Aiming a gun toward the sky

When the clock struck midnight, gunshots rang out in my neighborhood and many others across southeastern Wisconsin as the calendar turned to 2024.

We live off 39th and Capitol Drive, and gunfire ranged from the small pop of a .22 caliber round to the rapid-fire succession of a Glock.

While I understand the need to celebrate the New Year, hearing so much gunfire for so long is unnerving. The gunfire lasted for nearly two hours after my wife and I shared our glass of champagne. …

I’m a gun owner, and firing a gun from my porch up in the air to celebrate the new year has never been something that I’ve participated in. It’s irresponsible. …

The Milwaukee Police Department warns people against firing guns into the air on New Year’s Eve every year because those bullets fired in the air come down. All it takes is one of those bullets to go through a window and strike someone.

In fact, a Glendale family found a bullet hole in the wall next to their son’s crib. The stray bullet was located in between their son’s stuffed animals. 

When the gunshots started this year, I opened our living room window and recorded. My wife fussed at me to move away from the windows. When I looked out my window, I could see the flashes of light coming from several of my neighbors opening fire. …

While I don’t want to sound like the grumpy guy on the block who complains about everything, the number of shots fired on New Year’s Eve was disturbing. …

Please stay safe, store those guns. Also, remember, what goes up must come down.

— James E. Causey in Irresponsible. Unnerving. Sound of Gunfire Rang in New Year for Two Hours.

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68 COMMENTS

  1. High powered rifle rounds fired off in my packed urban neighborhood.
    Proof you can’t fix stupid, no matter how many times you whack it in the head.

    • Caliber and power level is meaningless to this topic. Doing this with a 22lr is just as stupid as 308win and for all the same reasons.

      • Those who discharge firearms thinking they can get away with it because people will assume it’s firecrackers are generally sleazebags.

        • When I was a kid, a neighbors kid was playing around with a bow and arrow (a real one, not a toy). He ended up putting a hole all the way through the roof of my house. It got patched up and no one was hurt but only for the fact that no one was sitting in the chair under that hole at that particular moment.

          Caliber means nothing.

      • I guess danger increases with mass and reduced drag coefficient? The heavier the bullet the more energy it has at terminal velocity. The lower the drag the higher the terminal velocity. So a 50 bmg coming straight down and not tumbling probably has a good velocity, maybe 650 FPS? Good enough to pass through your roof and kill you in your chair.
        Blanks are good at making noise.

  2. I heard a lot of booms, hoped they were all fireworks, but assume some were probably gunshots.

  3. Why assume it was people firing into the air?
    The more diverse community was probably shooting into their fellow man.

  4. Two thoughts:

    One, if fired near vertically, falling bullets are actually not incredibly dangerous. See, for example, mythbusters or, refer to the laws of physics that govern terminal velocity.

    Two, firing into the air on New Years Eve, or at any time, for that matter, is monumentally stupid because, even if your rounds are not necessarily deadly, it is bad, very bad, form. Such actions accomplish nothing and make you an easy to use example when people want to vilify firearms owners as brainless idiots with a fixation for things that go “bang” so, don’t do that, you are embarrassing the rest of us.

    • I remember that myth busters episode, they actually found the lethality of bullets fired up to be busted, plausible, and confirmed. If you could fire perfectly straight up, then sure, it will go up until it slows to a stop, then gravity pulls it back at terminal velocity. But straight up was hard to duplicate, angling it just a bit results in ballistic trajectories.

      So in general it’s a bad idea, don’t point at anything you don’t want to destroy, know your target, and what is behind, etc.

      • As Mythbusters showed the problem word is “straight” up. Any variation and it’s going to be harmful or fatal if hit.

        Anyone who has done trips to the Middle East will understand why doctors in Iraq were the world leaders in repairing skull damage from falling bullets.

        • everytime my assyrian friends belch they “air ak” upward with one arm.
          the imaginary spray is more pleasant than the actual spittle.

  5. He could tell it sounded like a Glock? Really.
    Any 9mm is going to sound similar. 40, 45. Whatever.

  6. He could tell it sounded like a Glock? Really.
    Any 9mm is going to sound similar. 40, 45. Whatever.
    Doubt it.

      • I mean Glock and glock-like guns, even generic glocks are so common you could pretty much use Glock to define common semi auto striker plastic frame pistols, like some say “get me a coke” to refer to any soft drink.

  7. I’m a gun owner, and firing a gun from my porch up in the air to celebrate the new year has never been something that I’ve participated in.

    Not something I’ve ever been interested in either, some folks just don’t grasp the laws of gravity “what goes up WILL come down” the only question is WHERE… Every time I see some dumbass shooting into the sky I think of the movie “The Mexican”…

  8. Slightly different problem from shots in the air.

    Had people living near me who had lead shot all over their roof and gutters from their neighbours. Not helpful in a rural area where the only drinking water was rainwater.

    • You drink bird shit water off yer roof? Ya gotta wait til winter and eat the icesickles cause Penguins can’t fly up on yer house.

  9. This is a problem everywhere. I had a leak in my roof once. The contractor showed me what I recognized as a 180 gr.40 cal FMJ he recovered from the decking. My parents had a new roof installed because it was time. Dad later showed me a .38 cal 158 gr round nose lead projectile the roofer found in the decking. That is bad enough, but I’m almost embarrassed to tell you the rest of this. Before I retired I was the head firearms instructor for my agency. On January 2 I get a PX from a fellow deputy. He wants a couple boxes of duty ammo. Huh? We shoot our issued duty ammo at qualifications and are issued fresh. That was only a couple of months ago. He had fired three magazines from his Glock 17 into the air. That moron should never have had a badge. He’s in prison now. Where he belongs. Another time it’s the 4th of July and I’m on the pool deck minding the grill. I hear someone doing a mag dump from a rifle. (I hate a mag dump, even on a range). I thought to myself, “Asshole”. Later I found out it was a guy I worked with shooting an AR I had sold him.

  10. As a Black man in Milwaukee, I’m tired of writing pieces about how someone got shot after an argument.

    Serious question. What does being black have to do with anything?

    I could see the flashes of light coming from several of my neighbors opening fire.

    If he doesn’t move his family away from the crazy, then it’s on him if something bad happens to them. It won’t be the fault of law-abiding gunm owners even though we’ll get the blame.

    • Q: Serious question. What does being black have to do with anything?

      A: You know…because…reasons.

    • Q: Serious question. What does being black have to do with anything?

      A: “Lived experience” I presume. As in, a black man’s experience is more valid than a white or brown man’s experience.

      • ….seem to hear a lot more gunfire in certain neighborhoods….remember the uneasy feeling I had working on New Years eve in a construction trailer…and observing that happen….

  11. “…rapid fire of a Glock.”

    So you heard pistol fire and new it was a Glock? Interesting, do tell more.

  12. I live out in the sticks, where it *might be* considered to be safer to fire into the air. I say *might be*. It doesn’t matter where you live, the laws of physics work the same. That bullet has to come down somewhere. And, there could be anyone, or anything, where it falls.

    In a rather long life, I have fired very few bullets that I couldn’t account for. As in, “Well, I missed my target, but I hit that tree right there, I know I didn’t kill another hunter out in the brush.”

    Negligent homicide is negligent homicide. Let’s just not do that, alright?

  13. Our Senile Sock Puppet President Joe Biden would disagree with you. He recommends responding to threats by firing a shotgun in the air or better yet, blindly through a door. However; even birdshot can penetrate a door and retain enough velocity to be lethal. Buckshot as well as slugs can have enough terminal velocity to penetrate a human skull.

    This might not be a problem as long as your shotgun is habitually loaded with birdshot. However …

    Did other people have access to your shotgun?
    Did you check to see what type of ammo your shotgun was loaded with before you fired it?
    Did you actually open up the shotgun cartridges to confirm what projectiles were loaded?

    • “Just in time before the holiday.”

      It’s either really early, or very late.

      The choice is up to you…

  15. “and gunfire ranged from the small pop of a .22 caliber round to the rapid-fire succession of a Glock.”

    The “small pop of a .22 caliber round”, just “a” round, just one?.

    But whats really telling about this story is the supposedly “rapid-fire succession of a Glock” (just “a Glock”, just one?). Its not uncommon for people to mistake the sound of fireworks in a neighborhood for firearms being fired. But anyway, this story is telling because there is nothing about firing a Glock that makes it sound any different from any other brand of firearm being fired, or in a lot of cases no different than the sound of fireworks going off, and its also telling because this whole story is a contrived bunch of BS written by someone who doesn’t know anything about firearms.

  16. I am in my sixties now and have owned guns since my teens. I have never felt a desire to fire a gun in the air in the middle of town. I know it has become a cliche to say “education” is the solution to every problem, but in this case, a return to the kind of firearms education that used to be common in the schools will help. We still have the Civilian Marksmanship Program in the US, though it is not as large as it once was. I recall a bill proposed five years ago, to add gun safety as an elective class in public schools. It died, of course. What a pity. You have incidents like the New Year’s discharges, and year-round shootings in the city occurring because people literally do not know what they are doing. We have anti-gun public policies and attitudes that do not allow them to be taught. To me this is a bit like not teaching a child to swim, because you fear this will encourage him to go into the water where he might drown. Guns are a part of our society. They can be respected and made respectable, or can be disrespected and disparaged, with consequent effect on how they are viewed and used by those who own them.

  17. Wisconsin? I’m skeptical.

    Now if this story was coming out of Ilhan Omar’s district in Minnesota I would be less surprised.

  18. I never understood the idiotic desire to fire a gun into the air. It’s a pointless action that only produces waste.

    Ammunition is expensive
    It violates all 4 rules if shooting
    It’s likely to get you arrested
    You could easily lose your license to carry
    You likely to anger everyone around you
    Nothing worth having is gained
    It puts lives and property in danger needlessly

    The particular angle it goes up doesn’t change any of this.

  19. St. Louis Downtown Airport (KCPS), which is actually in St. Clair County Illinois, posted a NOTAM (Notice To Airmen) that they would be closed from 10:00 p.m. News Year Eve to 4:00 a.m. on New Years day due to gunfire.

      • Frank Speak
        Funny you mention tracers. I live in the city of St. Louis. About thirty years ago, when my kids were little, we were outside banging pots and pans at midnight. My wife said “Look down the street, somebody saved some bottle rockets from the Fourth of July to shoot into the air.” I informed her that those were not bottle rockets. They were tracers. About a dozen of them had been shot skyward.

  23. I only fired off five shots this new years eve, used the M102, all good because I aimed it at the Cherokee Nations.

    • Field Artillery, the King of Battle. Hoo-ahh! But Possum, I got a bit (a little bit) o’ Cherokee, myself. High angle?

  24. It’s the third of January. New Year’s Eve is over. It’s a bit early to start warning people for next year.

  25. CAN’T STOP CRAZIES …
    THANKS GOD WAS QUITE AROUND ME FOR MOST PART , FEW FIRE CRACKERS
    10 MINUTES WORTH … CAUSE OF MY DOG TURNED TV UP DROWN OUT MOST OF THE POP BANGS … PLUS MY RANGE EAR PLUGS …

  26. I’m a bit suspect as to the embellishment in this opinion piece, but there’s another way to look at it:

    People everywhere do things that can range from being somewhat negligent or irresponsible, like speeding while driving on the road, to downright stupid, as in shooting in the air.

    While this shooting, if it was actually as intense as Causey describes, is both illegal as well as irresponsible, I have to wonder how many of Milwaukee’s best citizens were driving vehicles around NYE with a BAC beyond the legal limit? Certainly at least as many people would’ve been put at risk by the “drunk” drivers as those from residual, falling bullets.

    Condemnation of the tools (guns, bullet, car, SUV, alchohol, etc.) is alway far easier, and more lazy, than trying to deal with those actually causing the problems, particularly in many diverse city neighborhoods. The actions sought should be to try to change the behavior of those actually creating the problems.

    A 4000 lb vehicle at 50 mph driven by an impaired person or a 115 gr FMJ at 1000 fps (likely fired into the air by someone similarly impaired)- which is worse if you are in its path? I’m hoping that making the individual responsible for his/her/its actions was Causey’s intention, perhaps I’m reading to much “between the lines”.

  28. “I fired a gunshot in the air
    Where it lands I do not care
    But when I hear my neighbors swear
    I’ll know my gunshot landed there!”

    Below is the original version:
    “I shot an arrow in the air
    Where it lands I do not care
    But when I hear my neighbors swear
    I’ll know my arrow landed there!”

    Give a young boy a bow and arrow, and sooner or later he’s going to try shooting it up in the air to see what happens. If it comes down on his own head, then it’s Darwin’s law, natural selection at work. Some idiots do the same with guns, but unfortunately bullets travel farther than arrows and don’t come down on the head of the guy who shot it in the air.

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