And now for something completely different...

[AHI in AR]

Several years ago I found a .22 slug embedded in a roof. I pocketed it as a curiosity. Much to my surprise, I have found 4 more of various calibers since then. To date, my collection stands at five. Two are .22 caliber. One looks like a 9mm to my untrained eye. Not being a hunter or firearm enthusiast, I don't know about the other two (largest) ones.

I saw the Myth Busters episode where they fired shots straight up in an attempt to find out if they were still lethal as they came down. Interestingly, they found that they tend to tumble as they return to earth so the velocity/energy is not that great when they hit.

My admittedly unscientific research would tend to confirm that. All of these were found in a position that did not penetrate the roof deck; most didn't even penetrate completely through the shingles themselves.

Anybody have similar findings?

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[Home Pride]

I have found a few over the years, usually in older neighborhoods, but I never bothered to save them.

A note concerning the Myth Busters thing: sometimes things like that can happen. Local story about this very issue here in town:

Falling bullet death

Dom.

[kurt]

Exactly. You do NOT want to be under a slug when it's tumbling to Earth. Whatever goes up, comes back down pretty darn hard.

I once found a bullet hole in a wall of a property I was looking @; I visualized the general path and found the 9mm slug stuck in the timber beam of the LR.

Found a few embedded in roofing; all 9mm.

[sepefrio]

My buddy had one go through his wall at a slight angle as it came back down right into the Dining room. In Iraq, one convoy I was on started taking fire, or so we thought. A round went through the windshield (just missing the drivers leg) of a HUMVEE. After calming down, and looking at the round, it came in from the top and was probably a round fired in the air.

Remember, you can't do anything about that bullet with your name on it, it's the one labeled "To whom it may concern" that is scary.

[Les]

We find 3-4 per year of various caliber. Mostly in the neighborhood around the police firing range. Around here we see evidence of gun play on the exterior walls quite often.

My favorites are the cornfield palaces just after deer hunting season. No rifles are allowed for hunting in this section of Michigan, so the culprit is always a 12ga slug. I had a broadhead arrow in the seat of my tractor last year.

My usual roof fare are tennis balls and pennies.

[hausdok]

I found a couple of 9mm slugs imbedded about 12ft. apart in the shingles of a roof in the central district a couple of years ago.

Where I grew up in New York State, my father's property bordered a very large overgrown meadow that had been used for growing crops decades earlier but had long since been used strictly for grazing. There was a wood and a small marsh out there in the middle of that. It was teaming with pheasant and deer would hide out in the wood and graze in the meadow. Every year during hunting season, particularly on weekends, pairs of guys wearing orange hats or vests and carrying shotguns would stroll by on the other side of the fence and we were accustomed to the sound of shotguns going off nearby. Every year a few stray pellets would find the back of the house. Somehow, none of us kids were ever hurt, none of my sisters' horses was ever injured, and we only ever had one window, a dining room window, broken. However, one year we did lose Lady, my sister's dog, to a bullet during deer season. She was gone for a couple of days before we found her out in the field near the fence bordering that meadow. We never did find out who'd shot her. She was accustomed to the hunters and wouldn't bother them or bark at them but she would run out by the fence to watch them. I suspect it was probably some idiot from NYC who fired at the first brown thing he saw in the bushes along the fence.

Kevin, next time, place a ruler in the photo and space the slugs along the graduated edge where we can see the tick marks.

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

[mthomas1]

Hey, this reminds me - something I'm looking for, but can't find as I don't know the the correct name for it: 12" a durable marked ruler with prominently graduations designed to be used to illustrate scale in photographs...

Well.. duh: "Evidence ruler"

[rlskfoster]

I spent almost fifteen years at one Fire Station in southeast Fort Worth. This is an area known locally as Stop Six, it has long been an area of gang warfare and violence. It is popular in this area to shoot guns into the air to welcome in the New Year--heck it must have been New Years every shift I was over there! But the story i was going to tell involved our station AC. One morning I came in and the off going shift said that the back AC had quit working during the night and we should get building maintenance out to check it out. This was mid-July so I made that phone call rather quickly. The city AC guy came out later in the morning and headed up to the roof. A little later he came down with a bullet and a piece of copper tubing that had a gouge and a deformed spot. Evidently during the night the unit took a hit and lost it's freon. The units are roof mounted and not visible from ground level. The AC guy said there was a hole in the top of the unit almost directly above the spot the copper was hit.

I wish we had taken a few pictures. The AC guy was keeping the bullet and copper to show the other guys in his shop.

We invited him to stay for lunch--he said, "No Thanks!"

[Jesse]

Lawn furniture, empty beer cans or OE bottle, drug paraphernalia, the occasional condom. No bullets yet.

[inspectman]

I have found over 30 slugs in roof shingles. There is one neighborhood where the preferred firework for the 4th of July or New Years Eve is a handgun fired in the air. Roof next to these neighborhoods generally produce the most slugs. Happy New Years! [:-bigeyes

[Bain]

Originally posted by Les

Around here we see evidence of gun play on the exterior walls quite often.

Les,

Are you talking about remnants from gunfights? In neighborhoods?

[Les]

John,

Most common place for us to see damage is in the inner city. I have found that most inspectors in those areas simply don't look for it. We don't specifically look for it, but most dings and holes in the side walls go unreported or unexplained.

In the land of cornfield palaces, these holes often get blamed on lawnmower discharge and most are caused by lawnmowers. But if you look real close you will discover many are caused by other events.

[AHI in AR]

While all of the slugs I've found have been in neighborhoods comprised of what I'll call "rough" homes, I've never found anything that looked definitely like damage to side walls from gunfire.

I was in New Orleans several years ago at New Years visiting a friend. Residents there have a bad habit of shooting into the air to celebrate also. On January 2nd, the headline in the morning paper was about a tourist who was hit by a falling bullet and fell over dead. If I remember, it entered right behind an ear. Obviously there was no sound of gunfire to alert them as to what happened, and he apparently didn't bleed much. Took a while to figure out what happened.