I’ve long had a theory: In the 1980’s, the CIA infiltrated the gangs of Los Angeles and New York, and convinced them that holding handguns and even bigger arms sideways was not just “cool”, but proper shooting technique:
It must have worked much better than most government conspiracies; by 1985, a Minneapolis cop told me that the safest place to be in a gang fight was the target; unfortunately, the most dangerous place was 45 degrees off the line of fire, in your living room, watching TV. This was grimly true, of course; there’d just been a gangbanger shootout in North Minneapolis where a half dozen urban yoots stood on each side of the street and blazed away at each other, hurting none of their enemies but paralyzing a boy in a second-floor apartment half a block off the line of fire.
Anyway – the John Woo grip has saved the life of a policeman, albeit at the cost of the Woo-gripping gunman:
A Times Square bloodbath was narrowly avoided because the machine-pistol-toting thug who fired at a cop flipped the gun on its side like a character out of a rap video, causing the weapon to jam after two shots, law-enforcement sources said yesterday.
When scam artist Raymond “Ready” Martinez held the MAC-10-style gun parallel to the ground, it caused the ejecting shells to “stovepipe,” or get caught vertically in the chamber, the sources said. The gun is designed to be fired only in a vertical position.
If he had fired the weapon — which had another 27 rounds in the clip — properly, Martinez, 25, could have killed the hero cop pursuing him and countless others walking through the swarming tourist mecca Thursday morning.
The NYPD owes at least one life to rap videos, and John Woo’s oeuvre.
A toast…
Wonder if this conspiracy is going to get on the Jesse Ventura show?
Cross-posted and comments welcome at Shot In The Dark.
