Reminder: Don’t Shoot Your Damn Gun Into the Air to Celebrate New Year’s Eve

We’ve gone over this before, people. But despite annual appeals to avoid ringing in the new year with celebratory gunfire, every few years, someone in Miami is struck by a falling bullet. So here we go again: Don’t welcome 2017 by shooting your damn gun into the air.

This week, city and county officials have the unenviable task of reminding the public of basic physics — what goes up must come down, bullets included.

“When it comes down, we have no idea where that bullet is coming down to,” County Commissioner Audrey Edmonson said during a Thursday news conference.

Miami is now in its 19th year(!) of asking residents to put the guns down on New Year’s Eve. Pitbull is the face of the “One Bullet Kills the Party” campaign, which as far as we can tell just means that his face, eyebrow cocked, looms above a huge bullet and fireworks in posters publicizing the initiative.

The Miami Police Department also revived a foreboding video from the Fourth of July, which tends to be another trigger-happy holiday.

The video, which ends by suggesting a bullet is headed toward a singing child, unfortunately reflects a harsh reality. Bullets falling in Miami killed a 9-year-old girl during Fourth of July celebrations in 2006 and seriously injured a 6-year-old boy during New Year’s Eve festivities in 2010. In the early hours of 2013, a man was grazed in the shoulder by a stray bullet.

Miami appears to have gotten through the past two years without any New Year’s Eve gun incidents. For the love of Pitbull, let’s keep it that way.

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