innovation of Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, and other elderly gangsters, was quick to catch the entire nation's attention, and made headlines across the country for more than twenty years. Graham Bell highlights the sinister history of the most infamous Mafia crime organization, including the men's identities and the forging of their partnership (Arcadia Publishing, 2010).
The media labeled 1930s-40s organized crime gangs "Murder, Inc.."These gangs were said to work on behalf of nation-wide organized crime gangs including the Italian Mafia and Jewish mob. Jewish and Italian-American thugs hailing from East New York, Ocean Hill, and Brownsville chiefly made up… Continue Reading...
the film transcended the action genre already well-established in the West by using the various tropes of the genre (gangsters, the conflicted family, brother-against-brother, friend-in-peril, reformed hood, betrayal, and so on), mixing in elements of melodrama and morality (both Buddhism and Christianity appear in the film), and layering it with stylized gun violence -- gunplay like swordplay -- in a manner that had never before been seen. The film played, in certain moments, like a dance -- bullets being used like rain to wash away all the problems and issues that otherwise could not be resolved. For both Chinese and Western audiences, the film was something new: it appealed… Continue Reading...
the U.S. mails. (Jacobs 20) However, in the United States, the crackdown on gun ownership began in the 1930s when notorious gangsters had too much access guns. 1934 saw legislation passed to impose new criminal penalties, taxes, and regulations to those that owned sawed-off shot guns and machineguns thanks to criminals like Al Capone (Lott). Four years later, Congress passed the 1938 Federal Firearms Act that required gun dealers to register and maintain a record of transactions.
The assassination of John F. Kennedy and a couple of other high-profile deaths led to the signing of the 1968 Gun Control Act, which regulates firearms owners as well as the firearms industry. (Lott)… Continue Reading...