Three friends in the living room on a Friday afternoon, happy to have finished the work week and looking forward to the weekend. Two of them would be going out to dinner for one of their birthdays, while the third would stay at the house to finish setting up for the surprise party. The girls were sitting on the couch finishing up some videos on Khan Academy, learning about WWI, while the guy watched a prison show. He stood up to walk down the hall to change his clothes to take the birthday girl out, but as he passed the kitchen island, he stopped to munch on a freshly-made quesadilla. In that moment, we heard a loud pop and something metal skidded across the floor, stopping to rest near the living room desk. It was the sound of glass popping, and no one was too worried, simply puzzled.

The guy started to look around for what it was. The two girls stayed put on the couch, not interested enough to go look too. Was it a light bulb that burst? A piece of hardware that was lodged in the ceiling somewhere that finally broke loose? Was it a piece from one of the bicycles that was wound tight and finally popped off? Finally, the guy went over to pick up the metal item, and found that it was a bullet … still hot to the touch, with scratches from the journey through the gun barrel.

For a few moments no one said anything, three heads bowed looking at the bullet in his hand. Then come the questions. Where did this come from? How did it enter the house? Why did we not hear the gunshot? Are we in danger? We went together down the hallway in search of the origin, and found white material on the floor. We stood, puzzled, looking up toward the high window, typical of a New Orleans shotgun house. Very high up in the window corner, was a hole in the glass and a missing piece of the blind. The man chimed in with a theory: Someone had shot a gun into the air, the bullet flew up and headed back down in parabola form. The bullet happened to come down through our window. His theory was proven when we found the mark low on the adjacent wall, where the bullet had hit upon entering through the window. It then must have ricocheted from the wall and skidded across the floor where we found it minutes before.

So there we were, all standing in front of the window through which a bullet had just come. We slowly moved away from the window, in case another bullet was coming. We decided against any menacing threat, as the bullet was obviously not meant for us. Should we call the police? No, what would they do? And how long would It take? I am sure that what just happened is a crime, but we do not know where it came from, and frankly, I doubt anything would be done about it. We all decided to count this event as a freak happening and move on with the night, have our party, forget about it.

The party was great. People went out on the back porch. No bullets fell from the sky. We all soon forgot about what had happened. Tomorrow we will spend the afternoon in the garden planting our spring flowers, and just hope that no one is playing with a gun. Anything can happen. Things can go wrong. One of us could be hit by a stray bullet like that. People always talk about violence in the city; gun violence, gang violence, car wrecks, robberies, knifings; but playing with a gun is also violence, because the result can be the same. People have been killed in this city from stray bullets falling from the sky or coming through the thin walls that divide the two sides of a double shotgun.

So, what do we do? There are so many issues here that this story probably means nothing to many people in the city or elsewhere. But next time you hear someone declaring the necessity to loosen up on gun control and keeping gun possession rights, think again about what that means. How will everyone get good gun safety education? Looking at the current failures in US basic education, we cannot expect a sweeping inclusion and consistency on gun safety knowledge.

Nowhere is really safe. Anything can happen. Therefore, I say keep living, do fun things, do not be too serious. And every person should have a cause, something they fight for, participate in, educate people around them about. Because being part of the community is important, and no one can fight for everything. But everyone can stand for something.