31 Iraqis killed while celebrating

[punistation]

"THIRTY-ONE Iraqis were killed in the capital by stray bullets from celebratory gunfire marking the deaths of Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay, a Baghdad newspaper reported today."

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,6815178%255E1702,00.html

[punistation]

1. Gravity's funny like that.

Truth to tell, I've never really understood the idea of firing straight up. I see it on the World News all the time, but don't people realise when you shoot bullets up, they eventually come down... often at much faster speed?


Kisses XXOOXX
Jen

[R Hickey]

8. Gravity's not as funny as you think.

You said "bullets come down...often at a much faster speed?"

It seems to me that the speed of bullets comming down would be the same as the speed of bullets going up, minus the resistance of the air.

[GermanDJ]

15. When the bullets fall down they should be much slower

Just my 0.02 cent:

Before the bullets leave the gun, they go through a phase of propulsion. When they leave the gun, they have a speed resulting from the propulsion.

Then they ascend, reach the highest point of their trajectory and after that they are free falling.

Then they follow the formula speed = (acceleration due to gravity) x time - (deceleration due to air friction)


I guess that in this forum are some physicists, who can elaborate this more eloquently :-)

[Uzybone]

24. you dont even need a physicist

its just common sense. Its ridiculous that anyone would think a bullet (which weighs a few ounces) would come down even faster that the speed at which it was fired out of the gun.

The story seems to say that a total of 31 Iraqis were killed by stray bullets. they didnt say all at one time or in one place. Sounds to me like they just rounded up all the fatalities of that day and blamed them all on "stray bullets from celebratory fire:.

[htuttle]

17. They actually come down much slower than they went up

Google on 'bullet terminal velocity' for a set of discussions about it. Apparently this topic has been studied in depth by humanity.

When the bullet reaches the apex of it's trajectory, it's is standing still for a moment (vertically speaking). When it falls back to earth, it is limited by the terminal velocity of the bullet in the atmosphere.

Most of the sites I found about this estimate that the terminal velocity of a .30 caliber bullet is about 200 mph (300 fps) coming back down. That's somewhat less than the speed of a CO2 pellet gun.

In addition, US army testing on this phenomena that most bullets start to tumble quite a bit on the way back down, altering the directory from a clean parabola to whatever the wind is doing that day. So if you shoot a bullet straight up, it's only going to come back straight down if you are in a vacuum.

Here is Cecil's definitive answer on bullets shot up into the air:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a950414b.html

While it's not impossible for people to be killed this way, it's not as likely as you might think. Bruises are probably more likely than death.

[aquart]

23. So maybe some of those deaths weren't totally accidental?

People in that region have been firing in the air a long time. I'd think they'd know the risks.

[saigon68]

2. THEY HAVE A WAYS TO GO TO COLLECT ALL THE GUNS

Complete waste of Ammo too.

[Enraged_Ape]

3. They did this kind of thing in L.A. on the Fourth and New Year's Eve

Shooting guns straight up in the air. It sounded like a damn war zone.

The first time I heard a ricochet on the street in front of me, I made a vow never to be outside on those holidays.

[saigon68]

4. THEY NEED A GUN CLEAN-UP IN L.A. TOO

Good thing they have disarmed the population there too.

[Emboldened Chimp]

25. Happens every year

Folks in East LA fire their guns and the bullets land in South Bay. Someone usually gets hurt or killed. Happy New Year's!

[soupkitchen]

5. As they say, Guns don't kill, bullets do.

Support National Bullet Control

[gulliver]

6. This number seems suspiciously high.

I'm a bit skeptical about this report.

[Poll_Blind]

7. I know what you're talking about.

Even in a city of 5 million the number of bullets which would have to be put into the air to kill 31 would be trumendeous. After all, statistically speaking, although the head makes up about 1/3 of the surface area of a person (looking down, from above), the number of dead would imply that nearly 100 were wounded as well. Well, that might be the case. But, still, coming back to the number of bullets you'd have to put in the air to have 31 people win that lottery would be incredible. The US troops would have thought that they were under massive attack, especially (get this), by all the bullets that didn't hit people (and hit buildings, the ground, parked Humvees).

I am dubious as well.

PB

[dwillison]

10. So you're saying the US troops massacred the Iraqis and

blamed it on celebatory gunfire?

[radwriter0555]

13. Sounds like the slightly more accurate version to me...

cause we know how this regime operates.

Since when was the bush regime in the business of telling the truth?

[Kellanved]

16. ???

AFAIR nobody wrote that; not even implicitly.
It is just a dubios story to read. IMHO the coalition is not in control in Iraq and faces a situation approaching a civil war.

Edit: Okay one wrote that, even explicitly. :wtf:

[gulliver]

19. No

I think we're both saying it seems possible that 31 Iraqis may not have been killed at all. In other words, the report may be in error.

[Barrett808]

27. If accurate, it seems reasonable to suspect a "night of knives"

on somebody's part.

The chance theory seems more reasonable to me if "celebratory gunfire" means shooting at an random angle instead of mostly upward.

[R Hickey]

11. I'm dubious too

Is there any truth to it? Were there 31 people actually killed, or was it none killed but just 31 'reported' killed, or were 31 really killed but were actually deliberatly shot by troops, factions, or robbers?

[Devils Advocate NZ]

20. Well, if you had read the article...

After all, statistically speaking, although the head makes up about 1/3 of the surface area of a person (looking down, from above), the number of dead would imply that nearly 100 were wounded as well.

If you had read the article you would have read:

Seventy-six people were also wounded, 40 of them seriously, Al-Moatamar, mouthpiece of Ahmed Chalabi's Pentagon-backed Iraqi National Congress, reported citing hospital figures.

Does 76 = nearly 100? Seems like a pretty good match to me.

Did you note the source? It is from a paper that is the mouthpiece of the INC.

This actually seems like a lie designed to enable them to take even MORE drastic measures to disarm the population.

[Turley]

22. Could have been Triple-A

I seem to remember seeing some Triple-A going up on TV after the deaths were announced. Just a couple of those shells coming down in the wrong place could kill a number of people.

[JohnyCanuck]

9. Me Three

They shoot guns in the air at celebrations all the time over there and on this particular occasion 31 people buy the farm? If there were 31 fatalities, you'd think there should also have been around another 100 or so wounded, and we'd have heard before about massive numbers of casualties caused by these types of celebrations. If there really were 31 people killed, maybe they were offed by some group so that blame for their deaths could be passed off as a result of the celebrations. All in all, this doesn't pass my smell test.

[radwriter0555]

12. Yeah wanna bet all the bullets came from the US military, and

this wasn't a celebration but an uprising instead?

Think about it.

[dwillison]

14. I can't believe anyone, far left or far right, could make an

accusation this serious without any basis.

[rjbcar27]

18. Indeed

:eyes:

[pansypoo53219]

21. considering

how many people there like to celebrate this way over there(i read a story about this crap at a wedding and the bullet landed on either the groom or bride killing them)I see no problem that 31 were killed as the knuckleheads don't even THINK about where the bullets go and were probably milling around outside.

[MODemocrat]

26. Wow! those Iraqis certainly know how to celebrate their FREEDOM

What a big mess.