Comments on: More than 1000 shots fired in happiness in Birmingham, AL

By: Fnordius

Fnordius — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 10:42:00 +0000

Ah, yes, the Internet Sarcasm Indicator was broken for me as well.

Come to think of it, that darn thing never worked right in the first place.

By: Scott Sanders

Scott Sanders — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 13:30:00 +0000

Perhaps Walmart had an ammo sale?

By: Byron Goode

Byron Goode — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 12:49:00 +0000

Blanks actually are kinda hard to come by. The only places I know of to get them are internet ammo supply companies that the average “person who shoots in the air on the 4th” type doesn’t shop at. They cost as much or more than regular ammo.

My celebratory gunfire is always directed safely into a nice dirt berm. I’m a saint, yes.

By: Andy Simmons

Andy Simmons — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 11:45:00 +0000

How odd. I was born in Birmingham, AL, lived the first 9 years of my life in Pinson, and have gone back to various areas of the state many times over the past couple of decades to visit family, and I’ve never, ever, ever seen or heard of a person there engaging in the celebratory firing of guns into the air.

Maggie, are you absolutely positive you’re not in Texas?

By: noah django

noah django — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 06:53:00 +0000

I live in one of the most liberal enclaves of my city. In 2010, EVERY lawn had an Obama sign. There was ONE yard with a McCain sign. This year, on July 3rd, 10pm, I heard a few gun reports. At midnight, it was a fucking bullet festival.

I was proud, personally. I thought all my neighbors were pussies. [spoiler] I live in the South [/spoiler]

By: Joshua Tolley

Joshua Tolley — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 04:20:00 +0000

I haven’t seen them on the shelves at Wally World, for whatever it’s worth. They’re certainly more likely to cause minor malfunctions in semi-automatics, because of differences in pressure. Of course, that inconvenience in now way justifies firing bullets randomly in the air in celebration.

By: penguinchris

penguinchris — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 03:46:00 +0000

I know the type of person who does this kind of thing doesn’t think about it, but couldn’t people use blanks? I handled a few different types of guns once (a demonstration at a police station when I was 15) but have never fired one and never knew “gun culture” having always lived in suburbs. Are blanks hard to get or expensive maybe? That’s not an easily googleable question.

By: Jaron R. Hendrix

Jaron R. Hendrix — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 02:52:00 +0000

Are you calling city limits “metro,” or the surrounding area? You can’t really compare Mountain Brook and Ensley, or Irondale and Hoover/Vestavia Hills to one another. At leas not the way I remember things.

By: Jaron R. Hendrix

Jaron R. Hendrix — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 02:48:00 +0000

Not if you sharpen them first.

By: Deidzoeb

Deidzoeb — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 01:22:00 +0000

He’s up there somewhere. Firing into the air could hit the baby Jesus!

By: Deidzoeb

Deidzoeb — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 01:21:00 +0000

I have always believed that it was members of an actual wedding party innocently shooting celebratory rounds in the air. I wouldn’t have used a word like “massacre”, or mentioned that there have been several wedding party massacres, if I thought it was a justified attack by the US.

On the other hand, my memory is crap and I’m dredging this up from a memory of a two minute clip I saw on CNN several years ago. I don’t automatically trust everything I hear on CNN. I don’t automatically trust everything the US govt reports. And I’m not going to trust some stranger on the interweb who asserts “They weren’t” in a comment. I made it pretty clear from my first comment that I wasn’t sure what happened, and admitted I hadn’t researched it to my satisfaction.

If you want to assert it so stridently and insultingly, then guess what? = [Citation needed].

By: static 2

static 2 — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 22:13:00 +0000

The simplest conclusion is likely that, this tool to measure gunshots has caused people to want to shoot more, being measured is a means to quantify your existence and people like to do that.

By: C W

C W — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 21:50:00 +0000

“Maybe they actually were firing at the planes and used the idea of celebratory gunfire as a cover story?”

Guess what! They weren’t. Sell your conspiracy theories on Prisonplanet or something.

By: Mister44

Mister44 — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 21:49:00 +0000

As a gun safety nut – firing your gun into the air is absolutely unsafe and people have been hurt and killed by bullets returning to earth. Guns are fun – just use them properly.

By: KnoBrain3r

KnoBrain3r — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 21:04:00 +0000

I remember one 4th of July incident very well when I lived on Birmingham’s Southside several years ago. I was standing outside my apartment bar-b-queuing when my neighbor next door burst from his apartment, pointed his shotgun in the air and blasted away, about a foot from my head! The sound was so loud and sudden that my knees buckled and I hit the ground! I love B’ham but I’m very glad I don’t live in the Metro area any more.

By: Robert

Robert — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 19:20:00 +0000

This year, it rained 1.83 inches. OF LEAD!

By: Aaron Weiss

Aaron Weiss — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 18:52:00 +0000

Um, the difference in statistics is almost certainly because Birmingham upgraded its ShotSpotter system after the first one didn't work. The year-to-year numbers are apples and oranges.

By: retepslluerb

retepslluerb — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 18:47:00 +0000

How does one play lawn darts with children? They are terribly unaerodynamic.

By: Robert Drop

Robert Drop — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 18:21:00 +0000

I had a leak in my roof (which itself did a fair bit of damage) that turned out to have been caused by a .32 slug that (luckily) embedded itself in a rafter.
Neighbors who grew up in rural Mexico liked to fire guns on the 4th of July and on New Years. I was lucky to just have one bullet (that I know of) come down on the house.

By: IronEdithKidd

IronEdithKidd — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 17:50:00 +0000

This is what I worry about. We have similar trigger happy celebrants far too close to my home.

By: Tay Boy

Tay Boy — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 17:33:00 +0000

Well to be fair, it’s generally seen as a sign of inbreeding when it’s done over here.

By: Grahamers2002

Grahamers2002 — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 17:32:00 +0000

I urge you to update your post to discuss the inherrent dangers of this practice. It is illegal for a very good reason. Here is a PubMed study on the incidence rate fo people being hit by such celebratory gunfire:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7996596

While you have every rigth to talk about this fondly, please know that it kills people.

By: digi_owl

digi_owl — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 17:31:00 +0000

A large part of the wedding party massacres come from informants claiming they are Taliban or Al-Qaeda gatherings, while in reality they are weddings involving a rival clan.

Btw, USA seems to be making much the same mistakes as UK did a generation or two ago:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2012/03/bodybuilding_and_nation-buildi.html

By: kmoser

kmoser — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 17:27:00 +0000

After Obama became President there was a run on guns and ammo. With all that surplus lying around, people are more likely to use them on a whim.

By: digi_owl

digi_owl — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 17:26:00 +0000

He was dark skinned and wearing a hoddie, he was obviously a homicide waiting to happen…

By: digi_owl

digi_owl — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 17:24:00 +0000

Hot weather leads to hotter tempers? Or that people go out more and so has more random encounters that eventually turn violent?

By: digi_owl

digi_owl — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 17:23:00 +0000

And yet any video of guns firing at the sky is seen as a sign of barbarism/fanaticism when coming from “over there”…

By: digi_owl

digi_owl — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 17:20:00 +0000

Never mind that real life gunfire and movie gunfire has little in common (thanks to the latter, we are more likely to confuse the former with the backfire of a old engine).

By: Gregg Le Blanc

Gregg Le Blanc — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 16:54:00 +0000

Looks like someone is trying to take the title!

http://www.theonion.com/articles/iraq-kentucky-vie-for-world-shootingintotheair-sup,74/

By: LogrusZed

LogrusZed — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 16:49:00 +0000

While not exclusive to the South I have experienced other great ironic behaviors to a greater extent there and from people from there, they include:

Negative comments about how Arabs (actually “Arab” seems to be Southern for any Muslim or any non-white person who has not confirmed NOT being a Muslim, or any non-white person whom a white person has insisted is a secret-Muslim, or any non-white person who wears regional/ethnic non-Western clothing styles such as Sikhs or Africans) treat women or “infidels” coming from people who treat women and non-Christians, and everyone else for that matter, like shit.

Referring to anyone non-white as a “savage/animal/etc” when observing them shooting firearms into the air in celebration, burning flags or effigy in anger, whooping for either reason, etc. Then proceeding to do basically the same thing for pretty much the same reasons only often with more alcohol.

Decrying, rightly IMHO, brutal foreign dictatorships such as that of Syria then supporting violence against protestors they don’t agree with (such as Occupy) and expressing a desire that such violence should be escalated. Similarly, but contrasted by, decrying rallies by groups like The Muslim Brotherhood while supporting the blocking of women’s health clinics and harassing of clients of said clinics. Equally amusing and more local is how they will mock the use of the 1st amendment when it is people like Occupy (“You’re not doing anything useful with your time”, “Get a job!”, etc) but if it’s a Tea-Party gathering/march then they’re doing God’s work, those patriots.

Right wing and Southern people aren’t the only hypocrites in the world, I’m certainly capable of hypocrisy as well, but I’m awesome and they suck (I also have the decency to become, at least at some point, self-aware and ashamed about it most of the time).