Man saved by cell phone and the grace of God

[seamusTX]

A man mowing his lawn in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, had a .45-caliber bullet hit his cell phone, which was clipped to his overalls over his chest.

Police said that it seemed to be a stray shot and not aimed with malicious intent.

http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008 ... he_ce.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

St. Tammany Parish is north of Lake Pontchartrain, pretty much suburbs of New Orleans.

These morons who can't grasp the four rules are going to be the death of us.

- Jim

[carlson1]

The Grace of the Almighty God - Can't live without it. That is an amazing story.

[HighVelocity]

Awesome.

[Liberty]

but ya gotta wonder how much energy was left in the bullet to be stopped by a cell phone. Reminds me of the ear protection that stopped the .50 cal BMG bullet a while back.

I bet my 9mm wouldn't be stopped by a cell.

[sivart-dod]

I really like his closing words

Richard, who owns guns himself and said he doesn't want to discourage anyone from exercising their Second Amendment rights, also urged caution.

Its nice to see a news article about guns that doesn't slam the second amendment.

[seamusTX]

but ya gotta wonder how much energy was left in the bullet to be stopped by a cell phone.

Likely it was a ricochet or had already gone through something, but the guy still would have been worse off if not for the cell phone.

And it's a good story.

- Jim

[ladromar]

Two words:

Lottery ticket(s)

[WarHawk-AVG]

but ya gotta wonder how much energy was left in the bullet to be stopped by a cell phone. Reminds me of the ear protection that stopped the .50 cal BMG bullet a while back.

I bet my 9mm wouldn't be stopped by a cell.

That video on youtube there was more than enough energy left in that ricochet that ripped that guys ear protection off..it would have been just 2 inches over it would have taken his head off!

That lady at the Texas Motor Speedway got thumped by a .50 fired at almost 2.5 miles away...it ripped thru her RV and tore her arm up really bad! Bullets fired at anything under 80 degrees or less (like a little artillery shell) will still have some sort of horizontal momentum to them and retain much of their energy downrange.

[The Annoyed Man]

but ya gotta wonder how much energy was left in the bullet to be stopped by a cell phone. Reminds me of the ear protection that stopped the .50 cal BMG bullet a while back.

I bet my 9mm wouldn't be stopped by a cell.

With all due respect...

Discussing this very same story, a guy over at THR made exactly the same comment. Here was my reply to him:

9mm would have penetrated that cell phone.

I have a spent 9mm bullet sitting on my desk right now. It was sitting on the door mat outside my office one morning, the first day back at work after New Year's Eve about 20 years ago. The ogive on one side is very slightly flattened, and there was a corresponding "skid" mark on the paint of the wooden front door. It is obvious that the bullet struck the door at a downward angle and came to rest on the door mat. As undamaged as were the door, the doormat, and the bullet itself, it is obvious that there was not much energy involved.

That bullet most certainly would not have gone through a cell phone. It would have dented the phone a little bit, and it might have torn a hole in a shirt - if the fabric was light enough. But there is no way that this 9mm bullet would have done any more damage than the .45 caliber bullet which is the subject of this story.

I worked for several years on the PM shift of a level one trauma center back in the 1980s. Late one afternoon, we treated a guy who was hit by a .45 ACP FMJ. He was sitting in the driver's seat of his rag-top Jeep at a red light. The bullet came down through the top and struck him in the thigh, breaking his femur at the mid shaft - a very serious and significant injury. Since there were no tall buildings anywhere nearby, and since nobody heard the shot, that bullet had to have been fired upward at an angle and then arced in from some distance.

Mr. R.J. Richard is damned lucky he didn't get hurt worse, but I suspect that you can't support your assertion that a 9mm would have penetrated the phone. Maybe it would, and maybe it wouldn't. It's entirely possible that if R.J. Richard cared to repeat the experiment, he might be killed. So let's look at the numbers to see what they can tell us....

I've just looked at the Federal Cartridge website, as an example, and here are the data for a 124 grain 9mm FMJ compared to a 230 grain .45 FMJ (both are standard loads for the caliber):

Code: Select all

Load No		Caliber	Muzzle	25 Y	50 Y	75 Y	100 Y
AE9AP			9mm		1150		1095	1049	1010	977

Energy in Foot Pounds (To nearest 5 Foot Pounds) 	
Load No		Caliber	Muzzle	25 Y	50 Y	75 Y	100 Y
AE9AP			9mm		364		330	303	281	263


Load No		Caliber	Muzzle	25 Y	50 Y	75 Y	100 Y
AE45A			45 Auto	890		872	856	840	824

Energy in Foot Pounds (To nearest 5 Foot Pounds) 	
Load No		Caliber	Muzzle	25 Y	50 Y	75 Y	100 Y
AE45A			45 Auto	404		389	374	360	347

Now, I have nothing against the 9mm caliber, and some day I'll buy one; but I think it is safe to say from the above data that, given identical circumstances of a 440 yard distance and with just a caliber change, there is no way on earth that your 9mm would have gone through the phone when a .45 couldn't. Not a chance.

But that's just me. I'm a numbers guy.

My point is that, given A) the terminal energy of the 9mm vs the .45 at 100 yards is 263 ft lbs vs 347 ft lbs, and given B) the distance of almost 500 yards traveled by the bullet, it is highly unlikely that a 9mm would penetrate the phone. In fact, neither would a .40 S&W (324 ft lbs at 100 yards) or a 10mm Auto (339 ft lbs. at 100 yards).

[Liberty]

but ya gotta wonder how much energy was left in the bullet to be stopped by a cell phone. Reminds me of the ear protection that stopped the .50 cal BMG bullet a while back.

I bet my 9mm wouldn't be stopped by a cell.

With all due respect...

.

I was just kidding around. Poking fun at the "it has to start with a 4" crowd. I really believe that a .45 has the ability to penetrate most cell phones. ( unless expelled from a compact Kimber)

I just looked at the figures though. And I believe that while the .45 has more energy, the 9mm ball ammunition has a reputation for high penetration because of the higher velocity and lower cross sectional area.. but who in their right mind carries ball ammo except for the 1911 folks?

[seamusTX]

but who in their right mind carries ball ammo except for the 1911 folks?

Since you asked, some people maintain that .380 wadcutters are more effective for defensive purposes than .380 hollowpoints.

I'm not convinced either way.

However, I have noticed that many police veterans are satisfied with carrying a .380 off-duty, and these are guys who are on call and duty-bound to intervene in felonies even when they are off the clock.

- Jim

[The Annoyed Man]

but ya gotta wonder how much energy was left in the bullet to be stopped by a cell phone. Reminds me of the ear protection that stopped the .50 cal BMG bullet a while back.

I bet my 9mm wouldn't be stopped by a cell.

With all due respect...

.

I was just kidding around. Poking fun at the "it has to start with a 4" crowd. I really believe that a .45 has the ability to penetrate most cell phones. ( unless expelled from a compact Kimber)

OUCH! I guess I'll have to get rid of my compact Kimber. Should I send it to you?

I just looked at the figures though. And I believe that while the .45 has more energy, the 9mm ball ammunition has a reputation for high penetration because of the higher velocity and lower cross sectional area.. but who in their right mind carries ball ammo except for the 1911 folks?

Not this guy. Hollowpoints all the way. What some guy was doing out in those woods though with ball ammo is a puzzler. The only thing I can think of is that the shooter was plinking, and a round got away from him.

[bryang]

I respect him for giving God the credit...

"I don't look at any of this as coincidence, " Richard said Wednesday. "I look at this as God telling me to put my cell phone in that pocket, and I'm grateful and humbled."

But I agree with Jim....

These morons who can't grasp the four rules are going to be the death of us.

-geo

[retrieverman]

I carry my phone in my shirt pocket alot too. I never thought of it as a kind of bullet proof vest.

[iflyabeech]

I was just watching the mythbusters on this. They deduced that there is a difference in firing a projectile virtually straight up, where it comes back virtually straight back down with terminal velocity only, and arcing it where it maintains much of its initial velocity. There is a big difference in penetration

http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2006/04/epis ... up_vo.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Episode 50: Bullets Fired Up, Vodka Myths III

* Bullets fired up into the air can be lethal: busted, plausible, and confirmed.
* Vodka as a poison oak oil remover: busted
* Vodka as a bandage remover: plausible
* Filtering vodka through a Brita filter will turn it into a high-end vodka: busted

The "all of the above" ruling on the bullets fired into the air myth was a new one for MythBusters. All of their tests showed that if you fire a bullet perfectly straight up into the air, it will not kill you as it will fall down on its side and have too low of a terminal velocity to kill, much like the Penny Drop myth. However, it is very difficult to fire perfectly straight into the air and they even found an international expert in falling bullets who was able to confirm for them that people have died from bullets fired up into the air.
Bullets Fired Up

Myth: A bullet fired up can come down and kill you
How high would a bullet fly up?

Adam's idea was to correlate the density of ballistics gel with the density of air (Jamie: "Huh."). Adam figured that if they could see how far a bullet traveled in ballistics gel, they could use the difference in density to calculate the distance it would travel through air. Adam calculated that the ballistics gel is 650x more dense than air, so, according to his theory, if a bullet fired into ballistics gel goes 1ft, it would go 650 ft through air. At least that was the theory: they would have to go to the firing range with some blocks of ballistics gel to see if it would work.

They lined up several blocks of ballistics gel end-on-end at the South San Francisco Police Department firing range (last seen in the Catching a Bullet with Your Teeth myth). They quickly ran into a problem. The 9mm round went through three blocks of ballistics gel for a total distance of about 5ft. The much more powerful .03-06 only went one block in. This wasn't so surprising given the results of the Bulletproof Water myth, though they didn't seem to anticipate the same happening with ballistics gel. The .30-06 rounds travel much faster, so they a greater tendency to break up on impact. Jamie managed to flip a block of ballistics gel with a final shot, finally putting an end to this particular avenue of testing: the ballistics gel was not going to help them figure out how far a bullet would fly up.

Based on the failure of the ballistics gel experiment, they used a computer simulation program to calculate how high the bullets would travel up into the air. The calculations: *.03-6 10,000 ft 58 seconds

* 9mm 4,000 ft, 37 seconds

Terminal velocity of a falling bullet

Adam built an acrylic wind tunnel (much like the one in the Penny Drop myth). Air was shot up through the bottom and a bullet was dropped into the chamber. The terminal velocity was calculated based on the speed of the air needed to make the bullet stop falling. They figured that the terminal velocity was 100mph (150 ft/s). The wind tunnel also showed that the most stable falling position for the bullets was on their side.
Firing bullets at terminal velocity

The rigged up an air hose to an aluminum pipe to launch the bullets at terminal velocity (150 ft/s). Their first shot put a good dent in the metal door. Their next target would be a pig's head, just as soon as they got the amount of air pressure tuned correctly. A chronograph was used to measure the speed of the bullet and a solenoid valve was attached to the tube to control the air flow.

They fired bullets from the pipe into the pig's head and recorded it all on the high-speed camera. At 166 ft/s, the 9mm bullet bounced right off of the pig's head. The .30-06 bullet did only slightly better, piercing the skin and then bouncing off.

It was looking like this was going to be busted, but, as it turns out, there is an international expert on falling bullets working in nearby Stanford. The expert, Dr. David G Mohler, told them about a case in Menlo Park where a woman sitting in a lawn chair was struck in the leg by a bullet that was fired into the air 1 1/2 miles away during a 4th of July celebration. Mohler recovered the bullet from her leg and the police were able to match the ballistics to a shooter.

Mohler also told them about a case of an elderly man in Alameda who was talking to his wife underneath a plastic corrugated roof in his carport. His eyes rolled up and his wife thought he was having a stroke. When they got to the hospital they found out there was a bullet in his brain and, unfortunately, he died.

"I know for a fact that bullets fired at a distance, returning to Earth, with terminal velocity, have the ability to kill people." - Dr. Mohler

This contradicted their findings so far, so it was back to the drawing board.
Mohave Desert testing

They figured out what was different from their original assumptions: the bullets in Dr. Mohler's cases weren't fired straight up into the air. They were fired at an angle, which meant that they remained spin-stabilized and on a ballistics trajectory.

It was time for them to figure out what would happen with real bullets fired into the air. They went out to the Mohave Desert, where they setup a rig to fire straight up into the air. They planned to fire a bunch of bullets into the air and hopefully find at least one of the bullets where it landed. To maximize their odds, they stationed their crew in bulletproof listening posts.

They first fired bullets straight into the ground as a control:

* BB: 3"
* 9mm: 6"
* .30-06: 12"

Jamie fired a clip of 9mm bullets up into the air. 39 seconds later they heard the bullets hit the ground.

Adam: "I'm searching across the desert for a pencil-sized hole"

The first bullet that Adam found went only 2" into the ground and appeared to have hit the ground on it's side. The bullet had traveled 330ft horizontally. Jamie found another bullet hole almost identical to the first.

Jamie then fired the .30-06 rounds. Big problem: after 40 rounds fired into the air, they weren't able to hear any bullets land. The .30-06 rounds travel over twice as high, so they were simply traveling too far for them to find.

Adam brought out plan B: a balloon attached to an instrumented platform that could drop bullets remotely. The platform had a wireless video camera that fed an image of the platform, including the altitude gauge, down to Adam.

The bullets were dropped in a bundle from a height of 400 ft. The .03-06 made a 2" hole. The 9mm made a 2" hole as well, matching up perfectly with the actual 9mm bullet firing.

For the first time ever, they deemed this one busted, plausible, and confirmed. All of their tests, from the pig's head to the 9mm firing to the balloon, showed that a bullet fired perfectly straight up into the air is not lethal. However, it is also very difficult to shoot perfectly straight up into the air and, with the cases cited by Dr. Mohler, they have confirmed that people have died from bullets falling from the sky.