• Sibbo@sopuli.xyz
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    15 hours ago

    Who builds a gun range in a way that bullets can escape if shot from appropriate positions?

    • _cryptagion [he/him]@anarchist.nexus
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      10 hours ago

      They didn’t, the headline is shit and they shouldn’t have included that quote, because the gunfire came from a property that wasn’t the gun range.

    • LyD@lemmy.ca
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      15 hours ago

      I am pretty sure this is the gun range and you’re supposed to shoot in the direction of the blue arrow. That big mound of earth is where the targets would be and is supposed to catch stray bullets. Something tells me that redneck fuckery was involved.

      Found it on Google maps, I think I was right.

      • Triumph@fedia.io
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        15 hours ago

        It’s frankly amazing that this very pertinent information you revealed after the briefest of Google searches isn’t included in the “official” reporting.

      • AlDente@sh.itjust.works
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        13 hours ago

        Either fuckery, or a ricochet. My first time shooting tracers was eye-opening to how much bullets bounce around. This guy shooting a 50-cal is hit in his earmuffs after the berm launches the round back at him.

        • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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          8 hours ago

          Don’t bother to comment out speculation if you haven’t even bothered to read the article and watch the video. Like 30 bullets didn’t ricochet 500+ yards away into a baseball field.

          • AlDente@sh.itjust.works
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            3 hours ago

            My point is not that heavy volume is required for this to happen.

            Instead, a higher rate of fire gives more opportunities to witness anomolies between shots, within a given time. Combine this with tracers, and now you can easily follow these paths, before and after each bullet hits it’s initial target.

            With a 6000 round-per-minute minigun, even if you only see one tracer bounce away every second, that demonstrates a 1% chance for every round to deflect and hit somewhere unintended.

            Considering that the tracers are normally spaced out on a belt, with other rounds between them; the sample size can be reduced further, and this chance becomes multiple times higher.

            When yearly machine-gun shoots were still hosted in Knob Creek, Kentucky, the range staffed people left and right of the firing line with fire extinguishers. After the ‘finale’ occurred and weapons were cleared, they would run out onto the hills beside the range.

            With multiple miniguns firing alongside other automatics, and the insane number of rounds fired downrange, it was inevitable to have more than enough hot tracers land in the brush of these hills to start multiple small fires.

            The possibility of ricochet injury is simply matter of probability. Sure, I would never claim this is the most probable explanation, but it’s silly to claim there’s absolutely no chance this could happen.

        • Serinus@lemmy.world
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          13 hours ago

          To keep enough velocity and stay at a consistent height and ricochet in that direction seems much less likely than they were just shooting in the wrong direction.

          • AlDente@sh.itjust.works
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            13 hours ago

            I agree that fuckery is the most likely explanation in this case. However, ricochets do not need to remain at a constant height or velocity to hurt someone. A round bounced backward and arched just enough to clear the treeline would be enough. I’m kinda shocked an outdoor range would be allowed this close to those fields. Regardless of physical danger, imagine concentrating on playing ball while gunshots ring out in an adjacent lot!

        • njm1314@lemmy.world
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          10 hours ago

          There is no amount of Ricochet on this Earth that would result in this.

          • AlDente@sh.itjust.works
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            9 hours ago

            If you’ve seen tracer fire in real life, I doubt you would keep that position. The fact that a falling bullet traveling at terminal velocity is enough to kill or injure someone, combined with the fact that bullets travel for miles would instantly tell you otherwise. Watch tracers fired at night and you can see how frequent ricochets are when hitting a mix of rocks in dirt. The last video I shared already demonstrated that complete trajectory reversals are even possible, not that this is even required in this circumstance.

            The baseball field is only about 1/2 mile from the range backstop (about 22% of a 5.56 bullet’s maximum range). All it would take is a rock plowed up into an inopportune position on the berm to set off a freak accident. Now, as I’ve said in another comment, I absolutely don’t believe this is the most likely explanation; however, to discount it as an impossibility is ignorant.

            • njm1314@lemmy.world
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              7 hours ago

              The range of a round when fired and the range of a round after it hits a rock and bounces are two incredibly vastly different things. Also nobody’s talking about a bullet falling from the sky. Look at where that range is look at the angle from which they’re firing and look at where the baseball field is. There is no possibility a Ricochet fired at that range could bounce back into that baseball field like they claim. It’s not possible.

              • LyD@lemmy.ca
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                5 hours ago

                I think he made a good case for it being possible. That baseball field really isn’t far away from a bullet’s perspective. He mentioned his first time shooting tracers, which makes me think he has a lot of real life experience shooting FMJ bullets and seeing them ricochet. He posted videos showing ricochets, you can see them maintaining almost all of their momentum.

                • njm1314@lemmy.world
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                  2 hours ago

                  The issue isn’t the distance, though I think it’s further than you think, it’s angle. You can see where the range is. You can see where the baseball field is. It’s not possible. The JFK bullet couldn’t do this. He made a good case for ricochets being a thing that happens, not in this case.

    • rljkeimig@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      The article says that the people who were shooting weren’t on the shooting range property, so it was probably just some morons shooting guns in an unsafe location who and direction who can’t be bothered to use the shooting range. Hopefully the range, were they to actually use it as intended, has proper berms and backstops to keep any rounds from going an unsafe direction.

    • FistingEnthusiast@lemmynsfw.com
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      13 hours ago

      Who builds a range, especially in Texas, without knowing that 99.999% of the people using it are going to be stupid and reckless because they think their firearms compensate for all their many inadequacies?

      • shalafi@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        Never been to a range where the Range Safety Officer (RSO) wouldn’t rip your fucking head off for the slightest fuckery, kick you out, ban you for life, first offense.

        And fuck you very much BTW. I enjoy learning ballistics first hand, the mechanics are at the edge of what my brain can handle, refurbishing crap guns pushes my restoration limits and knowledge, and it’s just plain fun.

        Also, my dick is 7.5". Nothing to write home about, but I haven’t felt inadequate about that in life.