…It’s not against the law yet, is it?
That’s the analogy for a common, two-lane highway. Vehicles of up to 80,000 pounds or more, travel at up to 70 MPH (often faster as a lot of people exceed the limit) in opposite directions, mere feet apart with nothing in between but a painted line, day or night, in nearly all conditions.
Could someone do a nice graphic on that? Joe’s been on a gun cartoon kick. Maybe we can get this one published herein.
This inspired me to do a quick calculation of “muzzle energy” comparing a car and a round of .45 ACP.
Assuming a 230 grain round with a muzzle velocity of 250m/s where E=0.5*m*v^2 you get approximately 456.7 joules of energy. If we take the average car in the US to be 4,066 lbs (figure from 2003 according to the EPA) and make the naive assumption that the driver is traveling at the speed limit of 55mph then the same equation yields approximately 557,470 joules of energy. Unless I missed a decimal place somewhere, we are talking 1,196.95 times more energy stored in the average car traveling down the highway than the average .45 ACP round traveling down the range.
Granted terminal ballistics is much more complicated than just kinetic energy, even if you are talking about a car.
At least the shooters aren’t yakking on their cell phones instead of paying attention to what they’re doing.
Old; Nice one. I recall doing something like that after I hit a deer with my pickup, though I converted the 5,000 lb mass to grains and used the standard conversion formula. The shot placement and terminal ballistics resulted in an instant kill– something I have yet to experience when shooting deer with a more common ballistic weapon. There were of course no entry or exit wounds resulting from the pickup strike, but the energy transfer was substantial (some limited projectile expansion was observed, while weight retention was in excess of 99%). “Knockdown Power” in that case was a very real phenomenon, even though my velocity was reduced substantially, due mainly to frictional heating of the brake rotors (low BC?).
BobG; Let’s just say our shooters are listening to their iPods, enjoying the scenery, and sipping sarsaparilla while shooting toward each other. We’ll put cup holders and 12 volt supply sockets at each shooting position. Any wireless remote chitchat will of course have to be hands-free, but our shooters may freely engage in direct communication, including arguments, complete with enhanced gesticulating, while shooting. Muzzle disclipline will of course be a non issue.