celebratory gunfire

[Raider Bill]

Woke up to a hole in my roof and a bullet sitting on a table.
 

 

 
 

[Gary_C]

It would be near impossible for a bullet just falling by gravity to penetrate a roof. So you better watch out Bill, somebody is shooting at you. 

[sawguy21]

Rough neighborhood!

[Raider Bill]

It would be near impossible for a bullet just falling by gravity to penetrate a roof. So you better watch out Bill, somebody is shooting at you.

Same thing happened to my buddies house about 4 years ago. Went through the sunroom roof and partway in the top of a beer cooler.
Mine came in at a pretty steep angle so unless it came from a airplane it had to come from the ground.
About a mile or so away is da hood always shooting going in there but there are also a bunch of idiots that shouldn't own firearms that could have been closer. 
Odd thing to me is the red color of the slug. Anyone have insight to that? Make type?
Cops are coming for it. Said because it's red they are interested. Had it not been and nobody hurt they wouldn't be
Looks to be about a .38 or 9mm.

[florida]

My son just found one in his MILs 2nd floor roof. A perfectly round hole which means it can straight down. I found one in a customer's house once.

[coalsmok]

The red color is probably powder coat. Some reloaders are now powder coating lead slugs so they don't have to lube them, also makes them purddyy.

[Old saw fixer]

I am glad no one was hurt or worse.  Firing in the air is criminally stupid.  The present cost and availability of ammo keeps me from plinking, let alone shooting at nothing. 

[WV Sawmiller]

  I was working in the Green Zone in Iraq in 2006 and one night I had to walk just forward of the first check point on the Tigris on the other side of the 14 July Bridge just a little after sunset to meet and escort in a local genset repair guy. Just as the guy pulled up in his blue Mercedes as promised it sounded like someone was firing the final protective fire with every automatic weapon in the city going off and tracer fire lighting up the sky. I thought I had really played hobb that time. I took the repair guy to the check point manned by the Wyoming or Montana Nat'l guard and walked him through the security process. I later found Iraq had beaten Australia in soccer in the Olympics and it was celebratory fire. I did notice that all the rounds seemed to be aimed such that they fell over in the Green Zone instead of the rest of the city. We had a number of rounds come down and punch holes in the thin hootches we lived in and the metal shelters used for protection from the rain and sun in our shop areas. It is one of those experiences I'd have passed on if I'd had the option. :

[Ianab]

Terminal velocity of a falling 30 cal bullet is around 190 mph.  That's enough to do some damage....

[Raider Bill]

This is the most densely populated county in Florida. You can't spit without hitting someone.

We CSI'd the hole with a stick and it appears to have come from the direction of a pretty nice subdivision behind me and not the hood.

Wild Bill climbed up there and patched it for me.
Hope that is the only one and the shooters grouping was off as I have 6k sqft of roof.

[Patrick NC]

A guy down the road from me has a civil war era cannon that they shoot every New Year's Eve and July 4th. They load it real heavy with powder and a wad and fire it across the field. (No projectile). Shakes the whole house and scares the crap out of the dogs, but no real damage. 

[mike_belben]

My grandparents did cannon shoots and parade float demos and such.  One of the funnest parts of my childhood.  Prepared me for tire ether.   :D



Around here the shooting starts at dark.  Except for deer season. 

[Southside]

Your boys round there got nothin on Anvil Shootin'   :D Imagine this coming through your roof!!  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NFtX6a7o3c&feature=emb_logo

[mike_belben]

We used to do that with tennis balls and M80s trying to catch them out of around pipe stand

[Walnut Beast]

Your boys round there got nothin on Anvil Shootin'   :D Imagine this coming through your roof!!  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NFtX6a7o3c&feature=emb_logo

They sure didn't get very far away 😂

[olcowhand]

My grandparents did cannon shoots and parade float demos and such.  One of the funnest parts of my childhood.  Prepared me for tire ether.   :D



Around here the shooting starts at dark.  Except for deer season.

Mike,
Not many have earned the wisdom of "Tire Ether". My ex-FIL taught me that trick many years ago, and I will still employ it- to the astonishment of friends and family. It does make quite a BOOM!
Steve

[mike_belben]

BoomSauce©

[mike_belben]

I was probably 8 or so, employed for 5 or 10 cents each to make the "quick matches" for the association.  Dump black powder on the cafeteria tray, pick it up with a strip of scotch tape, hold that away from the tray so it doesnt potentially explode the whole pile from static charge when i snip it into two strips with scissors.  Then insert one piece each into a half length coffee stirrer straw with the edges sticking out.  



The charge was a pile of powder rammed in a tinfoil lined wooden form, looked like an old little debbie treat.  Pack that in the bore, then insert a projectile.  Poke an awl into the powder puck and stick the quickmatch in.  The projectiles were a funny tin juice can with the tops cut off, poured with concrete then topped with lead so they fly right.  And finally swedged through a home made hydraulic tube jig to smooth them.  We poured a LOT of lead.



There was shoots not too far from @BargeMonkey  back atleast into the 90s until FFL stuff made bulk powder hard to get. I remember armenia, westerloo and saratoga NY.. And maybe also somewhere around hunter mountain.  100, maybe 150yds or so yards into a berm at targets.  Many trees were mowed down.  Mortars too.  It was big fun for a little kid.  Throwin knives and tomahawks and such, campfires and smores with grandparents. 


If youre on the mass pike passing the mcdonalds at exit 7 in ludlow, look at the blue house across from mcdonalds for a red cannon in the backyard.  I spent half my life in that house.

[Ed_K]

 We used to scrape caps to get powder. Made up a 3/4 pipe nailed to the porch railing an shoot marbles at popple trees across the driveway. Got carried away one day and the pipe made a good dent in the cedar siding of the house ;D.

[Runningalucas]

I'm up in North Idaho.....  The other night, well it was around 4:00pm, which in winter is after dark, I was napping on my couch.  A single gun shot sounding like it was from the Northwest went off, then what sounded like a pound of tannerrite a split second later really woke me.... Not 10 minutes later, up the mountain to the southeast, someone lit off with 30 rounds in succession. 

I swear the folks around here answer each others gun shots in turn.  After my 57' dumptruck windshield had a stray bullet hit it, along with another hitting a van, I'm seriously in the process of designing my home to be a little more 'bullet resistant'.... Just too many folks moving in, and excited they can shoot on their properties....

[mike_belben]

We used to scrape caps to get powder. Made up a 3/4 pipe nailed to the porch railing an shoot marbles at popple trees across the driveway. Got carried away one day and the pipe made a good dent in the cedar siding of the house ;D.

My dad was big into M80s and M100s to pass the time back in those days after mom flew the coop.



There was that experiment with one inside a chevette on the rollback headed to scrapyard.  The windows do come out.



Then there was what if we put it in a beer can and toss it off the bridge into the 3ft deep chicopee river.  It blows a dry spot for a few second and send aluminum up in your face.




The tin wash bucket with a few rocks in it under the gutter with no downspout, for pre-washing mud covered boys and grease covered hands before being allowed in the house.  The rock shoots out the side of the tin and blasts a hole in the vinyl siding.



He's probably partly responsible for me being an idiot in the early half of my life, but we had a lot of fun and learned the good stuff first hand, before you could just ask siri and think you know. 

[Tacotodd]

Mike, all of that reminds me of the "teachings" that Dad schooled me about. I still remember the time that he sent an empty 55gal drum 30ft+ into the air! The funny but sad part about that, Dad said that he would never make any more "toys".  Oh well. The bad part is that I had access to all of that "equipment" and I knew how to use it!

He never said a word about it other than: just don't get hurt. I didn't, and I still know how to do it! hehehe!

Now I'm just playing with the tannerite, 2lb at a time! You know, isn't it amazing what the neighbors think!

I've never had the cops called but I attribute that to all of my neighbors knowing: eh, it's just Todd!

[Texas Ranger]

Houston had two reported injuries from celebratory gun fire on new years eve.  Both were horizontal shots, many more through roofs, windshields and such.  Dumb.

I used to be the combat photographer for the local Sons of the Confederacy in their annual demonstration/reenactment.  Got to fire the cannons.  Some fun.  They had a bunch of powder loads made in aluminum foil about the size of a coke can.  One load and wadding made a spectacular sound and sight show.  However, at the end of the thing, if there were any loads left, they would load up one of the six pounders with three or four charges, that had recoil and shook the earth.  Black powder became harder to find, and the local powers that be thought "glorifying" the Civil War and violence was not their thing.  And there was ranker in the ranks, so it all came to an end.

They also had cavalry charges that I thought  were the cats meow, and certainly displayed history.

[mike_belben]

That is a huge amount of powder.  Seriously huge.  These charges were a coke can filled 1inch high and that propelleda 3" tall x about 2" diameter concrete bullet straight and flat for maybe 200yards.  Theyre big enough you could see them fly if watching target through the bipod binos.  They knocked the carriage back a foot every time.  



For 4th of july the city of springfield had them on the city hall steps probably 10 consecutive years for the 1812 overture played by the symphony orchestra while they/we/i on occasion blasted the cannon to the notes.. With a flour charge to put on a show.  Hollywood uses flour.  Real life its mostly flame.  Cool at night.

[Tom King]

We have an abandoned rock quarry, about a half mile from the house.  There were some yahoos down in there shooting off explosive devices built from tannerite.  There are some lake houses closer than ours, and some of them called the cops.  They took care of it, so I'm glad I didn't go in there to confront them.  They were highly intoxicated, so I was told, so fortunate no one was injured.  I'm pretty sure they won't be back.