The question today, inspired by my recent listen to the conclusion of the Renegades series, is this:
Can the recoil from a handgun send you flying into a stone wall?
Nova locked her jaw around another scream and pulled the trigger. The kickback sent her flying into the stone wall. The gun blew out of her hand, ricocheting off one of the smaller bells with a resounding clang before it careened out of the tower window.
-Supernova, Marissa Meyer
-Supernova, Marissa Meyer
Supernova, Marissa Meyer
First, what is recoil?
When you shoot a gun, you send a small mass flying away from you at a high velocity. Newton’s third law says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction… which means that when your bullet flies away from you, your gun flies towards you. This is why:
When you shoot a gun, you send a small mass flying away from you at a high velocity. Newton’s third law says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction… which means that when your bullet flies away from you, your gun flies towards you. This is why:
- A rifle held to your shoulder bludgeons your shoulder
- A cannon on wheels rolls backwards
- A handgun pops up in your hands
Since the gun is heavier than the bullet, it flies back into your hand much more slowly than the bullet flies away from you. For example, if you’re using a Glock 19 (one of NYC’s standard-issue guns for police and one of the most popular guns for police nation-wide), the gun weighs 29.6 oz (839 grams) while the bullet itself typically weighs 115 grains/ 0.262 oz (7.45 grams) and leaves the gun with a velocity around 1150 feet / second (784 MPH), sending the gun back towards you with a velocity 7.45/839 * 1150 feet / second or 10.2 feet / second (7 MPH).
It's hard to visualize what a 1.85-lb Glock 19 hitting your hand at 7 MPH would feel like, so many times people convert the gun’s recoil into energy (typically in foot-pounds). A 7MPH 1.85lb weight has 3.1 foot-pounds (4.1 Joules) of energy… which is a little bit less than a gallon of milk dropped from 5 inches.
That’s right, a typical handgun hits your hand about as hard as a gallon of milk dropped from 5 inches.
This is not enough to send you flying against the wall, even if you’re petite (like Nova). It’s especially not enough if there’s enough energy left in the gun (i.e. not imparted to your body) to send the gun ricocheting off of a bell and out of a window.
But what if Nova was shooting a super powerful gun? It’s true that some handguns kick more than others (although Nova shoots her gun all the time without being flung back… but we’ll ignore that).
Here’s a nice handgun recoil table showing the foot-pounds of recoil energy for an assortment of handguns. The .500 Linebaugh (which shoots a massive 400-grain bullet at 1550 feet/second and has almost three times the recoil of the Dirty Harry .44 Magnum, the so-called “the most powerful handgun in the world), has a whopping 62.3 foot-pounds of kickback. This is almost as much as a gallon of milk dropped from six feet!
It's hard to visualize what a 1.85-lb Glock 19 hitting your hand at 7 MPH would feel like, so many times people convert the gun’s recoil into energy (typically in foot-pounds). A 7MPH 1.85lb weight has 3.1 foot-pounds (4.1 Joules) of energy… which is a little bit less than a gallon of milk dropped from 5 inches.
That’s right, a typical handgun hits your hand about as hard as a gallon of milk dropped from 5 inches.
This is not enough to send you flying against the wall, even if you’re petite (like Nova). It’s especially not enough if there’s enough energy left in the gun (i.e. not imparted to your body) to send the gun ricocheting off of a bell and out of a window.
But what if Nova was shooting a super powerful gun? It’s true that some handguns kick more than others (although Nova shoots her gun all the time without being flung back… but we’ll ignore that).
Here’s a nice handgun recoil table showing the foot-pounds of recoil energy for an assortment of handguns. The .500 Linebaugh (which shoots a massive 400-grain bullet at 1550 feet/second and has almost three times the recoil of the Dirty Harry .44 Magnum, the so-called “the most powerful handgun in the world), has a whopping 62.3 foot-pounds of kickback. This is almost as much as a gallon of milk dropped from six feet!
Is that enough to send you flying back? Well, most of us haven’t tried catching gallons of milk, so maybe putting it in terms of baseball is easier. 62.3 foot-pounds (84 Joules) is about the same energy as a 70MPH fastball, which is pretty slow for high-school baseball and definitely not enough to throw your whole body backwards.
There you have it – a handgun is not likely to throw you flying backwards, even if you use one of the very unusual super-handguns that seemed designed to do exactly that.
There you have it – a handgun is not likely to throw you flying backwards, even if you use one of the very unusual super-handguns that seemed designed to do exactly that.
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