I intentionally did not mention the movie. I was criticized in another thread for mentioning a plot point in a movie without putting “spoiler” in the title. Yes, I know the Al Pacino movie is almost 40 years old, but I thought I’d be safe.
In the film in which I was admonished for not putting “spoiler” in the thread title, the plot point happened in the first 8 minutes of “The Town”. I thought I’d just not mention the movie in this thread and assume that most of you would know which one.
Talk about coincidence. He did the same thing in 1972. 
Wow. That murder was the subject of the first episode of the TV series Unsolved Mysteries.
So the Mob was running Jai Alai in Tulsa? That just completely blows my mind for some reason.
I know. To be blunt, who would even CARE? That’s like the mob maintaining a stranglehold on professional bowling.
That thread is eerily similar to the one I linked to in post #5 of this thread 
I’ve heard that about snipers, but never about close-range hitmen. When you’re 1,000 yards away, it takes a finely-tuned weapon that you’re very comfortable with to make a lethal shot. When you’re a couple of feet from your target, any cheap old gun will do the job.
If you’re caught with the weapon on your person, couldn’t you tell the cops you were having a peaceful dinner when the shooting took place and you saw the killer drop the gun so you picked it up and were looking for a cop so you could turn the gun over to him?
Here in St. Louis they kill people with bombs. So they pretty much have to leave those at the scene to be effective.
You’re thinking Marines, not hitmen.
This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine !… 
Isn’t there some quote from the Oliver Stone film JFK about there never having been a mob hit with a high powered, scoped, rifle ? Not that JFK is where I’d go for reliable facts…
As I said in the last thread on this matter it was definitely the case that at one point the mark of a professional hit that the gun was left at the scene (or at least Mario Puzo definitely thought so and made to point in all the books of his I’ve read). This was because (as others have pointed out) there is (or was) far more chance being caught “bang to rights” with the weapon in your possession that there is of the weapon being traced back to you.
But I’m less sure it still holds in these days of forensic science. Though I could well be wrong.
In some movie the elder hitman gives the younger one the advice to use a revolver, (so you don’t have to search for the shells afterwards), not sure where I saw that, maby the Wire?
The main reason they drop the gun is so that they can’t get caught with it. The main reason that a dropped gun often suggests a professional hit is that to be confident in dropping the gun, you need to have been wearing gloves, not bought the gun yourself, rendered it untraceable by scratching off serial numbers, etc. If it’s a crime of passion the shooter is more likely to have bought the gun themselves, to be using a gun that was purchased in a legal, commercial transaction with paperwork, or to not be wearing gloves, in which cases dropping it would just make it a lot more likely the shooter gets caught.
Most Jai Alai places allowed betting on matches. And gambling is of course a huge interest of the mob.
I can’t remember where I read it, but I do remember reading that the “hit man” is essentially a myth – there is no pool of highly-compensated international sniper-types who come into town, plan and execute a long-range shooting, and split. Mostly, criminal gangs prefer to avoid killing because it brings down the heat, but occasionally, somebody needs killing. What the Mafia has (had) is a bunch of guys, some few of whom don’t mind killing, don’t mind jail so much, and can be relied on to keep their mouths shut. They’ll go back to these guys until they get caught. What other, less “old style” gangs have is a shitload of disposable “soldiers,” who will do damn near anything for a shot at the inner circle, plus maybe a guy or two who matches the Mafia description. Terrorists seem to fall into both camps. Governments can and do train snipers, but for covert work, they seem to prefer recruiting locals (or, rather, supporting self-motivated locals). All of these groups tend to isolate decision-makers from actual shooters whenever possible.
I’ve got these two books (early printing, Playboy Press I believe):
Nice to see they’re both in print. Both are excellent reads, by the by.
I wouldn’t say they’re absolutely-without-a-doubt-no-bullshit-true-from-word-one, but I believe that’s the way the mob worked, at least in the 50s and 60s. (cf the Valachi Papers, as well as other mob exposes through the years, like “Wiseguy,” the book the movie “Goodfellas” was based on, and “The Last Mafioso,” about Jimmy “the Weasel” Fratianno).
Ok, I know this thread cannot have much of a factual basis, but this post is either a whoosh or complete bullshit.
“I’d like to check out a weapon.” Which one? “Something in a 9mm handgun.” And when will it be returned? “Two days from now.”
Ok, sign the checkout card and be sure to wipe it clean before returning.
You really ought to live in a country where you have enough weapons that your criminals can just throw them away.
What kind of librarian runs this place?
(Bolding mine)
Scratching wont do it. Acid etching can bring them back up. You need to really grind them off deep.
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There was something like this in the film Layer Cake, but that was after all a work of fiction. A brief googling (and search on BBC) has found no reference to the expression used in this sense (lots references to libraries of books ABOUT guns, not of libraries FOR guns).
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The actual jai alai operation was in Florida, I believe. Roger started off as a normal Tulsa businessman, but he ran a couple of companies that did really well (one of them was Telex) so by the 1970’s he was very wealthy. He owned a variety of different companies around the country, but his headquarters was still in Tulsa. I can remember going over to their house a few times. It was an enormous mansion in one of the ritziest parts of town.
My parents knew the Wheelers from back when Roger was just a regular guy, not a multimillionaire. When he was contemplating buying into the jai alai operation, my dad tried to talk him out of it because of the mob’s ties to gambling. But Roger was convinced that he could handle the mob … .
According to the National Ballistics Intelligence Service:
The picture that is emerging is very much that there are a small number of weapons out there; handguns are the major problem—blank firing, converted or deactivated weapons. They are being used on four, five or six different occasions, and the guns move around the country
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmselect/cmhaff/447/447i.pdf