Palestinian Terrorists Shoot At and Hit Child

[Xiahou]

Why, what's the terminal velocity of a bullet?

Mythbusters did a show on it where, using a verticle wind tunnel, determined it to be about 150fps and that it's most stable position is it's side- that is to say it's likely to fall sideways. Using that speed, they fired bullets into a pig carcass with an air gun at that speed and it either bounced right off altogether or just barely broke the skin while bouncing off.

They did find incidents where people were killed by upward fired bullets- but they surmised that the bullets were actually fired at an angle instead of straight up considering that the bullets had travelled a great distance (mile?)before hitting their victim. A bullet fired at an angle wouldn't lose its velocity to gravity the same way one fired straight up would- so when gravity brings it to the ground it could still be moving at a lethal speed...

Since you asked though, I did some Googling where various eggheads worked out the terminal velocity of bullets using mathematics and calculated them to be 240-300fps. That's still about the same speed that paintball pellets are fired at and many times slower than the almost 3000fps that rifle bullets travel when fired. At that speed(if accurate), I'd say it can definately break the skin- but it wouldnt penetrate deeply enough to be serious.

Bottom line on shooting upwards- it's not a good idea.

More relevant to the topic- Consider that the child was hit in the abdomen. A falling bullet would almost definitely hit in the head/shoulders area- not the stomach and the children would've been far too close for an 'not quite' straight up shot to hit them.