human airgun fatalities

[EddieP]

Apologies to those of you who've already seen this, and to RichardH for stealing the link from his thread, but click

here



Elsewhere in the document it claims that on average there is only one fatality per year, so less than vacuum cleaners and stepladders, and the list obviously dates back some time. The ft lb info surprised me though, a fatal injury from a 3.7 ft lb girlie cal!?

[arnie2b]

Falling of your bycicle can kill u.
U have two entrie points where your brain ain't protected from the skull which makes an obvious target.

Arnie

[EddieP]

Absolutely. It certainly provides very strong evidence against any suggestion that airguns are significant risks to the public at large, with an average of one fatality per year. I was, however, surprised at the fact that some of the fatalities were brought about by quite low ft lbs, striking in areas of the body other than the more vulnerable regions of the skull.

[Rob M]

When people are killed in incidents involving airguns, it is usually the blast of air following the pellet that causes death. The recent tragedy where two young boys were fighting over a loaded air rifle which went off, resulting in a death, and the other tragedy where a young baby girl died after being accidentally shot with an air rifle by an older sibling fooling around, the actual cause of death was the blast of air which entered the wound behind the pellet.

This is why airgun related fatalities almost always occur less than six feet or so away from the airgun, and when people are shot from further away it is almost invariably just an injury rather than a fatality. This is also why deaths like this are usually the result of 'horseplay' involving an airgun, between siblings or friends, rather than people intentionally wounding others, using airguns as weapons.

This is the impression I have gained from reading about the unfortunate incidents anyway... Other people on here might be more knowledgeable than me.

I would also question the statistics, airgun fatalities actually run at less than one per year.

[EddieP]

The statistics claim an average of 'around' one per year, but it's interesting that all the guns cited are springers, and some of them quite old models, so I would agree that the stats may have been presented to demonstrate a worse case scenario. Where are all the deaths from PCP's and FAC airguns one might have expected in more recent years, given a one per annum average?

I don't know about the importance of the blast of air, I would have thought that unless the muzzle was actually in contact with the victim then most of this would be dissipated and wouldn't actually enter the wound? Certainly there are examples shown where the damage (severing of artery, etc.) is clearly due to the pellet.

I'm certain that, as you say, there are many more cases of wounding than fatalities, and this is no doubt due to the relatively tiny size of airgun pellets compared to human anatomy. There are many documented cases of people surviving headshots with 22LR ammunition, and this would surely be even more pronounced with airgun pellets, due to the fact that even a shot which penetrates the skull will be very unlikely to hit a fatal spot, e.g. the brainstem or a major artery, though there would certainly be brain damage of one sort or another.

[Taff Williams]

Yep, I can believe it so far,
The way a springer produces its power is different to that of a PCP. With a springer you get a massive pressure pulse of air, whereas a PCP is more controlled (info from Airgun From Trigger To Target) so I can believe that a close up wound with a springer could be worse. If you get a bubble of air in the bloodstream, the heart can't pump air and so the circulation stops.
Then as far as fatalities with FAC guns goes, they are the ones kept in a safe rather than under the bed etc and are used by more responsible owners on limited areas of the countryside.
I can see in the future an accident with a PCP pressure chamber, but whethter that gets listed as an airgun fatality or pressurised container injury is up to the statisticians.

Ogri the trog

[Dirty-Harry]

And what about this little bomb?

Page 52:

"10.2 The FCC fully endorse the approach which was adopted and recommends that a statutory threshold of one joule (0.7376 ft/lbs.) muzzle energy should be embodied in primary legislation on the basis that any air weapon which exceeded this limit would be deemed to be a firearm for the purposes of the Firearms Acts."

[Shed tuner]

Dirty harry, this has nothing to do with changing the limit from 12FP, it's just a defination below which the gun cannot be leathal, e.g. soft air. It's already in use "informally"....

[EddieP]

Well that's already in use, isn't it? The 1 joule limit is the level which, in the opinion of the forensic science service, separates 'lethal' weapons, i.e. those able to penetrate the skin and to therefore theoretically cause death by severing a major artery, from toys (though in real terms the chance of a giant goat from alpha centauri smothering you in a gigantic pile of galactic droppings is probably more likely)

This in no way relates to the 12 ft lb limit for non FAC airguns, and there is no support anywhere in the document for any suggestion that this be revised or challenged.

[Rob M]

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that the blast of air can kill up to six feet, I should have clarified it by saying that most deaths occur in incidents where the person is in very close proximity to the airgun, like in the two cases I mentioned.

[EddieP]

And in most of the incidents reported in the document.

You'd have to be seriously disturbed to attempt suicide with an air rifle though, wouldn't you?

[Rodent Freedom Front.]

The introduction of air or other gas into the bloodstream causes an embolism or blockage in an artery or vein resulting in a stroke. A condition usually experienced by divers and people working at pressure decompressing too quickly although this usually involves nitrogen as in the "bends" or caissons disease. A significantly large quantity of air introduced into the blood stream such as "burst lung" or pulmonary baratrauma could cause heart failure but (and I stand corrected if wrong) it would be unlikely that a small quantity of air expelled by an airgun would cause direct heart failure.

Roland

[Dirty-Harry]

I disagree that this is nothing to worry about. Once a 'statutory threshold' has been introduced we could be at the top of a very slippery slope. To mix my metaphors, this could easily be used as 'the thin end of the wedge'.
Years ago a 'threshold' of 4" was introduced as the minimum lethality for a knife (the distance between the chest wall and the pericardal sac). Today we need 'good reason' to be in public with any knife! As for a Gentleman's sword-stick - forget it .......

[EddieP]

Yes. In order to cause an embolism you'd need to introduce a significant quantity of air into a vein, injecting it fairly slowly via a syringe or similar, so that the heart receives it as a single large bubble and ends up pumping on nothing. I don't think that an airgun would introduce enough air directly into a vein to cause this effect.

Harry - I think all firearms legislation should be worried about, but this particular yardstick is already in use, and has been for some time.

[Rob M]

Airguns can introduce the necessary amount of air, think of the swept volume of a rifle cylinder, minus the volume of the barrel. In any case, what if the bubble is going the other way, towards the brain? This is a significant factor in many airgun related fatalities.