2 dead, 17 wounded in overnight shootings across city (Guess Where)

[The Magistrate]

15. You Do Understand, Sir, Your Comments Do Not Touch Reality At a Single Point....

Gang members generally attack members of rival gangs, and do so by ambush, or at least in circumstances where they have some advantage of surprise. Persons who are not members and become victims of gang shooting generally are simply bystanders, struck by stray rounds or caught in the open when an exchange between armed men breaks out. Both sides, where gangs are hostile, are reasonably well armed, and so the idea the toll flows from a lack of arms in the hands of the people shot is nonesensical. Where surprise is achieved by an assailant, an assailant who intends simply to kill, whether the target is armed or not is pretty much beside the point: the man who simply steps up with gun in hand will prevail, whatever the other might have had in waistband or pocket.

Details of a pair of shootings a while ago in a former neighborhood of mine illustrate the point quite well. In the first, two groups on either side of a street which was a factional boundary exchanged shots, with one member of one group being wounded. Later that night, a van pulled up beside a group of youths congregated on the sidewalk at a usual gathering point for one faction ( the one which had had no casualty in the earlier exchange ); the van's side door was cracked open, one shot, one only, was fired at a range of about five yards, striking one youth in the head, leaving him dead on the scene, upon which the van departed instantly at some speed. The second, fatal shooting, was clearly in retaliation for the first, and the night effected a sudden shift in local boundaries, with the group that had suffered the fatality retreating several blocks. In the first incident, both sides possessed pistols, and the firing was mutual; in the second, it is almost certain some in the group possessed pistols, but had no opportunity to use them against a successful surprise attack. In neither case was a lack of weaponry on the part of the persons shot a factor, nor could it be seriously suggested that possession of arms by the person shot would have prevented the outcome.