Police to America: guns and New Year’s Eve don’t mix

Some countries have street parties. Others do fireworks displays. Most nations bear witness to scenes of Hogarthian public drunken-ness. And in the occasional European city, half the population seems to spend the evening shoehorned into small cars, honking at passers-by.

When it comes to New Year’s Eve celebrations, America has all that. Plus guns!

Police in San Francisco today issued one of the more surreal public safety announcements  of modern times, warning citizens not to ring in 2012 by taking a firearm from their domestic arsenal and discharging it gleefully into the night sky.

“It’s Newton’s basic law of gravity, ‘what goes up must come down,’ and if it is a bullet, it could easily kill an innocent person,” a spokesman told the SF Weekly. “Too often we hear about it in the news the next day that someone’s child, parent, spouse, or friend was tragically killed by someone who irresponsibly and illegally chose to shoot a gun into the air.”

Similar warnings have been issued in several major cities, where America’s police clearly expect scenes reminiscent of post-revolution Tripoli (pictured). There are, by the by, approximately 100,000 shootings each year in the US. And 30,000 gun-related deaths. So it goes.

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• ccory13

  Muzzle flashes from all around, automatic weapons, and a rain of bullets all to ring in the new year.  Police work is never dull be safe. C

• ccory13

  Muzzle flashes, automatic weapons, and a volley of bullets all around.  I am suprised there are not more injuries and deaths.  Police work never ends…be safe out there.