They never showed up. Either nobody in the neighborhood called, or they just didn't come. There's brass all over the neighborhood. There were at least 100 shots fired that I could count.

There was a fatal shooting the next block up a few weeks ago. Police were called. In the interim, I ran up to attempt first aid. It was clear the victim was past first aid. The victim's girlfriend was standing in the street screaming holding a gun that she had used to return fire. I talked her out of the gun and safed it before the cops got there, so nobody else got hurt. Probably not my wisest moves ever, but here we are.

When the cops and medics did turn up, they went the wrong way and ended up two blocks away, facing the wrong direction and just milled around confused until someone went down and screamed and pointed them in the correct direction. When they finally got to where they needed to be and secured everything, I talked to them about the gun I'd handled, with neighbors jumping in to corroborate. Due to previous government jobs my prints are in the system and I wanted to let them know why they were on a gun of unknown providence and use. They took my ID and all my information. And never contacted me.

So, I'm seriously unimpressed, and with everything else going on all over they city for last night, random aerial gunfire in the Northeast seems to be a low priority.

Maybe in Mt. Airy, Society Hill, or Rittenhouse Square the result would have been different. I don't know.

I want to make it clear that while I'm a newcomer here, I love this city and the people. I feel far less unsafe than when I lived in rural Arizona (and that fear wasn't the border, it was the anti-goverment nuts that threatened me on a regular basis). Other than an exciting trip to a shipping store in Kensington one day I've never felt like there was a threat, and even there it was clearly a mental health issue that can happen anywhere.

I like my neighborhood and the people here. I just don't like guns being fired into the air to "celebrate". I didn't like it in Arizona and even less so here where there is a higher risk of harm from falling bullets. But it's something I've never seen the police do anything about, in L.A., Tucson, rural areas, or anywhere else. There's just too much else to do unless someone is getting hit. I'm still pretty jumpy about gunfire because of the incident a few weeks back, and that didn't help. Seeing one of my neighborhood friends standing out in the alley blazing away at the sky was disconcerting, but calling the cops was unlikely to accomplish anything.

Heck, I'd almost forgotten that in late summer someone fired off a bunch at about 6am. I heard the neighbors call. With no one hit, it took hours for the cops to arrive. Because no one was hurt I just shrugged it off.

Fortunately none of the rounds fired off into the air here last night seem to have hit anyone on the way down, since none of the nine shootings last night were near here. Again, I love this city, and the neighborhood, but I could do with fewer guns.