Shooters

The last days of the Twentieth Century saw a major crackdown on Manchester’s warring gangs. Armed police patrolled the streets and prominent faces were arrested, tried and jailed as the authorities launched a major effort to rid the city of its ‘Gunchester’ reputation. Their success, however, was shortlived. New gangs soon emerged, with names like the Young Gooch Crew, the Moss Side Bloods, the Old Trafford Crips, the Longsight Street Soldiers and the Fallowfield Mad Dogs. Younger and even more brazen than their predecessors, they baited their rivals with explicit grime tracks and internet videos, and unleashed a fresh wave of bloodshed.


Shooters tracks the course of these new gangs and their various alliances, feuds and crimes. Using detailed court testimony and inside accounts, it gives a rare insight into the lethal conflict between the Pitt Bulls and the Longsight Crew; tells how two underworld armourers dubbed Bobby the Gun and the Merchant of Death supplied the gangs with reactivated weapons; chronicles the infamous bloodbath at the Brass Handles pub in Salford, when two would-be assassins were themselves executed; and reveals the inner workings of the drug-dealing L$$ posse. 


It also recounts the story of Gooch leaders Colin Joyce and Stephen Amos, whose arrest for murder led to one of Britain’s biggest-ever trials; pieces together the events behind the notorious killings of teenagers such as Jessie James, Giuseppe Gregory and Louis Brathwaite; examines the methods of the audacious armed robbers of Salford; and describes the rise of lethal Asian gangs and their influence in the neighbouring towns of Bolton and Oldham. 



Shooters is a powerful account of one city’s ongoing struggle with the law of the gun.