Let's celebrate Martha...go grab yer gun!

I find it very odd that in a country (OK I find it odd anywhere, but hear me out) where guns and bombs and rockets and IEDs are killing folks on a daily basis, that the chosen practice for celebration would be....gun fire.

Every once in a while we get an alarm that tells us to stay under cover because the Iraq soccer team won another match and they will show their joy through celebratory gun fire.  There is a logical concern that during this celebration of firing guns, you might accidentally get hit with a bullet.  It's so odd to me...I mean has human life lost all value?  (Perhaps so based on my last post.)   How quickly that celebration would turn into mourning.

Back to our warnings at the compound.  I kind of ignored those warnings.  I thought---how would bullets being shot straight up in to the air, miles away from me be any kind of risk?  Yup, that's what I thought.  And so I continued to walk freely around my, er, street feeling utterly free and safe.

Last week we had some C.G.F. (in the spirit of DOS acronyms) and the next day some friends were talking about the danger.  I laughed and shared my complete disregard for this "danger."  They told James and I about one bullet that went through a soldier's roof on the compound and through his BED.  That caught my attention.  They shared a couple other stories, and explained how the bullets could get pretty good distance and still have momentum as they rained down. 

Suddenly I gained greater respect for this "warning."

Apparently there must have been others who like me laughed in the face of this danger, because today we got an all-embassy security email that explained to us simpletons the very real dangers of celebratory gunfire.  this paragraph caught my attention:

Bullets fired into the air will arc and fall back downward at a significantly reduced rate of velocity.  However, the danger posed by the possibility of falling-bullet injuries is still substantial.  The mortality rate of persons struck by bullets in a typical gunshot scenario is 2% to 6%.  Comparatively, the mortality rate of those struck by falling bullets, as in those fired in celebration, is over 32%.  This higher mortality rate is due to the higher likelihood of severe head wounds from falling bullets.

32 percent???  Yes.  Now I get it.  They also shared pictures of a bullet that went through a car roof in the IZ.  As I learned at Root, a picture can paint a thousand words.  This picture pretty much painted three for me...repeated hundreds of times:  Duck. And. Cover.  (Oh, and three more:  celebratory. gunfire. sucks.)
Over.