A 5 year old kid was hit and injured by a stray bullet from a funeral gunfire in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Mounir Hazini was shot in the head and is still in coma while two others were slightly wounded. Of course the story didn’t get much attention because 1) the boy is a Syrian kid living in a camp, 2) we got used to assholes emptying their machine guns and RPGs in the air and 3) because the authorities can’t or don’t want to do anything about it.
Every time I tweet or post about the dangers of stray bullets and the need to ban celebratory gunfire in Lebanon once and for all, I get replies from people telling me that all party leaders, specially the heavily armed ones, have already asked their followers to stop shooting guns in the air, BUT they can’t control them unfortunately. If that’s really the case, which I doubt, inform the authorities about these guys and let them be arrested. How hard can it be to spot a guy emptying his machine gun in the street or on the roof? Why doesn’t anyone film them and sends them to Tony Khalife or Joe Maalouf? Why aren’t TVs doing anything to investigate further on such incidents?
Celebratory gunfire is stupid and dangerous and whomever does it is unintentionally trying to kill innocent people and should be labeled as a criminal. Mounir could have been anyone’s kid and just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. We cannot and should not get used to such incidents and the Lebanese Army and ISF should take stricter measures when these things happen.
There’s nothing stopping them from doing so (not that I know of) and I am quite sure not a single party in Lebanon would want to cover for brainless members accidentally killing and injuring innocent people.
