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Shooting into the Air

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen 

Those of us who know about responsible firearm use cringe when we see displays of stupidity — one of which is firing into the air. Yee haw, bang bang bang! Maybe it is human nature to make noise when celebrating, but is it human nature to put the brain in neutral as well?

Ammunition may be hard to come by, so that is one reason shooting guns in the air is stupid. Worse, though, is a simple thing called gravity. What goes up must come down. Old Hank Longfellow shot an arrow into the air and eventually found it in a tree. Stupid poem.

Recovered al-Shabaab AK-47s, Flickr / AMISOM Public Information (CC0 1.0).
On an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, a man was under suspicion of murder for supposedly shooting his wife — outside. However, the damage and the angle of the wound were all wrong, and other facts didn't jibe. It was determined that she was killed because someone nearby fired a bullet into the air.

Watching news reports or movies with idiotic sewer weasel terrorists firing AK-47s into the air prompts me to mumble things that should not be said around other people.

Remember before he became President Houseplant, Biden was telling folks to fire a shotgun into the air? Conga-rats on announcing your presence while you stand there with an empty shotgun. Diddly dur hay! While those shotgun pellets are not bullets, they can be harmful when they come down. And this jasper has the nuclear missile launch codes...


News, TV, movies show those small mortar tubes, and those big field artillery cannons, that seem to fire almost straight up sometimes. Yep, people who know mathematics, geometry, and physics have calculated how to aim so a target far away can be reached with specific loads. They know the God-given laws of nature, and that those projectiles come down after traveling a parabolic arc. While us reg'lar folk don't need to know the minutiae, we know about gravity and how those things travel in arcs. You savvy, Sigfreid?

People have been hurt or killed in the formerly United States in celebrations. Bullets come down, people die. Think, people. Having and using firearms are tremendous responsibilities. Think, people!

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