HIGH POINT, N.C. — Don't start 2020 off in jail.
Don't fire your gun in the air to ring in the new year. That's the message from High Point Police.
"It can have life-long lasting effects from a bullet just flying up in the air and coming back down," Lieutenant Matt Truitt of the High Point Police Department said.
The science says it all.
"I have a son and at a very early age I was able to teach him a very simple physics lesson: what goes up, must come down."
The law of gravity, that ties into the law of the land.
"Typically July 4th and New Year's Eve is when we receive {911} calls like that," Lieutenant Truitt stated.
It's a trend that police say needs to end.
"You may have to deal with damaging someone's property and unfortunately taking someone's life."
But if a lieutenant can't convince you, how about an 8-year-old little girl from Winston Salem?
"I just saw like, blood pouring on and I had a puddle of blood in my hand."
Last year, a falling bullet hit the top of Alondra Delgadoa's head while she was playing in her pool.
She had to get stitches.
"It was a really hard moment for me," Alondra said.
22-year-old Kaitlin Kong has a similar story.
"Seeing someone who's been affected by it, might convince somebody not to," Kong said with tears in her eyes.
Raleigh Police say she was ringing in 2019 downtown, when celebratory gunfire struck her. She had to have surgery.
"{The bullet} went through a lung, and then a diaphragm and then my stomach and liver," Kong explained.
If none of the above prompts you to put your gun away for New Year's Eve celebrations, maybe this will: think about yourself. The consequences you could face if you fire your weapon into the sky tonight.
"Damage to real property is a misdemeanor," Lieutenant Truitt said. "But then when you go to striking individuals with bullets, that can go all the way to homicide."