Watch Out for Falling Bullets Is it dangerous to fire a gun into
the air? A crowd of Libyans fired guns in the air and chanted
slogans in support of Muammar Qaddafi at a rally in the city of
Sirte on Monday. Isn't it kind of dangerous to shoot bullets
into the sky? Yes ... well, probably ... maybe ... it kind of
depends. The Explainer is far from being the first to ask this
question. Everyone from the U.S. military to The Straight Dope's
Cecil Adams has probed the lethality of falling bullets. That
includes forensic scientists, cardio-thoracic surgeons, and the
hosts of the Discovery Channel's Mythbusters—which devoted
nearly a whole episode to the matter. And yet, no one has been
able to come up with a straightforward answer. The general
consensus is that a bullet fired straight up—at precisely 90
degrees to the horizontal—is unlikely to kill a healthy adult
when it returns to Earth. That's because, on the way down, air
resistance prevents the bullet from returning to its initial
velocity. The bullet would d