MOULTRIE, Ga.-

Gun safety is much more than how one handles a weapon while hunting or target practicing.

It’s also about how one is stored.

Our community has noted many gun thefts in the past year with some of them directly related to violence.

Just recently, we had reports of guns being stolen out of vehicles. While it’s legal to carry a firearm in a vehicle, it’s not very wise to leave it stored there. It’s as though some of our social malcontents expect there to be handguns or even long guns left in vehicles.

Hunters quite often will leave a shotgun or a rifle in their trucks. This can be easy pickings for thugs who want to steal them and sell them on the streets.

We have no specific data that tells us how many stolen guns are subsequently linked to robberies and other acts of violence. But we might expect that the number is large.

If one is into making resolutions, then maybe adequately securing guns would be a good one.

That said, let’s review a tragedy that just happened in our community relative to “celebratory” firing of guns.

As someone pointed out in today’s Rants and Raves, “what goes up, must come down.”

Specifically we are talking about a person being killed when a bullet fell out of the sky and struck him on top of the head. We have had at least one other incident of this type in recent history but it did not end so tragically. And we’ve had numerous reports of bullet holes being found in houses and vehicles.

If you remember your physics class, an object such as a bullet that has no other propulsion force but gravity, will fall at 32 feet per seccond, per second. That’s well enough speed and mass to maim and kill.

‘Celebratory’ gunfire of this nature indeed should not be tolerated. At the least it is reckless conduct and disrupts the peace and dignity of a community.