New Year's Eve safety: Don't fire your gun into the air, officials say

Celebratory gunfire dangers

As you're celebrating the New Year tonight, officials are reminding you to not fire your gun into the air. You could kill someone. FOX 7 Austin's Angela Shen reports.

AUSTIN, Texas - As you're celebrating the New Year, officials are reminding you not to fire your gun into the air.

What they're saying:

"When you shoot a gun up in the air, that bullet is coming down, and it may not come down at the same velocity it went up at, but it's coming down fast enough to do damage. It can damage property and it can kill people," Kristen Dark, senior public information office for the Travis County Sheriff's Office, said.

State Rep. Armando Martinez (D-Weslaco) was hit by celebratory gunfire in 2017 and spoke to FOX 7 Austin after someone in Bastrop County was injured from celebratory gunfire.

Last week in Comanche, Okla, Cody Adams was charged with manslaughter. Investigators say he was firing a gun he bought himself for Christmas, and it killed his neighbor. 

Last year, between 8 p.m. New Year's Eve to 6 a.m. New Year's Day, the Travis County Sheriff's Office took 40 911 calls about shots being fired.

"Shooting guns in the air, it's like a cultural thing. I remember watching Westerns with my dad, and you see the cowboys on horseback, and they're firing their guns up in the air. It's almost a piece of Americana, but it's also part of other cultures that are in our area. It's something that needs to change. This is not the Wild, Wild West. This is Travis County. This is an area that's suburbia. It doesn't matter where you are, whether you're on a ranch or whether you are in a subdivision. It's inappropriate. You can hurt people. You can kill people," Dark said.

Every jurisdiction has its own laws. State law says you can't recklessly discharge a firearm in a municipality of more than 100,000 residents. Travis County goes further than that. You can't fire a gun on a regulated lot in an unincorporated area. You could face fines or jail time.

"I hope the consequences have made people think twice, but we are asking again in the hopes that we can curtail it, because this is something that is terribly dangerous," Dark said.

What you can do:

If you hear gunshots, call 911. If you hear fireworks, call the non-emergency line.