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Almost 50 shot in violence-filled weekend in New York

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After a bloody holiday weekend that left dozens shot in New York City -- including two police officers and at least one innocent victim who died of her wounds -- Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Tuesday lashed out at lawmakers in Washington for not doing enough to get illegal guns off the nation’s streets.

‘It is a matter of life and death,’ Bloomberg said while standing outside a Brooklyn hospital about 1:30 a.m. as the two police officers were being treated. Neither suffered life-threatening injuries but three other people died in the incident. They included the shooter, who was shot by police; the shooter’s target; and a 56-year-old woman hit by a stray bullet as she sat with her daughter on her apartment building’s stoop, police said.

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The shootings occurred a few blocks from an annual parade celebrating Caribbean culture, where earlier in the day at least other four people suffered gunshot wounds.

Also over the weekend, an early Sunday shooting at party in the Bronx left eight people wounded, and four people were shot early Monday in Brooklyn. Altogether, 46 people were shot in various parts of the city during the long weekend, according to the New York Post.

New York state has some of the country’s strictest laws governing the purchase and carrying of guns, something Bloomberg said has helped reduce crime in the nation’s largest city. ‘But we cannot do it alone,’ he said. ‘This is a national problem requiring national leadership, but at the moment neither end of Pennsylvania Avenue has the courage to take basic steps that would save lives.’

According to the FBI’s latest crime statistics, firearms were used in 67.1% of the nation’s murders and 42.6 percent of robberies.

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