Gunshots or Fireworks: Learn To Tell the Difference

By Lorraine Swanson

It’s the loudest holiday of the year, and you’ve probably already experienced a jarring 2 a.m. quarter stick or M80 blasting off in your neighborhood. Or was it a gunshot?

With Fourth of July weekend upon us, lots of Long Island residents are getting ready to celebrate America’s 240th birthday by setting off illegal fireworks, purchased legally in Pennsylvania, along with a few drunken idiots firing guns into the air.

Some describe the sounds they hear to harried 911 dispatchers as “Pop-pop-pop,” a thunderous boom or cracking rapid fire.

• Fireworks or gunshots? It was gunshots Monday morning that killed one person and left another seriously hurt in North Amityville.

But can you tell if it’s a firecracker or a gunshot? We consulted the experts on Yahoo.Answers to see if there’s a way to distinguish the two.

According to a guy named Bill — whose Yahoo asker’s rating is five stars — “A typical gunshot from a .22 rifle has two sound components, the blast itself and a small sonic boom as the bullet breaks the sound barrier. The same for many centerfire handgun and rifle sounds."

Bill adds: “It’s almost like an echo. A typical firecracker, like a Black Cat has just a sharp ‘BANG’ as the black powder explodes all at once. Larger aerial fireworks, like mortar shells, are more like gunshots, but usually they are accompanied by a large visual display.”

Archerdude chimes in: “A gunshot SOMETIMES has an ‘echo’ in it, sort of like ‘blam-am-am..., (but not always. It depends on how close it is to you, and just where you happen to be at (city, woods, open field..). Many times I have heard a loud BANG outside and thought ‘Oh, another idiot playing with his gun" -- only to learn later that the idiot was playing with his bottle rockets.”

David, who says he has never been a soldier, also seems to speak from experience: “Having had a drunken gamekeeper keep me hugging the side of a ditch, up to my armpits in filthy water for 20 minutes till I crept back into dead ground while he potted .306 hollowpoints near me I can testify that it isn’t the bang that gets your blood pumping, it s the whizzz fap noise as it passes you and beats into the ground like someone hitting a cowpat with a sledge hammer …”

Depending on the type of gun, length of barrel, use of a silence, shell size and many other factors, the sound of a gunshot is not always the same. The sound of fireworks also depend on the size and type. Cops describe a gunshot as having a flatter sound. The sound of fireworks also depend on the size and type, but they have fewer echoes than a gunshot.

Don't feel bad if you can't tell the difference. With a little practice, you’ll soon be able to tell the gunfire from all the Black Cats, mortar shells, saturn missiles and megabangers.

Now take the pop quiz. (Video by Corpus Christi Caller Times)