Don't shoot your gun in the air on New Year's Eve - you could hurt someone, officials warn
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- If you have a gun and you plan to fire it in the air to celebrate the arrival of 2024, officials in Philadelphia have a warning for you: don't.
"We do want to warn you, if you do shoot your gun up in the air, you gonna get the smoke up in your house," Sheriff Rochelle Bilal said in a news conference Thursday.
Celebratory gunfire is especially common around July 4th and New Year's Eve. According to ShotSpotter, a gunshot detection program in dozens of cities across the U.S., New Year's Eve is the most active night for celebratory gunfire.
In Philadelphia, officials are warning residents to speak up if a relative is planning to fire some shots into the air - and pick up a gun lock from the Philadelphia Sheriff's Office by Friday.
You can also request a gun lock from Temple University Hospital's Safe Bet program.
"This is just horrific behavior, it cannot be tolerated, we cannot have this going on," District Attorney Larry Krasner said at the news conference Thursday. "There's no reason to take these kinds of risks with other people's lives or your own life."
"It's not the norm, it's not safe," Bilal added. "You don't know where that bullet comes down and you don't know who you can hurt. ... Don't do something stupid."
The bullets fired onto the Benjamin Franklin Parkway during Fourth of July fireworks in 2022 may have been celebratory gunfire - fired from as far as a mile away. Those shots sent people running, in video that was seen across the country.
Last year, members of a Mt. Airy church told CBS News Philadelphia they planned to stay late after 11 p.m. services on New Year's Eve in order to avoid celebratory gunfire.
"We've heard them coming out of church. And so we try to stay in church to as close as 1 o'clock a.m. as possible, Jan.1. So that some of those activities can settle down," Bishop J. Louis Felton of Mt. Airy Church of God in Christ said last year.
Victims of celebratory gunfire have said they were celebrating and enjoying themselves before the night suddenly took a turn and required trips to the hospital.
In Woodland, California, not far from Sacramento, Clayton Worl was celebrating the 4th of July with his family when a .22 caliber bullet fell from the sky and lodged in his foot.
"What goes up must come down, but it's going to land somewhere," Worl told CBS Sacramento. "Luckily it wasn't someone's head."
Down in Texas, celebratory gunfire actually did hit someone in the head: Democratic state Rep. Armando Martinez, who was ringing in the New Year as 2016 gave way to 2017.
"It felt like a sledgehammer hit me over the head," Martinez said at the time. "I was a victim of celebratory gunfire."
Martinez recovered but still has a scar.
Firing into the ground is no good, either, because bullets can ricochet and hit you or your loved ones or neighbors.
State Sen. Sharif Street said homicides are down to end the year and we should keep up that progress.
"Gun violence is slightly down, but personal safety and responsibility continues to be a part of that," Street said in a statement. "Avoiding needless death and injury through celebratory gunfire is a positive way to end 2023."
