Ricochet hazards

Once again I have received a reminder of how easy it is for a bullet or bullet fragment to ricochet. I'd like to pass the story on, in hopes that others might learn from it.

A friend and I were at the range this past weekend, and someone had left a home-made steel plate "gong" at the 50 yard line. We spent the first half-hour or so alternating between talking and smacking this 6"x10"x1" thick mild-steel plate, welded to a vertical piece of angle iron and a base made of the same stuff, with various handgun loads from .22LR through .357/9mm, and up to .44 mag. No problems of any sort. Then I decided to break-out the AR.

It's a 16" barreled 5.56mm/.223 carbine, and I usually feed it cheap FMJ ammo for plinking and practice. I snapped a mag into place, charged the weapon, and settled-in at the bench to "ding" the plate a few times to see where it was hitting at 50 yards with the new ammo I had brought.

On the third shot, I heard a loud exclamation from my friend, and a second or two later, he says "Wait! Stop!". I apply the safety, lower the gun, and look over. He's rubbing his leg and picking up something shiny from the concrete. It's the remainder of one of my .223 slugs; what's left after it strikes a steel plate, anyway.



(dime is for scale; slug is on the right )


He checks his leg, and there is no damage; even the pants leg shows no hole or cut. He says it was a fairly light impact, but noticeable; he first thought it was one of my empty cases, but then he noticed I had my brass catcher in place. That's when he looked down and saw the bullet fragment, and realized it was a ricochet off the plate.

The slug was mostly bullet jacket material, and probably weighed less than 10 grains. Nevertheless, it had struck him hard enough that he felt it immediately, and after examining it closely, we both agreed that it could have caused a serious injury if it had hit an unprotected eyeball, or even caused a minor cut to any exposed/bare skin. Check out the razor-sharp edges in this close-up:




This incident was my fault, for not checking (just assuming) that the plate was hardened steel. When I examined it later, up close, it was cratered all over its face, and I realized we were probably lucky that we hadn't caught some pieces from all the handgun rounds we'd launched at it earlier in the day.

This was a "freebie" in the lessons-learned department; I've not always been so lucky. Every 10 years or so, I get one of these reminders about the dangers of ricochets, and some of them have been a little more serious.

We always remember our first one best, right? For me, that was shooting a steel BB at a trash can lid at close range, which provided my initial lesson on rebounding projectiles; the mark it left on my 12-year-old forehead stayed for about a week, but the mark it left on my memory was a lot deeper than that. I was MUCH more careful with that BB-slinger around hard objects for the duration of its use.

During my teen years, I owned a shotgun and several .22 rimfire guns (long and short), but the one that nailed me next was my first centerfire revolver, a .44 Magnum Ruger Super Blackhawk. I'd bought it used from a private seller, and as soon as I got it, I began to shoot a couple of boxes of ammo a week through it, getting used to the trigger action. Most of these were .44 Specials, the old 246 grain round-nosed lead load. One day, I was shooting at a tin can on the ground, in front of the stack of tires used to hang targets. The bullet hit the can (I saw it move), hit the ground (I saw the puff of dust), hit the tire stack (I saw an old target rip), and then, seemingly out of the blue, it thumped me in the chest. OUCH! I had a blue/yellow bruise for a couple of weeks, and a new respect for big heavy slow-moving lead pistol slugs.

After I joined the military, I got to shoot on Uncle Sam's time and money, and this provided many important lessons on the unpredictability of ricocheting bullets. Tracers are unmatched for their ability to show what happens to a bullet's trajectory when it hits, or passes through, an object in its path. Belt after belt of 7.62mm tracers, fired on wide-open mile-long dirt-surfaced impact ranges with various paper/plastic, wood-frame, metal, and earthen targets have left me with one overriding impression -- in the real world, the direction a ricocheting bullet takes after an impact simply cannot be predicted with any level of accuracy.

It has happened again and again over the years, most of them benign reminders -- a clang on a car body here, a thump on the back wall of the range there -- but a few with some blood added for emphasis (I watch steel plate matches at a great distance, whenever possible, nowadays).

So be careful out there, folks. Wear those darn safety glasses, even if you're not shooting, just watching. And make sure the kids and spouses have them on, too. There's no calling that bullet back, or undoing the damage once it's done.



Others are encouraged to tell all of us about their encounters with ricochets, in the comments area, below.