Do not try to catch a . . . wait, what?
A man claims to have accidentally shot himself when he dropped a dumbbell on a 22LR shell.
8 Responses to “Do not try to catch a . . . wait, what?”
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April 16th, 2012 at 1:12 pm
Okay, I’ll display my ignorance. Is this even possible?
April 16th, 2012 at 1:59 pm
John: No.
Without a barrel to contain the detonation, the shell just goes “pop”, without firing the bullet with any meaningful force.
People throw .22 LR rounds into campfires for fun (though it’s not really recommended, since there’s a small chance of tiny brass shrapnel and, say, getting that in your eye would suck).
April 16th, 2012 at 4:28 pm
I’d imagine it’s possible in just the right conditions, but they’d have to be million-to-one shots.
The campfire .22 situation is similar to what Mythbusters did with the .22 as a fuse: since there’s nothing in front or behind the round, there’s not a lot of force imparted.
However, if the dumbell crimped the edge of the case against the ground, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that the majority of the energy is imparted to the bullet. Sure, it would tumble like crazy and wouldn’t have nearly the energy or distance you’d get with a rifled barrel, but I don’t think it’s strictly impossible.
April 16th, 2012 at 4:54 pm
I’d say if the dumbbell landed on it well enough to pop the primer, it would hold the casing down long enough for all the force to go into the bullet, unless the case itself shattered much. Now, there probably still wouldn’t be that much force, what with no barrel, but it doesn’t say how much it penetrated, so I’ll point and laugh at this one.
April 16th, 2012 at 7:09 pm
Ok, dammit this is embarrassing, but I can say with first hand experience that this could definitely happen.
When I was about 13 (I can’t remember exactly how old I was, it’s been too many years ago now), I decided it would be a good idea to put a .22lr round on the garage floor and whack it with a hammer.
To be fair, the garage door was open, and there was about 5 miles of untouched field on the other side of the street (all houses now, but it was my shooting range back then).
I don’t really know what possessed me to do this, it just seemed like the thing to do on a hot summer afternoon.
So I put the bullet down pointing across the street, told my two friends (who both thought this was a banner idea and were cheering me on in the name of SCIENCE I’m sure) to stay behind me, and gave the rim a good whack with a 16oz estwing framing hammer (which I still own).
It fired. The bullet struck the field across the street throwing up a nice puff of dust, the point of impact was probably 60-80 feet away, and the time from when I hit the round with the hammer to the impact of the bullet was virtually instantaneous (so I’d assume it was moving at a pretty good clip).
The casing was still sitting right near where it started out, only one side was blown out.
The missing pieces of that case were embedded in the fingers of my right hand. At the time I thought they’d hit my hand and just torn the skin as they blew past. Fast forward about 8 years to a wrist injury at work, and a very curious doctor asking me how I got metal embedded in the fingers of my right hand. It took me a minute to put two and two together, but the doctor agreed that is most likely exactly what the metal on the xray was, and not to worry about it if it had never bothered me as my body would eventually either break it down or reject it (since it had been like 8 years he thought it would just stay there and be broken down).
I don’t know if it’s still there (haven’t had to have my hand xray’d in the last 10 years), but I do most certainly know that you can indeed cause a .22lr round to “fire” with enough force to break human skin by hitting the rim with something heavy at the right angle, assuming that the round is sitting on something solid (I’m thinking that a dumbbell dropped onto a carpeted floor with a thin pad would just about cover it).
God I feel stupid every time I have to explain to someone why this story is fully plausible.
April 16th, 2012 at 7:09 pm
A couple years ago, a child died after a car ran over a .22lr cartridge laying on the roadway. Don’t recall the location.
April 17th, 2012 at 12:28 am
You can shoot a .22LR from a one-inch barrel. You wont’ get the benefit of the possible pressure, it will most be muzzle blast, but the breechblock just keeps the cartridege from coming back at you. You don’t need a backstop for the reaction to the action. That’s how we got to the moon.
April 17th, 2012 at 12:29 am
*cartridge case*