On 1/2/2012 2:24 AM, harry wrote:
On Jan 2, 1:57 am, Home wrote:
The Daring Dufas wrote:
I started hearing semiautomatic gunfire about 6:30pm. I haven't
heard any bullets land on the roof or vehicles yet.

How many stories like this can happen, day after day, year after year,
and you gun-loving fools can say with a straight face that your country
is a better place because of your constitutional right to own
firearms...

--------------

http://www.tampabay.com/news/publics...boy-in-coma-af...

Ruskin boy in coma after being struck by celebratory New Year's gunfire

Posted: Jan 01, 2012 04:19 PM

RUSKIN (near Tampa Bay I guess) — Diego Duran stood on his family's
front lawn to watch New Year's Eve fireworks cut through the darkness,
snapping and popping in the air over their Ruskin home.

As the bright bursts of light fell and faded after midnight, a bullet
dropped with them.

Diego's mother saw her son collapse to the ground. His sisters and a
friend thought at first he was joking.

But when Sandra Duran knelt to check on her 12-year-old son, she became
covered in blood that poured from his nose and eyes. She drove Diego to
South Bay Hospital in Sun City Center, where doctors found he had been
shot in the top of his head. No one knows where the bullet came from,
but authorities believe it was fired from miles away in a new year's
celebration.

"Here we have a 12-year-old kid fighting for his life because he
happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time," said Hillsborough
County sheriff's spokesman Larry McKinnon. Detectives spoke with
Diego's family and neighbors Sunday morning and determined that no one
in the immediate vicinity of the home had been firing a gun at the time,
around 1 a.m. Sunday, according to officials.

"The bullet was quite a large one," said family friend Dee Sims. "They
said it could have come from 2 or 3 miles away."

Diego was later taken to Tampa General Hospital, where he remained in
critical condition Sunday evening. His mother was at his side all day as
he lay in a coma, Sims said, the bullet still lodged under his eye.

Sandra and her husband, Diego Sr., have rented a small home for eight
years behind Sims' 10-acre farm property. The boy has two sisters,
Genesis, 14, and Grace, 16, Sims said. Like his sisters, Diego is an A
student. He loves football and baseball and lately has become a fan of
skateboarding, she said.

The farming community where they live has its share of gun owners and
hunters, Sims said. Celebratory gunfire isn't unusual. "We hear it all
the time," Sims said. "I don't know why people do things like that."
The firing of weapons into the air in celebration is not an uncommon
practice, particularly among immigrants from countries where there are
few or no laws prohibiting it.

It's illegal in most states, including Florida. Authorities often remind
people not to do it. "Nationally it's a huge issue," McKinnon said.
"What somebody thinks is a cheap form of fun and entertainment, it has
potentially catastrophic consequences."

Still, it happens.

Last year, a 6-year-old boy was hit and injured by a stray bullet during
a New Year's Eve celebration he was attending with his parents at a
Miami restaurant. In 2007, a 69-year-old Plantation man was killed in
his back yard on New Year's Day by a stray rifle bullet.

A 2006 incident in which two people were shot during a New Year's Eve
celebration in Delray Beach led then-state House Majority Leader Adam
Hasner to introduce a bill increasing the penalty for firing a gun into
the air. The bill did not pass, and the maximum penalty for firing into
the air remains a year in jail.

But if someone is hurt or killed, the consequences are much greater.
The lethality of a bullet depends on the trajectory at which it is
fired, as well as the speed at which it falls. If fired at a
non-vertical angle, it maintains enough speed to do damage.

"Some of them go over a mile high," McKinnon said. "Depending on the
angle of the bullet, it could come down a couple of miles away."

Detectives want to talk to anyone who might know of someone who was
firing any type of weapon into the air early Sunday morning in the
Ruskin area. Anyone with information is asked to call the Hillsborough
County Sheriff's Office at (813) 247-8200.

Benifits of US gun culture.

Harry, you want to help me with my "Ban Mechanized Transportation"
movement. So many people are killed all over the world because of
Transportation Nuts and we must put a stop to it. The battle against
TN's is in its infancy but I'm sure if the right celebrities behind
it we can put a stop to deaths caused by Mechanized Transportation!

TDD