Mythbusting: Shooting A Tire

We’ve all seen Hollywood movies where cops or bad guys are shooting tires to end a high-speed chase. Realistic or not, we’ve frequently seen tires shot from the windows of moving cars. Or other unlikely scenarios, like the hero standing in the middle of the road to shoot the tires of an oncoming car. The most realistic, and least exciting plot, is shooting the tires of a parked car, so there’s no chance of it being used to follow someone on screen.

While all of these options may be clever ways to move a storyline, they may not be an efficient way to stop a speeding vehicle in real life. So which calibers out of what guns can actually penetrate a tire? We set out to test this theory and see if we could bust the myths and answer a few questions along the way.

Testing GoalsMore @Widener’s