Thursday, October 18, 2012

Wasn't this a movie with Lancaster & Douglas?

So the NYPD have taken down eight members of "the Forbidden Ones, the Dirty Ones and the Trouble Makers", average age 51, and charged them with firearms trafficking.

Four of the guys are too sick or in need of detox to attend their arraignment hearings, and the rest are probably going to need to be placed in solitary confinement for their own protection once the rest of the criminal underworld sees the positively anemic junk-on-the-bunk photo that accompanied the article... 


Too bad about the Gold Cup, but the rest of the display looks pretty par for the course, all media nattering about AK-47s aside. Well, except for the signaling cannon, that is. Lord only knows what sort of mischief they could have gotten up to with that.

The bikes were a little surprising, too, appearing to be a selection of pretty stock-looking '80s rice burners, with the one closest to the camera being a first-generation Honda Magna. Is that a... a... Rebel second from the back?

No word on whether or not the desperadoes were planning on smuggling 32-oz. Big Gulp cups into Gotham along with the gats.

25 comments:

Bram said...

I am having more trouble distinguishing the "real" news from the Onion.

og said...

A single shot slug gun?


I have more ordnance than that in my sock drawer.

Living in Babylon said...

"Agents found seven improvised explosive devices in Brannigan’s home, where his wife also operated a day care center. Also seized were 20 guns, 2,000 envelopes of heroin and 2 ounces of cocaine and marijuana."

Now that sounds like a party.

Also, is anyone else intrigued by the concept of home defense signalling cannons? Any idiot can yank a cord and you can prepoint it at the door, give home invaders a whiff of the grapeshot. Or load slaggen (gravel) just for funsies.

JohninMd(help?) said...

Hey Tam-- you being the resident rice-rocket pilot, any ideas on outfitting a wheel-chair sidecar with a mount for a swivel-gun? B-)

Derfel Cadarn said...

If this is the best a "gang" of "bikers" can do for weaponry then we have nothing to worry about. This collection wouldn't scare a den of cub scouts.

Jim said...

Get snarky if you must, but the large caliber shotgun is equipped with a sniper-scope mount, and if that isn't ominous I don't know what is.

Woodman said...

Good thing they banned high capacity magazines, or something.

Maybe if they loosened gun control laws in NYC then these alleged criminals wouldn't be peddling alleged "guns".

Jay G said...

Heh. This story is on my rotation as well. I noticed the same thing about the bikes - that is definitely a Magna (I had an '82), and it looks like they're all metrics...

perlhaqr said...

Wow. That's just... pathetic.

Are those .22 pistols in the last pic?

Tam said...

Jay G,

I had an '83! A V45 from the last year before the tariff.

Tam said...

(http://web.archive.org/web/20010822094112/http://members.aol.com/tamslick/bikes.htm)

Jay G said...

Hmm. I sold mine before we owned a digital camera (I sold it to buy the S&W 360, AAMOF). Wonder if I have any pictures in one of the many shoeboxes around the Casa del G.

Great, great little bike. I toured a lot of Maine on that 750.

Stretch said...

Clearly the old geezers are traditionalists: 1911s, wheel guns (nice Dan Wesson set in 1st photo)and Ruger .22s.
And a muzzle loading cannon? Now THAT'S old school.
Maybe they'll get cells in the original block at Sing-Sing. They'd appreciate that.

A Reader said...

That's not a gun-running enterprise. That's a sad table at a gun show.

If we, as gun owners, shouldn't get worked up about a new AWB because they're only after the big, scary, "military-style" ARs, AKs, and Barretts, why do the fuzz in endarkened states like NY go after old guys with black market .22s?

Something is rotten in the state of Brooklyn.

David said...

What I really take offense to is referring to a group with an average age of 51 as "geriatric"...

Kristophr said...

Yea, they probably did make some booze money selling those pathetic clunkers.

As long as NY continues to violate the Second Amendment, petty criminals can make money selling junk guns on the streets there.

Now I know where old Hi-Points and Jennings go to die.

Sigivald said...

An undercover officer purchased the cannon, fuses and .50 caliber projectile shells for $2,000 last April and loaded the weaponry into his vehicle.

Someone should point out to the author there that that's a muzzle loading cannon and does not take "shells".

It's also well over .50 caliber, given that the bore is larger than the OD on that shotgun, etc.

I'd say it's maybe 1" or 1.5" bore.

(I imagine the average New Yorker would have nigh-literal pant-shitting-hysteria were someone to remind them that there's no Federal restriction to speak of on muzzle-loading artillery.

Hell, they're even legal in California; not sure about MA and IL and NY-not-NYC. But most of the country? Just go buy one.

Hell, you can mail order one.)

Bram said...

I knew a guy in MA who owned an 8-pounder. He did revolutionary reenactments.

Jon Moore said...

Sure wish I could have hooked up with these guys before NYC's finest did and gotten a deal on that Woodsman in the last picture.

NotClauswitz said...

I really don't believe that riders of said two-wheeled apparatus actually qualify as a "Biker Gang."

CJM said...

"including a cast iron cannon."

Uh, I think more like a wrought iron cannon. Cast iron is way too brittle to be making cannons out of, unless the object is to kill your own gun crew. There were reasons why brass cannon were made for so long, and most had to do with the very poor grades of iron and steel that was available prior to about 1860.

SiGraybeard said...

NYC cop: "Who do I go after? The 51 year old arthritic guys with less junk than the average Texan, or the MS-13 gang running drugs?" "Let me think" Yeah, that took a microsecond.

Critter said...

the mild bunch.

Justthisguy said...

Heh. I know a guy who is totally cold-blooded about his motorcycles. He doesn't care what they look like, or if they're popular. He just buys the ones that work right, but are marked down in the back of the shop, because they did not impress the doodahs.

These days, he rides one of those BMWs which looks like an insect, and doesn't care what other people think.

P.s. He met Neal Boortz at the BMW shop in Atlanta, and was not impressed. This is a guy who grew up riding Nortons and Triumphs in Detroit in the fifties, and who once spent thirty days in jail for loud exhaust pipes on his bike. 18" open megaphones, baby!

Anonymous said...

That bike in the rear looks like a CB750 or 900F from the early 80s. While it is a very sweet UJM, it isn't really a paragon of badassery.