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WARNING - May be an off colored word in the background. I can't hear it clear enough - So Be Aware

A guy is hit in the head with a .50 caliber ricochet. Anyone seen this? I guess they were not back far enough. I have never shot or been around a .50 caliber.

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=0ABGIJwiGBc[/youtube]

This video has been around for a few years now, but I still go back and watch it once in a while. The only think I can think of is that there must have been a poor target choice.....something that could throw back a riccochet. I was once teaching a couple of ladies how to shoot pistols, and there was a steep and quite tall berm behind the target frames. Unknown to me at the time because I just plain didn't see it, there was a piece of angle iron—of the type you would use to hold a realtor's sign in the front yard of a house—partially embedded in the earth behind the targets. After having had a couple of riccochets come whizzing past us at what sounded like an uncomfortably close distance, I went and investigated. I found the angle iron and removed it. Voila. No more problems.

It might have been something as simple as that in this video, except that whatever it was would have had to have been pretty substantial to throw a .50 BMG bullet back hard enough to al-cabong the guy on his melon and draw blood like that. He's lucky it bounced off the ground in front of him first, slowing it down somewhat. It might have killed him otherwise.

I've been hit by a couple of ricochets... once when I was about 8 by a BB that came straight back from a tree and into a very private area (yes, it hurt)

More recently I was hit by one at a Glock match at the Dallas Pistol Club year before last. Not sure where it came from but there was a lot of plate shooting going on.

Back in the late 1980s there were some kids shooting BB guns at trees. One of the kids shot a hardwood tree and the bb bounced back striking his friend in the chest. It traveled between the ribs and struck his heart. He died of cardiac tamponade.

These kids didn't think they were doing anything wrong, but someone failed in their training about knowing what you are shooting at.

Anything can ricochet and, sadly, we must pass on these incidents to warn others that it is not "Just a BB gun."

carlson1 wrote:Anyone seen this? [/youtube]

Yes.

Things like this are what makes me nervous about shooting at steel. I really wanted to get one of those steel targets from Cabela's or BassPro to take to my dad's with me, but worried too much about something like this. I ended up with that orange cube to shoot at. It still worked pretty good.