is it true that a bullet rises a bit after leaving the muzzle?

[6phunter]

is it true that a bullet rises a bit after leaving the muzzle?

[Bruce Beal]

The rear sight is higher that the front sight. Your eye sees straight ahead at the target. The barrel is canted up a little due to the sights and so the bullet leaves the muzzle on a slight upward angel and goes up a little from dead level but gravity takes over and the bullet begins to angle down downrange. If the barrel were perfectly level, the bullet would never go up at all. It would start level and angle down due to gravity.

[tyler1991]

Yea he is right all bullets have an arch to them no matter what.

[Buckshott00]

The answer that if the barrel is dead level this doesn't happen, isn't true 100% of the time. For the sake of generalization yes it is true, but there are some oddball cases that might make this untrue

It depends on how the bullet leaves the muzzle and if the pressure wave of burning powder is still accelerating the bullet once it leaves the barrel and it provide vertical thrust in that wave, it can in fact drive the bullet upward. A clear example of such a case would be a crown defect or un-burnt powder combusting outside the barrel driving the bullet slightly up, or even a bullet with an odd yaw that might somehow theoretically create a bit of lift. Again, not common cases but theoretically could happen