Miami officials are hoping residents will leave their firearms at home this New Year's Eve and ring in 2012 without gunfire.
Mayor Tomas Regalado, Police Chief Manuel Orosa and Miami-Dade Commissioner Audrey Edmonson held a news conference Thursday to discuss their "One Bullet Kills The Party" campaign, which aims to keep Miamians from shooting guns into the air to celebrate the holiday.
"Once again we are making an appeal to the residents of the City of Miami, Miami-Dade County and South Florida, to abstain from using guns on New Year's Eve," Regalado said.
Posters for the campaign feature rapper Pitbull.
Not only is it illegal, but the celebratory gunfire often leads to injury and sometimes tragedy when the bullets fired into the air come back to earth.
Two years ago, a 6-year-old boy visiting Miami from Italy was shot in the chest by celebratory gunfire in the Design District.
In 2008, a boy was killed in Opa Locka after a man celebrating the new year fired bullets into a couch the boy was sitting behind. Two other people were killed the previous year by celebratory gunfire.
"Those bullets that go up in the air will come down," Edmonson said. "They're coming down and we do not know where they're going to land."
