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Journal nizo's Journal: Happy (belated) "shoot into the air like a dumb hick" eve! 18

Journal by nizo

I was amazed at how many dumbasses in the surrounding area discharged semi-automatic (and and occasional fully-automatic) guns at the stroke of midnight last night. I kept expecting to hear a hail of bullets striking our rooftop, but thankfully we seem to have escaped unscathed. Maybe we are saved by the fact that most of the yahoooooos shooting guns were shooting up into the air, while the surrounding neighborhoods were being pelted by bullets from above.

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Happy (belated) "shoot into the air like a dumb hick" eve! More

Happy (belated) "shoot into the air like a dumb hick" eve!

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  • i went outside last night, a little after midnight and stepped out in the yard to look at the stars. then i thought about it and got back under the porch roof.
     
    i knew people that used to shoot into their pool on new years eve. but i doubt many of the shots i heard last night were downward. but where i live it has really dropped off. the city bought a system a while back that uses power lines to help track down where shots are fired. seems to have helped.

    • Re:yep (Score:2)

      by nizo ( 81281 ) *
      I was thinking about handing out flyers in the neighborhood that said that the Albuquerque police had installed a system like this, and people firing their guns would be prosecuted. I wonder if this would make a difference? :-)
    • How the heck does that work?

      • If I had my guess, someone cleverly spread a little bit of propaganda that there is this amazing powerline system that monitors (and tracks! no less) bullets being shot into the air and, afraid that they would be fingered by the authorities and seeing that shooting a bullet into the air wasn't worth the risk, people decided to skip raising their guns to the sky. This reminds me of a few cities around here in which the police leave police cars on the side of the road with a dummy inside. People tap thei
        • I do remember a few law enforcement articles about power pole mounted microphones - a tiny bit of matrix math and you have an array with excellent locating skills. Works fine for gunshots, but doesn't have a whole lot of other applications.

        • degrees is right. the system is shot spotter [shotspotter.com] and it is acoustic. Their web site links to news articles about the system, but the one in my local paper is no longer available to read without paying for it. So I'm not able to go back and look and see if they mention power lines or if I created that in my head since I read it over a year ago.
          • Ahhh. I misunderstood.
            • You didn't misunderstand.

              Quite a while back I read an article about a guy who did a lot of work with the military in wwII. one of the projects he worked on was magnetizing bullets, that would be used in anti-aircraft gun practice. they would shoot at wires towed by a plane and they figured if they made the bullets magnetic, they could tell when they were close to the wires. He mentioned they figured out they didn't need to do anything to the bullets. They were detectable as they were.
        • They might not even have to install something like that, just spread the word that one has been installed. The sorts of folks that discharge their firearms are frequently quite paranoid as well;)

          I seem to remember a Middle Eastern government issuing orders that guns were not to be shot into the air in a celebratory fashion because the bullets kept falling to the ground and hitting people. I think it was Syria.

  • My neighborhood as well. Yay for living in the South. (I realize this happens elsewhere as well. But in the South, it is really something to behold.)

    You know, it never occurred to me to aim a gun up in the air in a neighborhood, or anywhere really. I will admit to having shot an arrow upward with a bow before, but I was young, I was crazy, and it wasn't for a special occasion. (I could also see the rise and descent of the arrow.)

    Johndii and I were discussing last night that perhaps someone should sta
    • Huh, the blanks idea is a good idea. Though now I can see morons shooting at each other with blanks, only to find out they forgot that they had a real bullet in the chamber or somesuch. I still think it is a good idea however.
  • I was amazed at how many dumbasses in the surrounding area discharged semi-automatic (and and occasional fully-automatic) guns at the stroke of midnight last night.

    And I was amazed at how many dumbasses didn't shoot their guns off at midnight, opting instead to shoot before or after midnight. You would think that they would at least get the time right (/looks at atomic synchronized clock). I heard shots going off all the way past 1:00. Also heard a bunch of police sirens going off around at midnight too. Ei

    • Or perhaps responding to calls about people being shot because of the falling bullets?

      Let us hope not.

      • Geez, now you have to worry about non-nuclear fallout!

        I hope there were no airports nearby.

      • A little girl was killed in Philly at the end of '02 because some stupid fuckers were standing on a street corner shooting into the air. The bullets came down through a window a few blocks away.

        The annoying thing is that because of the velocity, the bullets travel pretty high into the air, so even the smallest angle on the initial shot can cause the bullets to set down tens or hundreds of yards away from the shooter. Personally, I'd enjoy New Year's Day a lot more if there were a routine column in the newsp
    • You know, I have to think there are more than a few places around here that, if they even thought you were shooting at them, might return fire. One fool shooting into sky + neighbors with itchy trigger finger returning fire = shootout at the moron corral. Or something like that.
  • I thought there were hicks near where I live but luckily they just shoot off fireworks.
  • Just fireworks. Lots of fireworks.

    And annoying people down the street with kazoos.

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