[kikilee]

Watching the Discovery channel tonight. Mythbuster's were shooting a pig carcass to try to simulate (the Hollywood) being knocked off your feet by a gunshot. The interesting thing to me was, they said the average shooting took place at 22 feet. Seemed rather far to me. But hey, what do I know?

[Stand_Watie]

I had heard (in relation to police shootings) something like 12 - 15 feet. Maybe they averaged in the shootings that are done with longarms.

[Indy7373]

I noticed there shooting instructor (expert) warned one of them once about keeping his finger off the trigger til he was on target. :D

[sm]

Seems to me the Rule of Threes described the average gunfight.
3 seconds, 3 shots, 3feet.

22 feet is NOT really that far. Just over 7yds.

The Tueller drill is based on the fact a threat at 21 steps can cover that distance in 1.5 seconds and do injury or death to a person.

[crawfish]

Find it odd that there is no mention here of how the test played out. Maybe that was a "near and dear to the heart" myth that a WHOLE bunch off shooters call gospel. I get so tired of explaining why the HGSSD just isn't so. :banghead: So NA NANA NA NA :neener: :D

[BluesBear]

Yeah, it was a rerun of Wednesday's show.
We discussed it here >>> http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=125980

[Ryder]

Somebody forgot to tell all those deer that I layed out with 12 guage 3" buckshot they aren't supposed to fall over sideways. I slammed one down to the ground so hard with an 06 once it bounced right back onto it's feet. Too bad it was dead before it hit the ground or it could of just run away. :D

[Backwoods]

I think the guy stated that most gunfights occur within 22 feet, as in 22 feet or less. A good episode, but most of them are.

Don in Ohio

[mete]

The seven yards [22'] comes from FBI study of gunfight statistics showing that most gunfights occur within 7 yards.

[Stand_Watie]

Somebody forgot to tell all those deer that I layed out with 12 guage 3" buckshot they aren't supposed to fall over sideways. I slammed one down to the ground so hard with an 06 once it bounced right back onto it's feet. Too bad it was dead before it hit the ground or it could of just run away.

I read somewhere (but I disremember where) that the reaction stereoptyped by Hollywood of the person "flying backward" when shot isn't typical, but is a genuine occurrence in some instances, and that the reaction isn't actually the physics of the bullet striking the body, but the bodies muscles spasming violently with the shock of impact like a person being hit with a high voltage but low amperage (or is it the reverse I can never remember) electric current like a taser. I wouldn't expect deer to immune from this response either.

[JohnKSa]

Somebody forgot to tell all those deer that I layed out with 12 guage 3" buckshot they aren't supposed to fall over sideways. I slammed one down to the ground so hard with an 06 once it bounced right back onto it's feet.They used a 12 gauge with buckshot and slugs on the show. It's the only thing that got any significant "response" from the target--and even that was so anticlimactic it was pitiful. There was no backward movement to speak of, it just jarred the carcass enough to bump it off the "motion detector" arrangement they set up. In slow mo, you couldn't even see it move backward, it just jiggled enough to come off the hanger and fell straight down.

If the deer you are shooting are really moving around when they get hit, it's reflexive movement. The show proved pretty conclusively that the actual effect from bullet impact is just about nonexistant.

At one point three of them were shooting the carcass at once using submachine guns with essentially no effect. They used 9mm, .45ACP, .44Mag, .308Win, and 12ga slugs & buckshot--maybe more--that's all I remember. Only the 12ga was able to bump the carcass and the dummy off the hanger and even then it didn't move it back away from the direction of bullet impact.

[gbelleh]

They do a lot of gun myths on Myth Busters. Great show! :D

[BluesBear]

You have to consider that this EXTREMELY FLAWED "test" was performed using a fully dressed carcass.

There were NO internal organs.
There were NO body fluids.
There was NO active nervous system.

And the most important criteria in any attempt to knock something off it's feet is that it MUST BE STANDING!

The carcass was HANGING. It was NOT standing. :banghead:



After all there is a very good reason we do ballistic testing with ordinance gelatin instead of pork chops. And it ain't the cost factor.

[JohnKSa]

They repeated the entire test using a crash test dummy wearing a bullet proof vest.

That means that the entire momentum of the projectile was be absorbed by the "shootee". That's better than is likely to be achieved in real life. Even so, the dummy was not knocked backward in the least. Only the 12ga was even able to dislodge him from the hook.

There was a test of the hanging set up prior to the shooting. All it took was a very light one-handed push by one of the female assistants to knock the weight off the hook.

I'm not going to argue that the test was perfectly set up, but it certainly did what it was designed to do. It showed that a bullet impact does not have enough force to knock a person backward.

They weren't trying to duplicate what happens when a person is shot. Clearly a living target may react in an unpredictable way and that may make it APPEAR that they were knocked down by the bullet, but this test shows that can not be the case. Under no circumstances was there enough momentum transferred to result in significant movement away from the direction of bullet impact. Not even when a bullet proof vest caught the projectile and made sure that ALL of the momentum from the projectile was transferred to the crash dummy.

[Firethorn]

Bluesbear,

This test was to see what the physical effect of something being shot was. Organs and such wouldn't have any effect. Organ damage would be a physiological effect. People and animals just have a tendency to 'give up' when catastrophic damage is done. The crash test dummy (if weighted correctly) is just as good of a 'test'. Shooting the meat is for making a good show, as well as roughly accounting for the elasticity of the target. It's a paper-scratch problem, ultimatly. You figure out how many foot-pounds of force it takes to knock a human (or animal) down on average, and compare that to a bullet. A sub-ounce projectile, even going close to a thousand feet per second, isn't going to do much in the physical force sense of moving a > 100 pound object around.

[Red Tornado]

Their expert marksman said that 70% of all shooting happen at 22 feet. I'm sure he meant to say within 22 feet, as that matches most stuff I've read.
RT

[RandyDTC]

JohnKSa - spot on.

The law of conservation of momentum.

If the projectile had enough momentum to knock the person down who was shot with it, it would have knocked the person down who was shooting it.

The deer 'flipping' is a common anecdotal story told by hunters when describing how effective a particular cartridge might be. One physiological response to being hit with a bullet (especially in the CNS area) is for all the body's muscle groups to contract violently. Since the muscles across the back of the animal are much more massive and stronger than the muscles under the belly, when all muscle groups contract the net effect is an arched back. Given this, and take into account the animal's body orientation when hit, a flip backwards or to the side is very possible.

I have shot many deer with rifles that didn't do anything when hit other than take a few steps and fall over. In my limited experience, this is much more common than a 'flipping' deer, yet you don't hear about it as often. I guess it has something to do with the dull and mundane nature of an animal simply falling over. The stories of deer being 'slammed' ino the ground or flipping cartwheels are much more exciting, no? ;)

Randy

[The_Antibubba]

Next time, they need to remember to hang the pig carcass from invisible wires, in front of a blue screen! :D

[Obiwan]

I have often heard the 7 yd distance given as an average