In article ,
RWL wrote:


Robert Heinbaugh of Plainsville, Ohio, has the distinction of being
the first person in the world to be shot by a lawn mower... As he cut
the grass one evening, he ran over a live bullet which went off and
shot him in the foot.

It made for a good newspaper headline, but it's far fetched. If the
slug lodged in his foot, it was probably flung there by the mower
blade. When a bullet is "fired" outside a firearm, the bullet, being
heavier doesn't go very far. The shell case, being lighter flys
farther and at a higher speed. I don't have the reference handy at
the moment, but my recollection was that the experiments documenting
this were done by the miilitary using 30-06 ammunition.

RWL


You are absolutely correct. As noted by Vince DiMaio in "Gunshot Wounds:
Practical Aspects of Firearms, Ballistics, and Forensic Techniques":

None of these missiles, however, is dangerous to life under ordinary
circumstances. The bullet in fact is probably the most harmless of
all these missiles because with its relatively great mass it will
have little velocity. Fragments of brass and primer are the only
components of an exploding round that have sufficient velocity to
cause injury. These fragments can penetrate the skin or eye if the
individual is very close to the exploding cartridge. With the
exception of the eye, however, no serious injury should occur, and
certainly no mortal wound...

Note that small probabilities mean odd things will happen on rare
occasion. I have seen a case of a teenager who was, as I remember,
hitting .22 cal rimfire cartridges with a hammer. A small sliver of
brass penetrated his neck and made a small laceration in the external
carotid artery. He probably would have lived had he sought help, but
instead simply covered up the wound with a Band-Aid and went to bed...


billo