drive-by

A drive-by shooting (or drive-by or "D.B." for short) is a form of hit-and-run tactic, a personal attack carried out by an individual or individuals from a moving or momentarily stopped vehicle. It often results in bystanders being shot instead of, or as well as, the intended target. The objective is to overwhelm the target by a sudden, massive amount of firepower without attention to accuracy.

Some of the first gun control laws were passed to control assailants who would ride up to their targets on horseback, shoot them with wheellock pistols and then ride off before they could be apprehended.^[1]

Usages

Military use

The British Special Air Service used a form of drive-by shooting in its campaigns in North Africa and France during the Second World War. Columns of heavily armed jeeps, bristling with machine guns, would drive past and sometimes through enemy positions, usually airfields and supply depots, shooting anything and everything.

Recently drive-by shootings have been used extensively in the Iraq war, including the assassinations of Waldemar Milewicz^[2] and Hatem Kamil^[3].

Gang murders

Drive-by shootings have been employed by gang members since the 1920's during the prohibition era. Then used mostly to disrupt distribution of alcohol by rivals, it is now used to commit revenge murder. Drive-by's are an efficient way of taking out rivals, as it allows the perpetrators to not only flee from the police, but quickly get out of a rival's turf.

Political assassinations

Drive-by assassinations of political leaders have been common in some regions and eras. It was one of the tactics used by groups such as the Red Army Faction, the Red Brigades and November 17. The November 17 assassination of Brigadier Stephen Saunders was carried out by assassins on motorcycle who approached the vehicle while it was stopped at a traffic light and shot him dead before speeding off.

For a time in the 70's the German special operations unit GSG 9 trained some of its operators in the "art" of the drive-by shooting so as to be able to better protect those in its charge.

In popular culture

In television

The stereotyped prevalence of drive-bys on the West Coast is satirized in a scene from an episode (Unconfirmed Reports) of HBO's The Wire. During the scene, O-Dog--a soldier in the Marlo Stanfield organization--suggests that they "go all Boyz in the Hood" before carrying out orders to take over a rival gangs corner. After all the drive-by shots miss the targets, hitwoman Snoop gets out of her car and lands a shoot on a fleeing rival-gang member then proclaims, "Fuck them West Coast niggas, cause in B-more we aim and hit a nigga. Ya heard?"

Hip hop culture

References to drive-bys were once prevalent in rap, at times to the point of glorification by certain artists. However, this attitude changed drastically following the deaths of cultural icons Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G, both by drive-by shooting, in the mid-1990s.

Drive-by shooting in video games

An early example is found in the game Quarantine, where the player could aim an UZI out the side window.

The Grand Theft Auto series of video games allows the player to aim his or her sub-machine gun out of the window of his vehicle to shoot.

In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, there is a mission in which the player has to follow a fellow gang member on a bike while a gang is in a car behind and shooting at the protagonist. In Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories and Saints Row, the player can recruit various gang members to shoot out of the car against his enemies who include police and various opposing gangs.

In Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned, players are even able to fire sawed-off shotguns while riding motorcycles.

The Godfather: The Game also features various levels where the player drives a car while an assistant uses a Thompson submachine gun out of the back windows. In certain versions of the game, one of the hit missions is to have your partner do a drive by shooting of a Barzini mobster for extra reward.

The game Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven enables the player to use the mouse for more precise aiming during drive-by shootings. The camera moves with the mouse, requiring the player to concentrate both on the target and direction on the road at once. This style was also used in the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 games Saint's Row and Grand Theft Auto IV.

See also

• Cantabrian circle
• Caracole
• Shoot-and-scoot

Footnotes

External links

• BBC article on November 17 shooting
• Database of Iraqi civilian casualties

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