Can a bullet ricochet back at the shooter?

Question

There are a few videos on the internet that show long-range firing going almost deadly, when, supposedly, the shooter's own bullet ricochets at the target area, and comes flying back at the shooter.

Is it really possible?

Answer 1

Yes. Your own video shows it, and there are several others on YouTube that do. But for the sake of proving this...

Monan Jauhari, the Assistant directory of India's Central Forensic Science Laboratory wrote here about Bullet Ricochet from Metal Plates

When a bullet strikes a target of sufficient solidarity at low angle it may, while maintaining its integrity, be deflected from its original path as a result of impact and travel in a direction quite different from its original one. Such a deflection of a bullet constitutes a true ricochet

A real life example from earlier this year; A Texas teen was killed by a ricochet when he shot a butane tank.

When you shoot a solid target, the bullet can deflect. If the target is angled properly, it can deflect back at you.

Answer 2

While it's possible, it's unlikely to cause harm to the shooter, unless the shooter doesn't take simple and obvious safety steps.

What happened in the video is that the shooter shot with a .50 cal sniper rifle at a steel target located only 70 yard away from him, Which caused a part of the bullet to come back to him. However, the bullet didn't cause any harm to the shooter, or any damage to his ear muffs, source.

This type of firearm is designed to kill targets that are up to 2 km away from you, for example, the effective range of the Barrett M82 rifle is 1.8 km, the bullet that hit the man moved only 140 yards, yet it lost so much of its energy that it was harmless. The reason for it is that bullets are designed to cause maximum harm to their target by unleashing the maximum possible amount of energy to the target, in other words they are designed to not retain any energy after hitting the target (accept for AP bullets, that are designed to continue at the same trajectory, and not to turn back, by unleashing only the energy needed to pierce through, and then continuing, or all if piercing is impossible).

As can be seen in this photo:

The ricocheting bullets are landing near the target it selt, even though they are fired from a relatively short distance (so they haven't lost much energy in their flight). The machine gun in the picture is an M2 Brouning, a .50 Caliber Machine Gun.

The problem arises when a person shoots a long range rifle at close range target that will "bounce" fragments of the bullet back, like steel or rubber. And while most of the energy is lost, it can still cause harm, if the shooter is standing nearby, like in this case.

The conclusion is to take caution, and as the first source says:

you should only shoot low-velocity rounds with soft lead or frangible bullets when shooting at relatively close range. ... Lesson learned–never underestimate the destructive power of rifle-launched projectiles.