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We’ve said it before. Don’t shoot into water. Here’s the perfect illustration why.

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56 COMMENTS

  1. Shooting over a water body in the manner shown in that video is illegal in Oregon, where I live. I suspect it is illegal in most states.

  2. So, that a$$hole sees that his bullets are ricocheting off the water and going all over the place, so the logical thing to do is dump another mag? What fvcking moron.

  3. I have a feeling this was a sanctioned safety video. Not some random dude doing a mag dump and filming his stupidity. I could be wrong.

  4. Those are tracers which weigh much less than regular lead filled bullets, thus they are much more likely to bounce and ricochet. I doubt regular fmj type rounds would have the same affect.

    • Water is essentially non-compressible. At the velocity a bullet strikes it, a ricochet is not only possible, but likely. Especially at the very slight angle they are hitting the water in this video.

    • M856 rounds are 60 grains, I believe. Wikipedia says 63.7. Both figures are very close to the 62-grain spec of M-855, so “weigh much less” is bullshit, pure and simple.

  5. That’s a pretty awesome representation of what happens. As long as the shooter controls the land on the other side of the lake, I see no problem with it. That hill makes a pretty effective backstop.

      • Lars, why can no one hold a different opinion from yours? Why must you personally attack everyone you disagree with?

      • This video certainly shows the effect and how far the bullets travel after striking the water. I just wish they had put more notice that this is NOT to be done. Notice some of the rounds are greatly going off the line of sight? This tells me you not only have to control the backstop area directly behind your line of sight, but a much greater area than I would have thought. Very dangerous stuff.
        P.S. Lars – Quit acting like a twit.

        • Well, I am from Florida. I’m one of a small percentage of the total population who can actually say that.

  6. That does not seem as bad as it may look. If you look carefully after the bullets ricochet there is a massive drop in the bullet velocity. It does not appear that those bullets are making it across the lake. While the bullets are landing in a relatively wide area from the initial impact, it’s still not a huge area. Even if the bullets where going straight or completely stopped after the initial impact, if there was someone in the area that those ricochets were landing you should not be shooting that direction any way.

  7. Absolutely unsafe idiotic …… fill in the blanks with expletives deleted.

    Want to see what a bullet will do when you fire it at a body of water? Take a flat stone, throw it sidearm, and count how many times you can skip it before it sinks. Stones are a lot heavier than bullets, they are moving at a much lower velocity (like, 10 fps?) and they are far from aerodynamic in shape. Guess what? When a bullet moving at 2500fps hits a flat surface of water at a shallow angle, the water acts like concrete. If you doubt this, try jumping into a body of water from about 200 feet up (you want to reach terminal velocity). Try to land flat, and then tell me that water is not a hard medium when the impact is fast. (Anyone stupid enough to try this is a public benefactor, because they will be removing themselves from the gene pool.)

    Do not shoot at or over a body of water. Period.

      • “Do not shoot at or over a body of water. Period.”

        Perhaps you should inform the Navy that they may be violating this safety rule from time to time…

        • OK, tfunk. If you KNOW there is nothing else out there for a hundred miles, then it’s OK. Like the Navy does before conducting firing practice from one of their ships.
          Otherwise, “Do not shoot at or over a body of water. Period.”
          tfunk, your comment was insipid and childish.

    • I agree with William. Probably about 30fps. But I really like your plan to rid the gun owning gene pool of one of its assholes. Chances are they’d be the one to do something stupid and burn us

  8. It’s shooters like this that make firearm safety laws necessary for the public good. One wonders what the folks on the other side of the lake thought about the stray rounds dropping in on them.

    I remember having my father chew me out for throwing rocks off a hillside trail into the woods below. My dad asked: “What if there was someone down there?” Same principle, but with lead.

    For extra bonus points, check and see how many spent bullets rain down as the result of idiots firing into the air on New Years Eve:

    Bullets fired into the air maintain their lethal capability when they eventually fall back down.

    In the case of a bullet fired at a precisely vertical angle (something extremely difficult for a human being to duplicate), the bullet would tumble, lose its spin, and fall at a much slower speed due to terminal velocity and is therefore rendered less than lethal on impact. However, if a bullet is fired upward at a non-vertical angle (a far more probable possibility), it will maintain its spin and will reach a high enough speed to be lethal on impact. Because of this potentiality, firing a gun into the air is illegal in most states, and even in the states that it is legal, it is not recommended by the police. Also the MythBusters were able to identify two people who had been injured by falling bullets, one of them fatally injured. To date, this is the only myth to receive all three ratings at the same time.”

    • “One wonders what the folks on the other side of the lake thought about the stray rounds dropping in on them.”

      How do you know there’s anyone on the other side of the lake? Do you know something we don’t? What if the guy doing the shooting owns the lake, the hill, and everything for a dozen miles beyond it?

      • One must ASSUME people on the other side of the lake. Or are you determined to prove how pig-headed you can be?

        FYI, they’re not remaking JACKASS.

        • If I owned, as I said, the lake, the hill, and a dozen miles beyond, I don’t have to assume fvckall. It’s my property, and I’m pretty sure if an unauthorized trespasser (because my perimeter would be marked “No Trespassing”) got hit, I would hold very little if any liability.

    • Reckless endangerment is already against the law, no new laws are necessary. This reflexive “there oughta be a law” reaction to every bad or stupid thing someone could do is what leads to the kind of Big Brother society we live in now. Stop it.

  9. i’ve seen bullets ricochet off the ground like that too even though the ground was clay, no rocks. you really have to be careful shooting at things at a shallow angle.

  10. It all depends. I grew up in a village in rural Alaska. When you’re facing 30 miles of wide open barren tundra, splotched with shallow lakes, it’s a lot of fun to stand on a knoll and lob .38 specials at a lake 300 yards away, and watch for the splash & bounce.

    • Great, give a rare and still unsafe example to defend this goof. Why don’t you go down to the lake and throw some rocks in if splashing water gets your rocks off.

  11. Quit linking videos from liveleak. It’s a children’s site, ran by a child for children. Almost every video up there I’m sure is an example of what not to do in life.
    I hope if anyone knows who this as*hole is turns him in, it’s jacka*ses like this that threaten our rights. This goof is no different than the gungrabbers, he is promoting the same end. Turn this fu*ker in!

    • “This goof is no different than the gungrabbers, he is promoting the same end. Turn this fu*ker in!”

      And your acting no different than the multitude of statists running around wanting the gubberment to “protect” them from any risk that might come up in life, at the expense of everyone else’s rights. Let’s turn in everyone that has done something stupid with a gun, then we’ll all be(feel) safE!!!!

      You can’t consistently regulate/make laws against stupidity and expect to live in a free society. In a society that values liberty, one should be accountable to the law for the consequences that DID happen, not what COULD have happened.

      Furthermore, getting your panties in a bunch over a video that you know nothing about concerning the surrounding circumstances, means you either just found out about the internet yesterday, or you just need a break to evaluate how easy your provoked. Take what you can from the video, use it to educate others if possible, and call it a day.

      • So even if you are able to practice firearms safety, we should do dangerous, ignorant things to get back at the government? Grow the eff up.

        • Where did I even hint that we should practice unsafe firearm handling, let alone to “get back at the government”? Nice straw man argument though.

          Chill “the eff” out?

    • Quit linking videos from liveleak. It’s a children’s site, ran by a child for children. Almost every video up there I’m sure is an example of what not to do in life.

      So it’s safe to assume you and I Know better have a ton of videos on that site?

  12. When I was younger we use to toss closed pop bottles into a farm pond and shoot at them with a 22LR. I didn’t think that would happen, and in fact, we didn’t see anything like the video happen. We were in a wooded private lot, so I think we would have heard the leaves being perforated.

  13. Too much stray,uncontrolled lead flying. Violates the rule of know your target and what is beyond it.

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