Complaints of gunfire and fireworks kept law enforcement officials busy over the Fourth of July weekend.

Between Thursday, July 3 and Saturday, July 5, officers from the Selma Police Department responded to 15 calls for shots fired and 21 calls for fireworks complaints.

On Thursday, the department responded to three calls for shots fired and eight fireworks complaints.

There were eight calls for shots fired and eight for fireworks on the Fourth of July.

Selma Chief of Police William Riley was unable to access numbers from past years, but he said this year’s number did not seem to be out of the ordinary for the holiday.

“These numbers look about average,” Riley said. “The number of calls does peak on the fourth, but like every year, we saw the numbers start to rise on the third.”

Riley said the issue of people randomly firing weapons into the air has been a nationwide issue around the Fourth of July and New Years for a long time.

“This problem is not unique to Selma or even to Alabama,” Riley said. “It happens all over. Celebrating these holidays with fireworks has been a tradition for a long time, and it’s been tradition to fire weapons in celebration even longer.”

Riley said his department remains committed to teaching gun owners about the dangers of firing weapons into the air.

“Our goal is still to educate people that shooting a weapon into the air is just dangerous and could easily cause damage to property or injuries to another person,” Riley said. “I’m obviously glad there were no injuries this weekend caused by this gunfire, but I wish we didn’t have to deal with it at all.”

Outside of the city limits, Dallas County Sheriff Harris Huffman said his department received few complaints about fireworks or gunfire.

“We had one or two firework complaints,” Huffman said. “And I don’t believe we had even one complaint of anyone shooting guns into the air.”

Huffman said the Sheriff’s Department saw a slight increase in the number of burglary and domestic violence complaints over the holiday weekend.

“There were more calls for burglary and domestic violence than we had last year,” Huffman said. “There were some burglaries, maybe four, and that can be traced to the fact that a lot of people were away from home. The domestic violence calls can be traced to drinking. People get to celebrating, and then they celebrate too much.”