Posted on 10/19/2017 5:59:58 AM PDT by marktwain
There is a stray bullet investigation ongoing in the south of Michigan, in Northville Township. A window was shattered on about the 10th or 11th of October, 2017. I am skeptical of these type of incidents. They are quite rare. The image of an Iraqi woman showing investigators two complete rifle cartridges, that supposedly hit her residence, is memorable.
This incident appears to be real, not a hoax like the famous Iraqi incident. The window was shattered. It was broken in a believable way. The bullet was found with the shattered glass. The bullet looks fresh and has rifling marks. From clickondetroit.com:
Last year, two homes were hit by stray bullets. The gun range was shut down and modifications were made to ensure the neighborhood's safety.
Now, another home was hit by a bullet. A resident on Crestview Circle came home to find his front door shattered and a bullet on the ground.
The Northville Township Police Department investigated and passed the recovered bullet on to MSP to see if it is one their rounds.
The distance from the Michigan State Police Laboratory and the broken window is 2,460 feet or 820 yards. The google maps image below shows the geometry. The direction of fire would have been nearly due South, as is shown in the image.
The distance from the Michigan State Police Laboratory and the broken window is 2,460 feet, or 820 yards.
The distance is well within the maximum range of common pistol bullets.
(Excerpt) Read more at ammoland.com ...
We had something like this at my range.
We determined it was from some moron who stepped out of his car on another part of the property and fired a rifle into the property. The angle was all wrong for someone shooting on the range itself.
Our determination also was that neighbors of the range would simply do anything to get it closed down. Including something as crazy as that.
Shouldn’t the bullet be under or mixed with the glass?
Glass might have been moved to get a clear picture of the bullet.
There is a range out here like that, a couple bullets ended up in someones bathtub...
I sure as heck wouldnt want to be down range from it!
It looks like your typical copper-washed lead .22 long rifle after shooting.
The rifling marks look like Marlin’s “micro-groove” with its many lands—or something similar with many grooves.
The ‘bent’ tip looks like it did NOT hit the glass at a right angle but at a much more acute angle—it most likely hit from a MUCH different direction than the illustration.
.22’s shot into rocks at 5-600 yards flatten out to little 1/4 lead disks. I’m guessing the range was MUCH more than that, as the slug appears intact.
This slug was randomly lobbed into the air a quite a distance—by some terroristic moron who should be locked up.
My estimate is a 9mm/.40/.45.
The glass is unlikely to be less than 3-4 mm thick. It could easily be more. The bullet seems to be 2-4 times as wide as the glass is thick.
The rifling does not look anything like Marlin micro-groove to me. It appears to be a sort of polygonal rifling.
Hard to do analysis with just this photograph.
what strikes me a “wrong” is not the bullet but the glass. Glass will punch a hole into a sheet of glass. It will not shatter into chunks like the picture.
If this was a patio door or something similar, it is likely the panel was tempered glass, which is intended to shatter into small shards like the ones shown in the photo. Plate glass will usually just get a hole and star, but if the bullet had lost enough speed over the distance, I can see it smashing the window, though I would expect the pieces to be larger.
Nevertheless, I think it was tempered glass. That explains both the odd shape of the recovered projectile and the small shards.
The bent nose indicates it was a ricochet and that is why it left the MSP compound in the first place.
Good analysis.
I think the photo was staged. Gather up glass, put bullet on top of pile, take picture.
I agree with polygonal rifling. I suspect .45 from the size of the bullet in comparison to the glass thickness.
A picture of the shattered window is in the article.
I accidentally hit a double-pane glass door (my own, thank you) with an arrow several years ago. It shattered into little regular shaped pieces just like what's shown in the picture.
Last year, my wife’s niece sent me a photo of her neighbor’s window shattered by a bullet.
I identified the bullet as a 50 cal full metal jacket fired from so far away that it shattered the outer pane of a double pane window and dropped to the window sill. It did not go through the second pane of glass. There were no shooting ranges anywhere close to their house.
They never found where it came from.
That is what seems to have happened here.
Outer glass shattered, inner glass intact.
Was the .50 cal a rifle or pistol round? Rifle/machine gun rounds would be more common, I would think.
I don’t know.... Tempered glass will shatter into little chunks like these. Some locales require tempered glass in large windows like picture windows.
***Was the .50 cal a rifle or pistol round?***
From the photo,it was a .50 FMJ rifle round.
Quite a story!
Typical code requires safety glass in doors, windows adjacent to doors and windows less than 18” above ground and adjacent to a walking surface.
There is a liberal on Oahu constantly trying to get the only public range at Koko Crater shut down. Name of Greg Knudsen I belive.
He went on a great hunt all over the area down range, looking for "stray" bullets.
He came up with unfired projectiles, widely suspected to have been salted by him is was so new. Some were apparently of Japanese origin from the Pearl harbor days. Of course he blamed the range for that.
Had some little mother get on the news and show a tear in her minivan roof she claimed was from a stray bullet while at Sandy Beach. No bullet was ever produced and the media dropped the story quickly.
They are out there doing what they can to shut down places to shoot.
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