Woman claiming house hit by stray bullet from shooting range

[M-Quigley]

https://www.whio.com/news/local/big-boo ... P3pVRCwDJ/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I live in a rural area, and there is an official gun range at a fish and game type club down the road. There are also a lot of people who have their own ranges and or allow or do hunting on their property.

BUTLER COUNTY — A Butler County community has taken action against a local gun range after a woman said a bullet from the business came within five feet of her face as she sat inside her home.

Berneice Wright was watching television at about 2 p.m. April 12 in her living room of her home in the 1900 block of Gephart Road when she said a bullet burst through her window, shattering a glass candle holder next to her.

Wright’s home is about two miles from Lake Bailee Recreational Park and Gun Range, and she said this month’s close call is not the first time she and her neighbors have had bullets from the business pepper their properties.

The incident prompted St. Clair Twp. trustees to hold a special meeting last week, where they passed an emergency resolution.

“The township solicitor is hereby authorized and directed to bring legal action on behalf of the township against Lake Bailee in order to cause the firing ranges at Lake Bailee to be permanently enjoined from further use and operation as a firing range until all such range(s) at Lake Bailee can contain all projectiles/bullets fired at such range,” the resolution reads.

That action angered Jesse VonStein, the shooting range’s owner, who denied his establishment was the culprit in Wright’s close call, especially since no one was shooting a rifle that afternoon.

“They’re going to make me do this and make me do that, when we didn’t do anything wrong in the first damn place,” he said. “That makes me angry.”

VonStein told the Journal-News he went to Wright’s house after the incident and examined the bullet hole, then did some homework measuring distance and elevations of his range, her house, and a berm between the two. He determined that even if someone was using a rifle, they couldn’t have hit Wright’s window.The sheriff’s deputy who responded to the incident was told the last person using the gun range was shooting a revolver, according to a police report. While at the gun range, the deputy could hear shooting in the distance, according to the report.

St. Clair Twp. Solicitor Gary Sheets said he is continuing to research the issue.
“I have not as yet been able to find a criminal statute which makes it an offense to operate a firing range which is incapable of capturing all projectiles fired from that location,” he said.

[qmti]

Here we go again. Another shooting range that is going to have to jump through hoops to stay in business like the "Miami Valley Shooting Range" did. They have yet to open the outside range after all the improvements they have made. The anti-gunners keep gaining ground.

[High Power]

I've experienced this sort of false accusation before. This lady's statement doesn't sound right. She said she heard a big boom over her head.

If the shot came from the shooting range which is two miles away, she would not have heard anything. There would have been the sound of glass breaking and that's it. The article does not say that the bullet was ever recovered. At a distance of two miles it would not be hard to recover the bullet.

Let's look at the ballistics of a .30 caliber bullet traveling at 2750 feet per second, which is typical for a .30-06 rifle. If the rifle was zeroed-in at a distance of 100 yards, the bullet would have to drop 25962 inches to reach a point of impact a two miles away. That is a drop of 2163.5 feet or almost 722 yards. In other words, the bullet would have to drop over 7 lengths of a football field to reach this person's house from the shooting range.

The person shooting the rifle would have to be aiming at the moon to get the bullet to reach her house. In addition, the velocity of the bullet at the point of impact would be about 490 feet per second. That's less than half the speed of sound. There would be NO big boom as she reported. The only sound would be glass breaking.

The kinetic force at the point of impact would be about 89 foot-pounds. A typical .22 rifle has about 100 foot-pounds at the muzzle. With that amount of force behind the bullet, it should not be too difficult to recover the bullet. So I am really doubting this lady's story.

If someone really wanted to file a claim or sue the shooting range, they would come up with a bullet. So where's the bullet?

Not only that, there were NO rifle shooters at the range when she claimed the bullet went through her house.

This woman obviously doesn't like the gun range and is using the the incident caused by someone else firing a rifle outside the range property. Watch her try to sue the range and get some money for her emotional distress.

[DontTreadOnMe]

If someone really wanted to file a claim or sue the shooting range, they would come up with a bullet. So where's the bullet?

According to http://local12.com/news/local/grandmoth ... -than-once" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; the bullet was recovered, but it's not shown or identified.

[kcclark]

According to http://local12.com/news/local/grandmoth ... -than-once" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; the bullet was recovered, but it's not shown or identified.

Not exactly sure what I'm looking at in the range pictures but if they're the backstops, they're lower than what I'd have. That said, anything being shot near them is not going two miles.

[Bruenor]

Was looking around and one site had an example of a 30-06 being shot 2000 yards (3520 yds is 2 miles) only requiring a 5 degree incline of the barrel from horizontal. I was picturing a much steeper angle being required.

Is there a trajectory app somewhere you can enter the ballistic info and it will tell you the angle of the barrel to reach a certain distance with a specific load ?

Just curious

[High Power]

Was looking around and one site had an example of a 30-06 being shot 2000 yards (3520 yds is 2 miles) only requiring a 5 degree incline of the barrel from horizontal. I was picturing a much steeper angle being required.

Is there a trajectory app somewhere you can enter the ballistic info and it will tell you the angle of the barrel to reach a certain distance with a specific load ?

Just curious

Here’s an article about raising your rifle on 5 degrees to cause a problem for a barn at 3,000 yards away. They base their calculation on a .300 WM round.

http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/201 ... jectories/

I used JBM ballistics myself but for a .30-06 round for a 165 grain bullet traveling at 2750 fps. The drop for a rifle zeroed in at 100 yards to hit a target two miles away is about 169 mils. The US military uses 6400 mils in a circle. So (169/6400) X 360 = 9.5 degrees.

A mil at 100 yards is 3.6 inches. Now let’s assume that the target is about 4 feet off the ground, assuming someone was shooting from a bench. To determine the height of the backstop that the bullet would have to clear, you would add 4 feet to whatever 169 mils is worth in feet.

[(169 X 3.6) / 12] + 4 = 54.7 feet. That’s pretty darn high. Now these assumptions are based on the shooters position and the house are at the same elevation, which they are not.

I also looked at some topo maps of that area but can’t figure out how to post them. Her home is about 700 feet above sea level while the range is about 640 feet above sea level.

That’s a difference of 60 feet. The angular change in elevation comes out to about 5.7 mils or 1/3 degree. Nevertheless, I plugged that into the JBM ballistics. The change was so negligible that it didn’t show any difference at 3500 yards.

Here’s a link to the photos of the shooting range from their web site:
http://lakebailee.com/photos/

Those backstops don’t look very high. Nevertheless, the person shooting a rifle above those backstops would have to be extremely negligent. Let’s not forget this; all factors indicate that the only firearm being used that day was a revolver.

The lady’s comments about hearing a big boom also call the claim (that the errant round came from the range) into question. At two miles the projectile would be traveling at half the speed of sound. She would not have heard a big boom and she would not have heard a rifle shot from two miles away.

Take a look at the terrain between the range and the house on google maps:

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/1990+Ge ... 424219!5i1

It sure looks like a good place for a quite a few folks to shoot their rifles at groundhogs or whatever. I would also like to see how the rifle range is oriented; to see if the house would be in the line of fire from the shooters position to the intended target. In other words is the rifle range oriented toward the east? I can't tell from looking at the areal photos or maps.

[rattlehead]

Reminds me of this story from several years ago...

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/blog/afp_Bullet.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

https://hotair.com/archives/2007/08/15/ ... ent-643937" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[M-Quigley]

Update: Township lost in court but is vowing not to give up.

https://www.whio.com/news/clair-twp-say ... qXYP8BzgJ/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Brian D.]

I was at this range for an "Open House" event in July. It struck me that some of their backstop ought to be taller, but that's just my opinion as a shooter.