Last night I spent my first New Year's Eve in Oakland at home with friends in the Temescal neighborhood. Just before midnight, and for quite a while afterward, I heard what I could have sworn were gunshots. A lot of them. From a lot of different directions. But I figured, nah, it couldn't really be.

Oh yeah, it was. Apparently, many Oaklanders ring in the new year by firing guns into the air.

Here are some reports that came in on Twitter from around the city around midnight last night:

• Enjoyapiece: "...everybody in Oakland. I've heard more gun shots than fireworks."
• Charithemrs: "...yep! oakland california they still shooting as i type"
• (Retweeting someone with protected tweets): "In the streets lettin off shots ... Fuck it it's Oakland. Happy new year < ayye! Lol"
• TheRealJoshRoss: "Gun shots in East Oakland. Happy New Year, mother fuckers!"
• fotociclismo: "Gunfire and firecrackers have slowed! Wish I was in the wilderness! Oakland, CA celebrates like the Old West! Duck & Cover"

I've never lived anywhere that celebratory gunfire was common. I've lived and worked in places where violence -- including gun violence -- is a fact of local life. But not celebratory gunfire. I find that, in Oakland, celebratory gunfire unnerves me on a whole different level.

Over the last year I've heard several much local community, civic, educational, and church groups in Oakland preach "Stop the violence." But I can't recall ever hearing any of them rail specifically against celebratory gunfire.

Celebratory gunfire isn't benign. In an urban area where lots of people are around, and at a moment when lots of them are likely to be outside celebrating, it's coldblooded violence.

What goes up, must come down. Bullets are designed to be aerodynamic. They tend to fall fast and hard. So celebratory gunfire is not really shooting into the air. It's actually shooting randomly AT people, property, vehicles, and animals -- just indirectly. And it's even far more dangerous than shooting directly at people.

No kidding. A 1994 study conducted at a Los Angeles hospital published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Trauma compared how many people died from being struck by falling bullets, versus all gunshot wounds. Falling bullets killed their victims 32% of the time -- while all other types of gunshot woulds proved fatal only 2-6% of the the time. This is because bullets fired into the air generally fall down on people's heads: 77% of the falling bullet wounds were head injuries.

There's some debate about the stunningly high mortality rate found in this study, but the general principle remains that falling bullets are dangerous, and they're especially likely to be deadly.

In a few minutes, Oakland Local founder Susan Mernit and I are heating out to the Fruitvale BART to the vigil commemorating Oscar Grant's shooting death a year ago at the hands of BART police. This is one of many community anti-violence events held in Oakland. I wonder: Will anyone speak out against celebratory gunfire today?

UPDATE Jan 2: This New Year's Eve in Atlanta, a four-year-old was killed by a celebratory bullet while sitting in church. The bullet that struck his head came through the roof of the church. Yes, this can really happen.