(WWJ) Ever been in a gunfight? In a war?
If so, this scene may be familiar, scarily so. If you've never been amid violence -- lots of it -- then this video taken on the east side of Detroit as the clock struck midnight on New Year's Eve may be chilling.
Gunfire all around, automatic weapons, pistols, 9 millimeters -- all with their own distinctive sound, popping off over and over to celebrate the New Year.
This video has been viewed nearly 10,000 times already.
"You've got balls of steel," one viewer commented. Others said it sounded like Chicago.
Many compared it to fireworks. Someone said the noise continued all night long.
The video shows no police presence, though officers have warned residents about celebratory gunfire for New Year's Eve, and how it can go wrong.
"Celebratory gunfire is illegal and highly dangerous," the Saginaw Police Department wrote in a Facebook post. "Bullets fired into the air return to the earth at up to 300 feet per second."
Freep.com documented the dangers of New Year's Eve gunshot celebrations, writing about a grandfather who accidentally shot his grandson in Sterling Heights in 1995.
There was even a gunshot that sliced cable wires in Detroit in 1996, shutting down cable television in Detroit for hundreds of people. The same year, a student was shot in the back in Detroit by gunfire that was still ringing out at 1 a.m.
A great-grandmother was shot at her kitchen table this year on New Year's Eve, and police suspect celebratory gunfire.
In Puerto Rico, about two people die and about 25 more are injured each year from celebratory gunfire on New Year's Eve, the CDC says, according to Wikipedia. Between the years 1985 and 1992, doctors at the King/Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, treated some 118 people for random falling-bullet injuries. Thirty-eight of them died.
