Ricocheting round knocks off shooter's earmuffs - video

Ricocheting .50 cal round knocks off shooter's earmuffs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ABGIJwiGBc

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Okay, it’s an Armalite AR-50. The ammo was South African Mil-Surp. The range was 100 yards. The target plate was only 1/4″ thick. It should have been like tissue paper to the 750 grain slug at 2800 FPS. Willie, the shooter, is a Former Marine with a lot of experience. The plate was angled back and to the side. A ric should have gone up and to the right. It didn’t.


The slug struck the arm of his glasses and the ear-pro. It destroyed the electronic ear-pro, bent the arm, and it cracked the top of his jawbone.

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Source's first-hand description of the incident:
The .50 cal Ricochet to the head video | Mad Ogre


Previously:

https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...612#post123362
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...407#post122170
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...396#post127213

That guy is lucky he didn't become a statistic
This compounds my arguments about safety of some range targets that are designed to swing or rotate when hit. depending on the grain and power behind the bullet the ricochet can be unpredictable. Fixed targets if that is what it was, like was explained in the video should hold a mathematically predictable path but not always. Should a bullet strike at the deformed edge of a previously fired round its return trajectory will be altered. I prefer soft penetrable targets with a berm behind them for shorter ranges and for longer ranges strategically places return path barriers with a down angle striking surface. My opinion is a bullet should be deflected down into the ground never up or to the side but even bullets deflected down if they strike at a shallow enough angle can become skip skimmers like a stone on water.

This story reminds me of an episode that occurred a few decades ago when I was practicing optometry. One of my clients returned to my office a couple of weeks after picking up a new pair of spectacles. He removed the pair from the pocket of his jacket, and laid them on the counter. He told me that he had broken one of the lenses, and wanted to have it replaced... he didn't explain what had happened to the lens. Upon inspection, I noticed that the lens had a small hole right in the middle with several cracks extending to the periphery. Several days, later, his wife phoned, wondering if the glasses were ready to be picked up. She asked me if "Jim" had told me how the lens had been broken, and I replied that he had not told me. She said "Jim" had wanted to string a horizontal line inside of the two ends of a corrugated metal building at their ranch. Jim thought that firing his 22 pistol toward one of the shed's sides would penetrate both ends, and yield holes at equal heights from the ground, thus providing a horizontal reference for attaching a line. So, he had a hired hand hold a small level against the barrel of the long-barreled 22 pistol that he carried, daily, for coyote eradication. When the hired man said, "Level!", Jim squeezed the trigger. The lead projectile struck the end of the building and bounced back toward Jim, coming right back along the pistol's barrel, breaking the eyeglass lens. Jim did not suffer any injuries to his eye, but he did have to go to the emergency ward to have bits of glass that were floating in the tear layer, removed. The tempered lens saved another eye.

I'm not calling the validity of this video into question. I don't have the ability to time the span from shoot to earphone impact. I do note the deflection from the ground immediately before the shooter. All that said, it sure looks to me as if the sequence takes a long time.

I suppose that is why the gun club I belong to doesn't allow us to shoot anything but paper targets. Probably a safe approach. There is not a range around here that will allow one to fore a .50 cal. rifle either. Apparently none of them want there berms torn-up. Many years ago I shot a tree with a .45 black powder ball while test firing a Kentucky Pistol kit I had built using a light load and the ball came back over my head. The normal load did not however.

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Originally Posted by VinnieL

I suppose that is why the gun club I belong to doesn't allow us to shoot anything but paper targets. Probably a safe approach. There is not a range around here that will allow one to fore a .50 cal. rifle either. Apparently none of them want there berms torn-up. Many years ago I shot a tree with a .45 black powder ball while test firing a Kentucky Pistol kit I had built using a light load and the ball came back over my head. The normal load did not however.

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In the past I've shot hundreds of kilograms lead with black powder long range guns, .58cal., IPSC in 357 mag. and a lot of big cartridges like 45-90, always on paper or IPSC metal targets, and when I look that they were no accident or ricochet but I've never tried to shoot outside of a specialized shooting range, looking at people on youtube videos, they are mostly not in what I'm calling a safe action especially on testing big guns, and they are a lot of incidents related to that use, for me outside of a range controlled by a good specialist they are no place for a safe shooting!

Obviously "Jim" was not the smartest book in the library, in more ways than one

Hmmm . . . do the 5th grade math. 2800 FPS is .000357 seconds per foot. The round trip (100 yards each way) is 600 feet. Total round-trip time should be about 0.214 seconds. Put an old stop watch (or your fancy I phone timer) to the video. I get 1.6 seconds from muzzle blast to return impact! Even accounting for my bad timing reflexes or a non-real-time video there is a 700% reality error! What am I missing! :gunfire:

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Originally Posted by Saltfever

Hmmm . . . do the 5th grade math. 2800 FPS is .000357 seconds per foot. The round trip (100 yards each way) is 600 feet. Total round-trip time should be about 0.214 seconds. Put an old stop watch (or your fancy I phone timer) to the video. I get 1.6 seconds from muzzle blast to return impact! Even accounting for my bad timing reflexes or a non-real-time video there is a 700% reality error! What am I missing! :gunfire:

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What would the degraded velocity be after striking the plate steel/ also not very common but not unheard of could it have been a double ricochet. A double ricochet would explain time lag as well as directional return, just saying.

There was a 2nd ricochet. Note the dirt spray in front left of shooter.

Total flight time... 1.6 seconds
First 300 ft.......... 0.107 sec (2800 fps or 1,900 mph)
Returning 300 ft... 1.493 sec ( 201 fps or 137 mph)

Bullet weight about 700 grains

Never ever shoot steels with anything but a soft lead slug. The plate was not mounted stiff enough for penetration. It was like hitting a ping pong paddle.

Hangfire; shoots a guy right in the...hat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za2ezCNvBeU

Gentleman demonstrates a ricochet off a steel target.

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Originally Posted by Jon

Hangfire; shoots a guy right in the...hat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za2ezCNvBeU

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Hats off to his firearm safety instructor.:hattip:

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Originally Posted by Altair

Hats off to his firearm safety instructor.:hattip:

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I cannot believe that he actually tried to look down the end or the barrel like that
the guy came very close to fixing stupid

Darwin honorable mention

Wow - incredible luck, he should go on his knees and thank his maker,- if he did not lean forward and down he would have shot his face off with the spread of the shot

Well there would not have been any spread of the shot at that distance in fact the shot would have still been contained in the plastic sleeve wadding had the shell been the type with that wadding. however aside from a direct hit the muzzle blast would have been the most dangerous part of the discharge. I surprised that he didn't receive severe burns from it and possible powder grain embedment