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Bloomberg: "You Have A Right To Live In Bed-Stuy And Not Have Bullets Whiz Past Your Head"
By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Jun 3, 2013
Modified Jun 3, 2013
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By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Jun 3, 2013
Modified Jun 3, 2013
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Mayor Bloomberg promised to keep up his pursuit for stronger gun laws today, after the shooting in Bedford-Stuyvesant this past weekend that left 11-year-old Tayloni Mazyck paralyzed from the neck down.
"I promised the father I would not flag in my desire to get guns out of the hands of minors and people with criminal records,” Bloomberg said today, three days after a stray bullet pierced Tayloni's neck outside her home in Brooklyn. "You have a right to live in Bed-Stuy and not have bullets whiz past your head."
Tayloni's father, Robert Mazyck, says doctors have told him his daughter will never walk again; he says the news was so dire, her 85-year-old great-grandmother passed away yesterday. "She watched the news and saw what happened to her great-granddaughter," Mazyck told the Post. "It was too much for her."
Tayloni, a fifth grader, was shot Friday evening while standing with her mother outside their 600 Gates Avenue home; her alleged shooter, Kane Cooper, was arrested soon after, and cops believe he was aiming at a gang member. Cops say that Cooper, 17, laughed when he was told he hit Tayloni. "“That made me want to tear his head off his shoulders,” Mazyck told the Daily News. “That made me angry." While Tayloni's family members say they don't want her to become "the poster child for gun violence," they say that it is a widespread problem. "I just don’t like that he’d bring a gun out in broad daylight," Mazyck said of the shooter.
This weekend was a particularly violent one, with 25 people shot in 48 hours; Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz also put out a statement today blaming poor gun control laws for Tayloni's shooting: "It is not just a tragedy, but an outrage—and the blame rests not just on the shoulders of the mutants who pull the trigger, but also the NRA , gun obsessed zealots and Congressional Republicans," he said. "If the NRA wants to claim that the Constitution protects their ‘right to bear arms,’ then the only guns that should be legal are the muskets that Americans had in 1791 when the Second Amendment became law."
Tagged
Bedford-Stuyvesant
brooklyn
marty markowitz
michael bloomberg
NRA
shooting
tayloni mazyck
Rebecca Fishbein
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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