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Depending on the angle the shooter points the gun at, yes you can! If the shot is fired straight up, at a right, 90-degree angle, the bullet probably won’t kill anyone, but it can cause serious injuries. “Once it reaches a certain height, the speed of the projectile drops to zero and it falls as if it were a small stone, but air resistance does not allow the bullet to exceed 270 km/h at the end of its journey. To pierce body tissue, it would need to reach at least 350 km/h”, says American chemist Lucien Haag, former director of the Phoenix Crime Laboratory, in the United States. The situation complicates when the shot is fired at smaller angles. In these cases, the projectile traces an arc in the sky without stopping and a good part of the initial velocity is maintained.
To make matters worse, as the bullet comes out of the rotating barrel, it pierces the air as if it were a drill and ends up falling with the tip facing downwards, almost without losing its momentum. The drama is that a bullet fired from a 38 caliber revolver leaves at 1,042 km/h. The projectile from an AR-15 rifle is even faster: it reaches 3,500 km/h. Even if they lose half their speed on the way, the upward shot can still be lethal.