As everyone knew, New York was where the Avengers first saw real combat and entered the public eye.
Many New York City residents took pride in the fact that superheroes like the Avengers had appeared there. As a result, certain groups had large numbers of Avengers fans: teenage boys liked Natasha Romanoff, mature women liked Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, or Thor. Combined with the United States' worship of individual heroism and its utterly loose, freewheeling superhero culture, some people imitated the masked superheroes from comic books and took to the streets to fight crime.
And they carried guns.
Since taking office, Commissioner Stacy had caught several idiots wearing masks. Using the excuse that they lacked concealed-carry permits, he had sent them to the district attorney for prosecution and taught them a lesson. Recently, a masked vigilante had also been causing trouble all over Hell's Kitchen. Once he caught that guy, he intended to have him convicted of a serious crime. He worried that more people like this would appear in the city, and he worried even more that the perpetrators behind today's two cases were masked freaks. That would mean New York's future was going to be far from peaceful. It was not that he failed to understand that vigilantes could sometimes supplement public security, especially when the police were unable to act because of illegally obtained evidence, orders from superiors, officers on leave, cuts to police funding meant to eliminate racial discrimination, and all sorts of other messy reasons. Masked vigilantes served as a deterrent to criminals. These people practiced humanity's oldest and most sincere vision, carved into the basalt pillar of the Code of Hammurabi.
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
That was precisely why the public welcomed superheroes who upheld justice, enjoying the