"I shot a bullet into the air; it came to earth, I knew not where."

— Apologies to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Now that holiday exuberance has wound down, load your guns with blanks, all ye lovers of firearms. Fire a salute to the laws of physics and to a 7-year-old girl whose leg may carry a lifelong scar from a bullet that obeyed those laws.

The ancient law of physics has been embedded in an aphorism: "What goes up must come down."

NASA spent billions of dollars to overcome that venerable rule, but it still applies to everything not fired from a launching pad for space vehicles, and it can hurt you.

Ask the little girl in Mobile who took a bullet in the leg on New Year's Day after some thoughtless celebrator fired it into the air. She ran into her home and complained to her mother about pain in her lower leg. She was rushed to a hospital, where the pain's origin was identified as a bullet wound. Fortunately, the wound was described as "minor." By happy chance, the bullet didn't strike her in the eye, or the chest, or in some other more vulnerable spot. But the person who fired that gun had no way of knowing.

Apparently, lots of ignorant people believe that when you fire a gun toward the sky, the bullet just vanishes into thin air. But like the arrow that Longfellow poetically launched, it comes back to earth — not always in something as stoic and unfeeling as the oak tree that received the poet's missile.

Some years back, when I lived in Mobile, I spoke to some people who were responsible for maintaining the roofs on public buildings. They showed me a collection of bullets they had pried from the roofs. Over the years, these spent missiles did significant damage to the roofs, costing the city tax dollars.

The citizens of Mobile seem to get a particular charge out of firing bullets into the air to celebrate holidays. At least one member of its city council took part in this senseless ritual, though I trust he has since mended his ways.

But despite official warnings that the practice is both dangerous and unlawful, the hard rain continues.

"Rubes and boobs in Mobile firing off guns to celebrate the new year were out in force Wednesday night, showing off a tortured lack of respect for the laws of physics, or for other people's safety and property," wrote my former colleague Gary McElroy for the Mobile Press-Register.

Here's the relevant law of physics: A free-falling object will accelerate at the rate of 32 feet per second per second. That means that each second that it falls, it is going 32 feet per second faster than it was during the previous second.

Math is not my forte, but my rough calculation is that a bullet that travels 100 yards straight up will be traveling around 150 miles per hour when it hits the ground, give or take a little air resistance. That's fast enough to penetrate flesh and bone.

The Mobile Police Department put it this way in its annual warning:

"Bullets that are fired into the air can travel great distances and cause significant property damage to vehicles, homes, and countless other items." They can also cause injury or death "to an unsuspecting victim."

The warning seems to have missed its target. My friend Gary took a 40-minute drive north of downtown Mobile on New Year's Eve, starting before 7 p.m. By 8 p.m., he had heard more than 100 gun shots.

"Up and down Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, the sharp, metallic bark of rifles and the 'pop, pop, pop, pop, pop' of pistol fire echoed from every direction," he wrote. At every stop light, "the sound of gunfire came through the windows with the evening chill."

In a Third World country, you'd think you were hearing the noise of a revolution in process.

I'm reminded, in fact, of a Leon Uris novel describing exuberant Arabs in 1948 as they contemplated the extinction of the infant state of Israel. They drove through Palestine firing their rifles into the air. The more disciplined Israelis used their bullets with more deliberate effect and won independence.

Insurgents in Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi and other violence-torn countries apparently have gotten their kicks the same way. The whole process is unbecoming to a lovely city on a placid bay in the Southern United States. And yet, I would bet that Mobile citizens are not unique in their potentially deadly form of celebration.

In Longfellow's poem, the arrow shot into the air was followed by a song breathed into the air.

The arrow was later found, "still unbroke," lodged in an oak. "And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend," wrote the poet.

Here's a suggestion: Next time you feel the urge to celebrate by firing a gun into the air, just fire off a few bursts of song. It's a good way of venting energy. Maybe the neighbors will try to silence you by throwing a few of last summer's sun-ripened tomatoes your way. But if they hit you, they won't leave scars.

Readers may write Gene Owens at 317 Braeburn Drive, Anderson SC 29621, or e-mail him at WadesDixieco@aol.com