Quote:
Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic
In Beckwith's case, the round had travelled some distance from the ground and then hit the helicopter so it may have lost enough energy to not kill him outright.
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Everything you say about the circumstances of Beckwith's shooting is true but perhaps I haven't been clear enough. The thing about a round like the 12.7mm or .50 cal is that they are a long, AP bullet. They don't fragment when they hit a human body, they don't expand and they don't tumble. This means that whether they hit you at 20 feet or at a kilometre they are still going to punch right through you. My point is that if the round doesn't fragment, expand or tumble there is a finite amount of energy it can impart to a human body before it punches out the other side, and that energy transfer is roughly the same whether the round is at full velocity or not.
This is a different situation to that of a pistol or rifle round that fragments, expands or tumbles when it hits a meat target, as those sorts of rounds are much more efficient at dumping their energy into a target.