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Last night around 8:30 p.m., Mario Avilaz "died in a hail of gunfire" between "at least two shooters in front of a Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment building," the Daily News reports. Avilaz, described as a good studentl, had been hanging around outside his building at Kingston Avenue and Herkimer Street. The police have not disclosed what the motive was, but a community activist told the Post he thought Avilaz was "hit by a stray bullet from a nearby dispute" (perhaps a fight between two girls). His mother tearfully told the News, "I was getting ready for Christmas, and now I'm getting ready for a funeral. I'm nothing without my son - my only son."
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It's terrible when good students get shot.
What a tragedy for his poor mother. How many stories each week do we need to read about unhappiness caused by guns before the gun lobby starts to take a hit? If we make it harder for people to get guns, there will be less violence and less misery caused by guns.
Why is it always the good students? Or is it that they don't become good students until they've been shot? He was young, it was tragic, but the good student knows to get out of the way when two gang bangers pull out their guns (unless, of course, they're with them).
this is the third (that I know of) violent act to occur in this area over the last few days. The Bus stabbing, the bodega shooting yesterday in Prospect Heights and now this.
This is a terribly tragedy. I think you are misplacing your ire r1b2. Kids will kill each other no matter what. Even if guns were illegal these gang members would get their hands on them. What we really should be looking at is eradicating the culture of violence surrounding the ghettos of New York. Rap culture glorifies guns, misogyny, and acting like an idiot and many kids are drawn in because of a poor economic background with little hope to speak of.
@holyfrjole
what are you living in an action movie? every good student can dodge bullets and predict the actions of others. c'mon
"If we make it harder for people to get guns, there will be less violence and less misery caused by guns."
That's not a proven fact and it never will be. Look at the drug war. Are 'illegal' drugs harder to get and therefore less of a problem? Nope! You can restrict everything on this Earth to try and curb criminal behavior, but it won't work. There will still be idiots who will find a way to be uber-idiots. That is a proven fact.
Plus, the media only reports stories about gun violence. They hardly ever report on stories where guns saved the day. It is always sad to lose someone to gun violence, but banning them or restricting access doesn't solve the problem of what caused someone to resort to using a gun in the first place.
"If we make it harder for people to get guns, there will be less violence and less misery caused by guns."
true, because they'll use knives instead.
HowBoutDemCowboys: That's because guns rarely "save the day." The vast majority of violent crime occurs between two already armed people. In this case too: the boy was hit by a stray bullet. Putting a gun on his belt would have done nothing to protect him.
The fantasies gun advocates have about heroic acts of chasing away psycho criminals intent on causing them hard just ain't reality.
According to some commenters on this site (see yesterday's bodega shooting thread), this grieving mother and her neighbors are in fact grateful for this crime because it will drive the white people away and keep rents down.
Virgil, good point. The bodega shooting thread yesterday included this gem:
"I don't know what is more undesirable: a gangsta or yet another fashion assistant"
I am sure this sentiment is shared by the family members of victims of gun violence.
The problem isn't the gun lobby. As it stand, there are already enough firearms to equip every man, woman and child in the US with a weapon. The problem is also rarely legal gun owners.
The problem is all the surrounding states (PA, VA, FL) that have cash and carry weapons laws. I also think we should start adding RFID tags, scannable at point of purchase, for any munitions. If that bullet ends up in someone, the purchaser should be held criminally liable. Even if every weapons manufacturer closed up shop today, the weapons would still be here.
Re Zodak's brilliant comment:
>true, because they'll use knives instead
Really? I've never heard of someone accidentally stabbed in a drive-by stabbing, or a bystander stabbed a half-a-block away.
Or of moms having their kids sleep in bathtubs, because they're afraid of a knife travelling through a window or a bedroom wall.
There's a reason (unless you're a Zulu warrior circa 1879), that guns are preferred over knives as a weapon.. they're much more effective at killing people.
You're an idiot.
Boogie nights!!!
When Bed-Sty becomes gentrified and lily white, there will probably be no more shootings. And no more black people.
Then several people on Gothamist will have something else to talk about.
Why is there a direct relationship between white people and rising rent?
stories like this just shatter me... that poor mother.
I know plenty of places loaded with white people where the rent is cheap.
#9 (and #13), please keep deluding yourselves into thinking that guns are the problem instead of focusing your righteous rage at the real problem... people. Those guns (and knives, swords, weapons-of-choice) are completely inanimate objects until something animates them. Eliminate all things animate (dogs have fired guns too), and you will eliminate the gun 'problem'.
And if you don't think guns can "save the day", find a Hebrew who lived in the 30s and 40s in Europe and ask them how they felt when the Americans liberated them from the horrors ravaging Europe at the time. Think the American army could have done that with spears?
Also, it wasn't too long ago that Gothamist reported on a shop owner who used his gun to "save the day".
Why isn't Mayor Mike screaming about this?? When a football player shoots himself and there is a coverup he screams bloody hell!! Young kids are being shot almost every day and not a fucking peep. These stories are just sickening and heartbreaking.
#19- I'm sure #13 would have preferred that the bodega owners just talk to the would-be robbers nicely.
No shit, HowBoutDemCowboys, nobody is saying the frickin MILITARY shouldn't have guns.
What are you saying, if we had given all the Jews in Germany some pistols the Holocaust would never have happened? LMAO!
I actually really like shooting guns at the range, I'm even pretty good at it. I just don't need one hanging off my belt clip, and neither do you.
White doesn't equal violence-free any more than Black equals poor.
These neighborhoods you're defending from some fantasy enemy aren't as they are because they're black. They're poor. And most of them would like to be less than poor. Most would like a reasonable improvement in their standard of living, and that includes not having to bury their kids over stupid arguments.
It's not the whites looking for cheap rent that drives the price up, it's the landlords and developers who see that whites might be willing to live there and jack the prices up as high as they can go, because they don't care about the neighborhood.
You're fighting the wrong battle.
Concentrations of borderline savage individuals. Guns are not the problem, demographics. I worked at Christie's the people who bought antique guns at these auctions never fired any of these things in anger in their lives. Keep deluding yourselve's New Yorkers, these stories are routine manifestations of a static ignorant and criminal ferment.
>#19- I'm sure #13 would have preferred that the bodega owners just talk to the would-be robbers nicely.
You're sure wrong, and what that has to do with this, beats me. Moreover, you know that wasn't my point, either.
So, join the club that zodak's already a member of.
Jesus brooklyn is out of control lately.
#25- Ever fired a gun before?
#23, You're right. Race has little to do with this. Let me re-phrase.
Poverty breeds violence. Violence causes undesirability of a neighborhood, thus lower rents.
People arriving in NY, realizing that they cannot afford the SITC dream, move to edgy neighborhoods. They see violence.
They are shocked, and report it to Gothamist. "Oh my, violence in an impoverished neighborhood. That never happened in my suburb!", they exclaim.
They get mocked by the less naive on gothamist.
Meanwhile, their arrival and ability to pay higher rents to landlords displaces the people who have lived here for generations.
Given the, say, 1 in 10,000 chance of being shot and the extremely likely probability of being displaced, you don't need to be Paschal to figure that they probably will prefer the occasional gangsta violence (as terrible as that is) to being displaced from their homes, left homeless.
If these poor people could move to a less violent neighborhood, they would have. They cannot. They have made a Hobbesian choice to remain amidst the violence, because an undesirable home is better than no home.
Having lived in dicey, violent neighborhoods in the past, some of which have seen gentrification, I would still prefer the occasional thug to yet another fashion assistant, unconcerned in her narcissism that she is displacing my friends and their families.
"I just don't need one hanging off my belt clip, and neither do you."
When some hooligans attack you in the street and beat you down to a bloody pulp, let me know then whether or not you need one hanging off of your belt clip.
Also, I never said that about the Jews or the Holocaust but if all 6 million of them had owned guns and used them, I have a feeling the German military would not have been as succesful as they were.
And if you think only the military should own guns, then you probably think they should be able to take your house/apartment/condo from you, whenever they feel like it, as barracks.
Poverty does NOT breed violence. How many Amish homicides? How many buddhist monks have ripped you off lately. Character is the power to make choices regardless of external conditions. Look at all of the felons in NYC and USA, they have cars, tv's and nice sneakers.
Amish are not poor. In fact, they own their land and are damn cruel to their horses, I might add.
Buddhist monks are parasites who live off the generosity of the poor.
If you think there is no violent crime in Darien or Southampton or Park Avenue because of the "character" of the natives, you are naive.
Go to a poor urban neighborhood, anywhere in the world, and you will see greater violence than in the nearby wealthy neighborhoods. Who truly believes the "character" of the poor is worse than the "character" of the wealthy, except some misguided Calvinist.
"Some People rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen." Woody Guthrie said that.
"Behind every fortune, there is a crime." Honore Balzac said that.
To Edge,
>Ever fired a gun?
As a matter of fact, several kinds, and more than once. But as with Cowboy's comment, that, is utterly off-point.
You too, can join the club.
#32- Hey, I was just curious. I'm glad that you've had the opportunity to handle a firearm before. Whether that means an airsoft, pellet, or cap gun.
Criminals will always be criminals. Doesn't matter how much you restrict, ban, or demonize certain things.
BTW, ever check the crime statistics in the UK? D'ya know what the main weapon used in assaults over there is?
D'ya know what they've tried to ban over there? (Hint: you might have a few in your kitchen)
Hey Edge,
I've used rifles and shotguns. Cap guns too, but wasn't counting those. As for the crime stats in the UK, yeah, let's go go have a look: (stats courtesy of NationMaster.com)
Assaults are very evenly matched.
The US ranks #6 per capita 7.56 per 1000
The UK ranks #8 at 7.45 per 1000
Yet, murders per capita by country:
The US ranked 24th .042 per 1000
The UK ranked 46th 0.14 per 1000
So in the US, the murder rate is about 3x higher.
I couldn't find the per-capita comparitive stats for manslaughter, but in 2007, there were a total of 19 in the UK. 19. The UK has somewhere around %20 - 25% of the US population, so if the rates were similar, we'd expect only about 100 in the US. Think that is the case? Ha!
Now.. why would all this be? Hmm. could it be that guns are..surprise..much more lethal than knives/clubs/bottles/fists? But we knew that, that's why people want them.
Congrats - you've been promoted to club president.
Oops - the manslaughter stats are from 2002. Doesn't really matter, and what's with the queestions about the guns anyway - sorry to hear you're that insecure about your manhood.
#35, so your argument is that the lethality of the weapon is what mandates whether or not it should be banned or otherwise made illegal?
To be honest, I can't wait for the day that the people of this planet get so scared and pussified that they hand over everything to their governments begging for their protection, just to find out that those same governments are what we should have been protecting ourselves against the entire time. Then, I will point at everyone and laugh and say "I told you so" right before I jump off the ESB knowing that death is a better fate than the loss of liberty.
To #36,
OK, so wec an now stipulate that it's easier to kill someone with a gun than with a knife?
Pretty much every law on this planet involves trading some kind of freedom in return for something else.
Maybe you think you should be able to own a bazooka, or a tank - that way you'll be sure to be safe.
Reasonable people may differ on where those lines should be drawn, but do not, do NOT make the argument that we'd have as many murders in this country if guns were not as freely available.
Povert does NOT equal crime. In the midst of grinding poverty Jewish immigrants still left us with a legacy of hospitals, schools and an historic Labor movement.
"These neighborhoods you're defending from some fantasy enemy aren't as they are because they're black. They're poor. And most of them would like to be less than poor. Most would like a reasonable improvement in their standard of living, and that includes not having to bury their kids over stupid arguments.
It's not the whites looking for cheap rent that drives the price up, it's the landlords and developers who see that whites might be willing to live there and jack the prices up as high as they can go, because they don't care about the neighborhood.
You're fighting the wrong battle."
Black doesn't equal poverty or crime, but LACK of an active moral sense equals a poor life no matter how much $ you have.