a single round of ammunition, and can be arrested on the spot; you also cannot ever have been adjudicated mentally incompetent.

To verify your clean record, you have to pass an FBI background check, usually administered by a phone call to a centralized database, though some states issue ID's or gun permits instead. You present proof of ID to the dealer, fill out a BATFE Form 4473 with a good bit of information about you (primarily so the gun can be traced to you via its serial number if it's ever used in a crime), wait for the word to come back that you're clean. Then the seller can sell you the gun.

Wal-Mart does sell rifles and shotguns (not handguns), as do many national sporting goods franchises, but the majority of gun dealers are small mom-and-pop type businesses.

The type of gun you can buy is restricted a lot more than some people think. All automatic weapons, guns over .50 caliber (except shotguns and some hunting guns), rifles with barrels shorter than 16 inches, shotguns with barrels shorter than 18 inches, non-handguns shorter than 26 inches overall, etc. are VERY tightly controlled in the U.S. under the National Firearms Act; possession without government authorization (BATFE Form 4) is a 10-year Federal felony.

Once you buy a gun, are a lot of restrictions on what you can do with it. In all but two states (Vermont and Alaska), you can't carry a weapon concealed on your person without a state-issued license, and a majority of state also restrict open carry. The discharge of a firearm is also quite regulated, and there are other regs (e.g., leaving one in reach of a child is a felony in many states).

[Paladin]

36. Don't Get Me Wrong---I Still Think Firearms Are Way Too Easy.....

...to acquire in the U.S.; I was just making the point that there is no constitutionally-mandated right to have all the guns you want. DU's resident Keyboard Militia members may argue to the contrary, but thery're wrong....

[Solon]

17. To own a gun, maybe, but to FIRE it anywhere, I don't think so...

In my area, if you fire off a gun, you get your ass thrown in jail for at least 90 days, and have to pay thousands of dollars in fines. The fine is even stiffer depending on circumstances, and if anyone dies due to the misuse of a firearm, that's manslaughter. By the way, even a claim of self defense wouldn't necessarily get you in the clear, if you kill someone in self defense, you may be able to get out of the manslaughter charge, but you might still be charged with firing off a gun in a residential area.

[Jamastiene]

29. The laws are different depending on where you live.

Where I live, inside the city limits, you cannot fire a gun. Outside the city limits, you can shoot all you want.

[Solon]

30. I live about a mile from city limits...

and some yahoos down the street from me fired off guns on New Year's, at midnight, and they ended up in jail for a while because of that stunt. In my state, its not so much whether you are in an incorporated city that matters, but whether its a residential, non-rural area, firing off a gun in a residential area is a criminal offense because of that.

[benEzra]

35. There's also the fact that ANY negligent discharge is a crime,

regardless of where it occurs. Around here, outside of city limits, it's perfectly legal to shoot on your own property at a safe backstop. It is NOT legal to shoot in such a way that your bullets come down in somebody else's house.

[Solon]

37. You bring up a good point...

Though I don't think its legal to shoot a gun in my area, period, outside of shooting ranges, which we have plenty of. Part of the reason is because the area I live in is an older suburb, where houses on the same street are maybe 20 feet from each other, and houses across the street or behind us are maybe 100 feet away. Not to mention that none of these houses are bulletproof, much less soundproof. Simply put, there are very few places around here where it is safe to discharge a firearm that WON'T hit someone's house. In fact, the only place I can think of is the basement, but I wouldn't want to deal with concrete shards and ricochets from that.

When all your nearest neighbors are close enough to you that all you have to do is throw a rock to break one of their windows, then maybe it isn't a good idea to allow people to target practice in the neighborhood, even taking safety into consideration. Shooting ranges are either indoors in reinforced buildings, or in more remote areas where its unlikely that an errant round will hit somebody or their property.

[Paladin]

40. "MAYBE It Isn't A Good Idea"???

Jeez, you appear to be leaving the issue of target practice with firearms in your densely-populated neighborhood open to some degree, perhaps if the shooters somehow take "safety into consideration." You couldn't bring yourself to state the blindingly obvious, i.e., "It's a bad fucking idea, and anybody who does it should be prosecuted"?

Do me a big favor and don't ever move to my community, OK?

[Solon]

41. Overreaction maybe?

Have you ever heard of understatement? Hello, I don't even OWN a gun, never have, never will. The only arms I have are swords and daggers. My idea of target practice is to throw my throwing daggers at a target in my basement.

[benEzra]

34. It's not a right to use one negligently or wrongly...

unfortunately it's a constitutionally protect right for any moron to own a gun, public safety be damned.

It's not a right to shoot one in the air, or at somebody else's house, though. Just like it's a constitutionally protected right to speak freely or to publish a magazine, but it is illegal to libel or slander somebody or to publish child porn. FWIW, the overwhelming majority of gun owners don't do stupid stuff with them.

What I don't understand is why don't people who want to make noise with a gun just (1) shoot blanks, (2) shoot at a safe backstop instead of up in the air, or (3) go get some fireworks, dudes.

I live in an area where households that don't own guns are more likely to cause raised eyebrows than households that do :P, but there aren't bullets raining down around here. Tons of fireworks, though, along with a collectively thumbed nose at NC's no-fireworks-that-leave-the-ground law...

[Reverend_Smitty]

5. I never understood doing that...

don't people understand basic gravity? When firing a gun straight up in the air gravity will cause that bullet to fall back down at the same speed at which it was fired thus potentially killing someone when said bullet falls back toward the earth.

[Random_Australian]

6. hate to be a pedant but I'll just say that friction is non-conservative so

it comes down with less.

Still firmly in the realm of not-good though.

[Jamastiene]

11. Whooo, boy.

Sounds like a physics cat fight to me.

:popcorn:

I'm just kidding, by the way. :hi:

[Reverend_Smitty]

12. I'll admit physics was never my best subject in school...

but a bullet will come down with enough speed to put a serious hurtin' on whoever happens to be standing under it.

[Random_Australian]

13. Agreed. Mind you, I don't like the idea of lots of high powered projectile

weapons about the place anyway, pointed up or otherwise.

[krispos42]

24. It depends on the angle.

If the shooter is close to vertical, the bullet goes up, stops, and starts falling down. Interstingly, they come down on their side instead of point-first. That ruins the aerodyamics quite a bit. It still isn't fun being smacked in the head by a bullet moving at 150 mph, but that's a hell of a lot slower than the 2,000+ mph most rifle bullets move at when they leave the muzzle.

If the shooter if aiming more horizontal, the bullet will follow a ballistic arc, remaining point-forward and gyroscopically stabilized until it hits the ground and it will be moving a lot faster than 200 mph when it hits!


they discussed this on 'Mysthbusters' :-)

[Esra Star]

31. Relatively dumbed down maths available at this site

http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/dec98/913922171.Ph.r.html

[Recovered Repug]

21. Actually, no it wont fall at the same speed.

Air friction will cause it to reach a terminal velocity much lower than the muzzle velocity at which it was fired. I still wouldn't like to get hit by it, though. That's assuming it was fired absolutely straight into the air. However, most yahoos fire at an angle so the effect will be different. Any CSI (Las Vegas version) fans might recall a senario like this being covered.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

22. I suppose the bozos who fire guns into the air think that

the bullets just keep going off infinitely into outer space like little Voyager satellites.

[EFerrari]

7. It could have been worse. They could have been sober.

:shrug:

[Jamastiene]

8. Sounds like evidence to me.

I know it might be a leap that police would do anything about it, but it would be worth it to let them know. Some places have laws about that because people can be killed that way. I don't think they have one of those laws where I live because asking red state morans not to get stinking drunk and shoot guns randomly would be too much to ask. It's all they are good at, unfortunately. :eyes:

[Pushed To The Left]

9. They need to make a special gun to sell for idiots who shoot in the air

It would have a feature that would cause the bullets to come out the back end of the gun if it was fired in the air! :evilgrin:

[warrior1]

16. A officer

came by this morning to pick it up. Unfortunately the most he could do is make a report. He said this happens all the time.

[krispos42]

25. You mean a Polish dueling pistol?

:rofl:

Sorry, couldn't resist! Saw one in a novelty joke shop, and it stuck in my head. That and the 33-foot sailboat, which had 33 little feet protruding from the hull underneath!

[Generic Brad]

19. What goes up usually comes down

Unless it lodges into something up there.

[lildreamer316]

20. I know, One of them caused a bar husband worked at to get shut down.

He started a thing that got a police officer shot. Dumb ASS.

[GoneOffShore]

23. Happens every year in South Philly.

Somebody lets off straight up (or at a slight angle) and someone suffers the consequences of the bullet falling to earth.

News flash: Bullets and shot gun pellets do NOT reach escape velocity. And according to the Law of Gravity, what goes up, must come down. And when they do come down, in a crowded urban environment, they injure or KILL people. Let's see, what was that old saying, "Guns don't kill people, people do"? Yeah, it's right. Guns don't kill people, BULLETS kill people.

If we have licenses for 2 ton motorized projectiles what's stopping us from having licenses for things that can throw 2 oz projectiles? I've never quite caught that logic. Anyone care to explain it in a fashion that makes any kind of logical sense?

[krispos42]

26. Two ounces?

ooch, that smarts. You must enjoy punishment! :-)

Check any reasonably-busy thread in the Gungeon. That point is always made, and always countered.

[GoneOffShore]

38. I was going for the 2 ton/2oz thing

If I'd said a 1 ton vehicle, I'd have said a 1 oz bullet.

[reformedrepub]

27. sounds like the neighborhood

I used to patrol......

[Name removed]

32. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[NewWaveChick1981]

39. Geez, warrior1! I'm glad you weren't in it!

:( There are at least two cases I can remember of people being shot by stray gunfire here in the last few years, and both times it was from some idiot shooting up in the air. One was someone who was "celebrating" July 4, and a family on its way home from the fireworks caught the bullet in their car. The mother was struck in the head and killed. Police eventually caught the person and arrested her. The other one was a child playing near his house. They eventually found that guy too. :(