New Years

GreggK, you live in Florida. Why are you talking about New Year celebratory bullets raining down in Puerto Rico when your state is known for having the exact same problem?

Also, don't you think that the tone of your post might be a bit tasteless? How would you feel like if I went to a Connecticut forum to tell parents to wrap their kids in Kevlar before the beginning of the next school year? Would it be OK as long as I wished them a happy semester? How would you feel if I went to a Colorado forum and told people to enjoy the next superhero movie premiere but told them to take bulletproof vests just in case?

I understand that your experience in Puerto Rico was rather negative, but you shouldn't let that experience transform you into a negative and cynical person.

My good friend Adolfo. You have been and still are one of the people I have respected  most in any of my dealings with Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans over the the past 12 years. I admire your intelligence and insight especially since they are way beyond your years. Not withstanding my own personal experiences and opinions of Puerto Rico, my comment was made as a result of reading many facebook posts by friends and relatives (yes I have relatives who are PR and still live on the island) who are literally scared to death to go outside on New years eve. The shootings on New years eve in Puerto Rico are not isolated incidents that are manifested by deranged individuals as were the tragedies in Connecticut and Colorado. They are a mainstay of tradition on the island and it is not unfair or tasteless to point this out. So is it tasteless for me because I don't live on the island to talk about a subject that gets discussed every year by the poorest jibaro all the way up to the Governor as to what can be done about it? Yes, you are right, I live in Florida and it happens here. Maybe not to the same extent but it does happen. It also happened in the ghetto where I lived in Virginia. You are welcome  to make comments on that and exercise your first amendment rights. I won't be offended. But you will not ever find me defending ANYONE that uses a gun for fun or carnage. The big difference comes down to the fact that people in PR shoot guns in the air for fun. Every year somebody gets inadvertantly hit and some die. Connecticut and Colorado were purposeful acts of mass murder. You are comparing apples and oranges. You are also right that my experience living in PR was "rather negative". But my overall experience over the years in dealing with the island hasn't been. After all, I did marry an absolutely gorgeous Puerto Rican woman. You and I may agree and disagree on a lot of things but we needn't be adversaries. And by the way, thank you for passing on the facebook posts from the Dead Dog Beach Project.

Happy New Year to everybody!

May everything you hope and wish for come through in this year.

About the stray bullets, yes every year people are wounded and/or killed because of that. We stayed inside, away from windows, until most of the noise was over (like we do every year).