Journal
JOURNAL OF FORENSIC SCIENCES
Volume -, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/1556-4029.15431
Keywords
angle of fall; bullet drop; bullet path analysis; drop angle; shooting incident reconstruction; trajectory analysis; vertical offset
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This study describes the effect of gravity on the vertical component of bullet trajectory reconstruction. By calculating bullet drop, drop angle, and vertical offset for various handgun/ammunition combinations at different distances, it provides forensic firearm examiners with reference data and proposes conservative distances for modeling bullet trajectories as straight lines.
Establishing the path or trajectory of a fired bullet is an often recurring part of shooting incident reconstruction. The current study describes how gravitational pull causes a systemic error on the vertical component of a trajectory reconstruction. Bullet drop, drop angle, and vertical offset are explained and calculated for 10 different handgun/ammunition combinations over a range of distances up to 100 m. The presented results are intended to provide forensic firearm examiners with a reference frame for the magnitude of error introduced on handgun bullet trajectory reconstructions over distance. Threshold values of 20 and 30 m are proposed as conservative distances up to where bullet trajectories can be modeled as straight lines with subsonic/transonic handgun bullets and with supersonic handgun bullets respectively. Both the bullet drop and vertical offset will be below 5 cm at these distances for those categories. The drop angle will be below 0.3 degrees.
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