by Susan Headden

About the author: Susan Headden is a staff writer for U.S. News & World Report. Her feature stories focus on prominent economic issues.

One glance in the rearview mirror of his 1978 Cadillac Eldorado and 21-yearold Dewayne Bellamy knew that his evening was over. Approaching the car near a decaying corner of the nation’s capital was the teenage son of a woman with whom Bellamy was having an affair. The boy had a gun. Before Bellamy could draw from his own arsenal of semiautomatic weapons, he heard the familiar pop of a 9-millimeter pistol. There was no pain, no blood. Only after he awoke from a coma three days later did Bellamy receive two pieces of news. The first was that he had been shot 13 times...