We’ve had a lot of people report in about our original comment from Stanley about gunshots on Bolling Ave between 6th and Avon at about 1:30AM on Sunday Morning. Is this just another neighborhood emptying of rounds, was it related to the shooting on the corner, or are there more details we need to know? We don’t have any reported injuries.
Tuffy, Stanley and Clarice want to know.
If you know anything, let us know in the comments.
P.S. If you want police reports you need to contact the Charlottesville police department. They should put you on the email list.
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Tagged as: Charlottesville, Crime, gunshots, Questions, shooting
Oh for Christ’s sake. I hear gunshots multiple times a week in my neighborhood, and I don’t start a thread asking for info every time. Get over it.
so, ethan, it’s okay to just sit in your house and duck if you hear gunshots “multiple times a week”?
you should be glad people are trying to be proactive in your neighborhood. If these threads help, what’s the harm?
frequent gunshots should tend to keep neighborhood rents low.
might consider letting off a few more in what’s become Hi-Tone Belmont.
I have no idea what happened, but that was a LOT of gunfire. (I heard it from my place just south of the Mall.) My boyfriend’s comment was, “That’s either someone setting off fireworks, or else a military engagement.”
I really want to know what happened. It went on for a good 10-15 seconds, constantly. I’d say I heard between 25 and 40 shots (although I suppose some of what I heard could have been reverb).
@2 I’m just saying get used to it. Charlottesville is getting worse, not better.
@5 – it was mild in the 70’s – I don’t for a second believe that it’s not getting worse. global media just making things worse, entitlement at work. people are crazy, ya’ll.
/flooz, just can’t stop the blather….
I think Cville was far more violent ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. We just hear about this stuff a lot more now. Sudden prevalence of guns is a good sign, though—it means less random wilding, and means the more violent element is accelerating things and turning in on itself rather than preying so much on ‘cvillians’ as in the past.
Also, robbery by gun tends to be, though less emotionally pleasant, far less damaging than robbery by baseball bat, for example. Guns in hands of bad guys robbing nice girls and boys tend to just get pointed. The victim/mark gives up the goods, bad guy moves on. Fewer heroics on the part of good guys, so fewer stitches and contusions all around.
that said, i have a helluva time buying ammo in this town. the gun stores carry entirely hunting schlock and very few serviceable ‘theft-deterrent personal accessories’ and means to feed them.
‘civilians’
I heard it, and it sounded like fireworks to me.
@7: Otter, the most effective self/home defense weapon you can buy/keep is a pump-action 12-gauge shotgun, which is widely available locally and is primarily used for hunting. i keep one that’s meant for ducks and geese in our bedroom closet with a box of 5 00 magnum buck shot (birdshot isn’t going to deter most folks) in case the sound of racking the pump doesn’t freak out any intruders sufficiently. i believe it was the FBI that has recommended a pump action shotgun as it’s impossible to mistake the sound it makes for anything but a pump action shotgun.
/there are all kinds of home-defense resources out there with suggestions and factoids about what loads/rounds are best for home defense (00 is a little heavy and will go through walls, so maybe not as ideal for apartment dwellers).
//admittedly, a full-length pump shotgun isn’t very good for personal defense when walking around outside the house. a nice compact 9mm or .380 is good in that situation, as long as you have your CCP.
@10
I agree with you about 12 ga pump. Of course the hunting version has a rather long barrel, and with a full stock can be difficult to swing around in the tight confines of my tiny pad. The short-barrel and pistol-grip version is probably best, but is a bit ostentatious and useless for much else.
I have a Colt 1911 in .45 that makes a helluva nice loud noise when you ‘rack’ the slide. Of course .45s will go through walls (and intruders and books and tv sets and stereo equipment and refrigerators and just about anything else), but then again drywall can be repaired pretty easily and blood stains wipe nicely off cheerful Martha Stewart pastel semi-gloss paint, with a damp sponge.
/no warning shots; one witness in court.
Y’all have fun pumping your guns and spraying casings. I meanwhile, defend my home by lining up boobytraps à la Home Alone.
it’s good for ventilation, Shen,
especially after the heady house-filling aroma of all the Provencale cooking i do routinely.
my biggest concern about rounds carrying through the target and then on through walls is mostly about whoever is behind them, especially with a little Nut in the house now. if i lived in an apartment or my neighbors were closer than .5 acres, i would definitely go with a lower power round. i do like the 1911 for intimidation factor, however, and it’s more of a stopper than a 9mm, which is a penetrator round.
@14
agree. my only little ones are low to the ground, cats, and unless I’m trying to wing the breaker-enterer in the ankles, the felines should be safe from stray rounds.
The local cops switched to .40 with the idea of protecting innocents behind criminals; the .40 was supposed to stay in the target. Then, I notice, they switched back to .45—presumably the ballistics of the .40 were awful, and the stopping-power such that they were emptying a magazine into a ‘perp’ (see shooting in Orange a year ago) with limited effect, especially a ‘perp’ on some sort of amphetamine, etc., like crack.
News Reporter: “Why do you carry a .45?”
Texas Ranger: “Because they don’t make a .46.”
/i suppose this stuff is related to shootings in Belmont, but we better cut it out—the girls are getting nervous.
OD, I admittedly know little about guns, but if the concern is the bullet exiting the target rather than staying in the target, couldn’t they just use hollow points?
Yeah, what is wrong with you two? Turn a post about a tragedy into your circle-jerk gun chitchat? Seems in pretty poor taste to me.
Not a post about a tragedy, is a post about gunshots-cause-unknown in an urban area. presumably it’s not the little-old lady at the Episcopal Church shooting her Hummel Figurines off the mantel-piece.
One assumes is bad-guys doing bad-things. In any case, it’s illegal to discharge firearms within the city limits. So it’s a thread about a crime—that of firing guns in the city. If those guns are fired at citizens, then it becomes a self-defense issue on some level.
/whence talk about firearms used not in commission of crime but in crime prevention??
/but i DID say ‘let’s stop because the girls are getting nervous’
Oh, sorry so many shootings I can’t keep straight which thread is about just gunshots heard and which thread is about someone dying. My bad. Keep on discussing bullet sizes and the like amidst the chaos.
i did try to be careful about that, honest—i mean, to stay on the right thread.
where the hell is our new FFA?
As Laurie Anderson once said (and as a great poet-teacher of mine once used, to make an argument about the essentials of form and function working together): “It’s not the bullet that kills you, it’s the hole.”
one last bit…
@16: Echo, the guy that writes Rule .303 (you can find it in the C’Ville Blogs link on the right side of the main page here) wrote a really interesting bit about “hollow points” vs. hollow points recently that might interest you (if your question was earnest).
@22
i love that guy. He’s funny as hell, used to do his own magazine of local satire.
he’s a screaming-leftie with rabid-right hobbies–he WILL change the world.
/Glaser Safety Slugs
Thanks Wingnut. Fascinating read. From what I read, most hollow points would fragment inside the target and not come out the other side, so I stand by my original suggestion.
@24
i think that’s the idea behind Glaser Safety Slugs, too?
Perhaps as programs in the 70s issued free sterilized needles to junkies, Charlottesville could be on the cutting edge distributing free hollow-points or Glasers to local violent criminals and gun-toting drug dealers in the community—you know, to prevent innocents being harmed by bullets that pass through the bad-guys’ rivals? Might also want to offer a standard firearms safety and marksmanship course—a lot of those guys hold their pistols sideways like in the movies, and really don’t seem to aim much.
Yes. Let’s pass out hollow tip bullets to street gangs.
I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
they evidently have plenty of the other kind.
i was trying to avoid saying ‘gangs’ in all the foregoing.
i was trying to avoid saying ‘gangs’ in all the foregoing.
Say what you mean, and say it mean.
I meant giving them to the cops.
@16 re:14
oh, you know—a few bad apples.
has anyone ever seen a gang in cville? i mean a bunch of people evidently moving/standing/behaving as a gang? there were allegations of there being a White-Oversized-Teeshirt-Gang, but that turned out to just be something they got off Project Runway or something, because everyone wore them, not just bad-persons.
@30 We may not be Florence and Normandy, but yes Virginia, we have gangs.
@29
i would worry more about stray bullets from gang shooters than from police.
presumably these late-night shots everyone is hearing come from criminals not police?
in any case, pretty sure the cops all use safety-slugs or some version of hollowpoint?
…at least that way when they shoot…
Who are “they”?
/my warm cozy blanket is made of indefinite references
@24: i wasn’t trying to refute your statement, echo, just thought it was interesting. the “bad” hollow points he mentions in the write up would indeed fragment and would probably stay inside the target, but the true hollow points that stay together, but mushroom, are probably still powerful enough to go through and through on a human target. we’re just not as thick (some of us, at least) as game animals and our skin isn’t nearly as thick. they just leave a MUCH larger exit hole than the one they enter by.
Chris Rock has the most hilarious joke:
“You don’t need no gun control. You know what you need? We need some bullet control. Man, we need to control the bullets, that’s right. I think all bullets should cost $5000. $5000 for a bullet. You know why? ‘Cause if a bullet costs $5000, there’d be no more innocent bystanders. … Every time someone gets shot, people will be like, “Damn, he must have did something.”
There woudn’t be no lost bullets, if someone shot you they’d be like “I think you have my property!”
that’s hilarious!
Shen, that was awesome. which routine is that from?
@38: Bigger and Blacker I think
Bigger and Blacker
“that’s what she said”
/sorry, had to do it…