This is a (mostly) wordless New Year’s Eve edition of Termination Tuesday.
I’ve made no bones about the fact that I find shooting guns – especially randomly and up in the air – an extremely ill-conceived method of celebrating something as inane as a number changing on a man-made calendar.
Here are some folks who just might agree with me.
- 17-year-old Saginaw man accidentally shot and killed himself while celebrating New Year’s Eve (Link)
- Celebratory gunfire: The science of shooting into the sky (Link)
- Two charged with firing 80 rounds in Elgin to celebrate New Year’s Eve (Link)
- New Year’s Eve shooting to start a day late in Cherryville (Link) Ah, respect for the Sabbath. -Ed
- Celebratory gunfire is uniquely dangerous and illegal in Florida (Link)
- A victim of a “celebratory” bullet appeared at a press conference warning residents against firing guns in the air to celebrate New Years (Link)
- Police: Cathedral City Man Caught Red-Handed Firing New Year’s Gunshots (Link)
To conclude and illustrate just how dangerous random gunshots can be, here’s a story about a 15-year-old girl killed from over a mile away by a man who was preparing to clean his rifle so he fired a shot in the air to clear the barrel. (Link.)
Some states, like California and Florida, make random shooting of a gun in public a felony. This needs to be made a federal standard for all 50 states.
For those who feel that “celebratory gunfire” is a fun way to ring in the New Year, I offer the following long-distance dedication.
Shouts from the Abyss 
I had no idea shooting guns was such a popular way to “celebrate” New Years! Unbelievable, except, sadly, it’s not. I guess these idiots imagine the bullets just magically disappear into thin air?
(Some) people are such morons.
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I live in an area where it happens like clockwork. I fell asleep by 10pm on New Year’s Eve and missed the whole thing. Even the gunfire didn’t wake me up. It did wake up my Mrs. and she can attest to it. Before falling asleep there were random shootings and my cats were freaked out. They get that way every New Year’s Eve and July 4th, year after year.
My personal theory states that the lower the intelligence, the stronger the need to celebrate holidays, and the higher the propensity to do so via moronic methods such as celebratory gunfire and prodigious amounts of alcohol.
My cow orker woke up on Jan. 1st to find a car had been driven into a ditch on her property and abandoned. They came later in the day to retrieve their damaged car. I would have hid it and said, “Well, you were drunk. How in the hell would you know where you left it?”
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Like Random, I’ve been fortunate not to live in a place where that happens. When I was growing up it was banging pots and pans. I can’t imagine shooting a gun “for the hell of it”. Good lord.
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Ditto on the pots and pans. I was so young at the time I actually looked forward to it. 🙂
The dude caught red-handed was charged with a felony and released on $30,000 bail. That’s a tiny glimmer of hope in an otherwise lost society.
Because society does not function like an airlock, however, I’m sure he’ll wiggle and squirm his way out of any punishment effective enough to actually change the way he thinks.
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