Special Request Saturday

As you know, I always answer every special request that I receive in TWIT: today's special request is no exeception. But before we delve into it, I need to go on record in saying that I reserached for about an hour, and could not find the exact info that my faithful reader requested. But I think my research will suffice their curiosity. Here's what the faithful reader had to say:

On average, how many people each year are injured or killed by stray New Year's Eve bullets? I'm particularly interested in people who are sitting safely inside their homes watching Dick Clark when a bullet comes through their roof or wall.

Unfortunately, I am at a loss, and don't have a official answer for you, faithful reader. I did over two hour's worth of research, and while I found statistics for the Phillipines and Puerto Rico, I didn't find any statistics for the U.S. But I did find article upon article about innocent, unsuspecting people being hit by stray bullets on Wednesday night; unfortunately most of them children and babies.

Here's just a few of the many injuries I found doing a quick search on "stray bullets causing injuries on New Year's Eve":

• Phillipines - 346 injured, 2 killed
• Mobile, AL - 119 complaint calls of shots fired; a 7 year old shot by an AK-47 stray bullet
• Houston, TX- a man critically injured when a stray bullet came through the wall of his living room
• Guam, Puerto Rico - a 6 year old critically injured when she was struck in the head by a stray bullet
• Manilla - a stray bullet kills a pedicab driver; a 12 year old boy critically wounded
• Fayetteville, NC - a family woke up New Year's Day to discover a quarter-sized hole in the roof of their living room caused by a stray bullet
• Baton Rouge, LA - a 14 year old girl was hit in the shoulder by a stray bullet
• Memphis, TN - a stray bullet ended up in the diaper of a 7 month old baby after coming through the church ceiling

Here's what the LAPD had to say about it:

Discharging a firearm into the air is a felony punishable by one year in state prison. Researchers report that a bullet fired into the air can climb two miles into the air and remain in flight for more than a minute. As it falls, the bullet reaches a velocity of 300 to 700 feet per second. A velocity of only 200 feet per second is sufficient to penetrate the human skull.
Don’t fire guns in the air. Remember what goes up, will come down, and when a bullet comes down it is traveling at a fatal velocity.
• Shooting a gun into the air is a felony. You will spend up to one year in prison if you are caught.
• If you’re arrested for shooting a gun into the air, you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
• If a stray bullet from your gun should kill someone, you will be arrested and charged with murder.
• People involved in celebrating the holidays by shooting their guns do not realize the danger posed by their actions.
• A bullet fired into the air can climb up to two miles. When it falls back to earth, it can reach a speed of 300 to 700 feet per second.
• If you ever see someone fire a gun into the air, call the police.
*Don’t fire guns into the air. REMEMBER, WHAT GOES UP WILL COME DOWN.

Well, duh. Do we need the LAPD to remind us the law of gravity - that what goes up will ultimately come down? And most of the time, it will come down on someone?

Let me say for the record, everytime that we've discharged a firearm at The Compound on New Year's Eve, it has always been into the ground, in an area away from any people, animals, buildings, pipes, wires, roots, or any other objects; it was just into the dirt. Never once did we fire our guns into the air.