Goodfellas : How long would Tommy have lasted if he didnt kill Billy Batts?

That whole thing where Billy Batts made fun of Tommy and insulted him and then got killed by Tommy after he came back to Henrys club was pretty crazy stuff, how long would Tommy have lasted if Billy Batts had already gone home for the night and wasnt there anymore when he returned to the club?

And you can see Billy Batts calling Paulie and telling him that Tommy called him names and threatened him at his own party and was acting like a jerk, associates of crews that are not Made Guys do not go around and get away with insulting and threatening Made Guys in public.

So Tommy might have lived longer because he wouldnt have killed Billy Batts that night, but Billy could always complain to Paulie and get Tommy into trouble or get an apology from Tommy, a forced apology.

How long would Tommy have lasted before Paulie had him whacked anyway? Obviously killing Billy Batts was the last stroke but Henry said it was for a Lot of other things.

Tommy still being around would have been bad because he would have gone into the Cocaine and drug business along with Henry too i think, helping him sell drugs and getting into even more trouble, that would be bad, Henry was sloppy but he was smart, Tommy was crazy and stupid and would never rat to save himself like Henry did, but he could have lived for years.

It depends on how much you want to factor in real life events and motivations into the movie. Conflict was going to happen as Batts was pushing to take back a business that Jimmy Burke was running although this is only vaguely hinted at in the movie. The structure of the crew in the movie pretty much states that Jimmy readily directs Tommy and Henry to preform various activities. It may look as though Tommy started the altercation at the bar but Jimmy knew when Batts would be back from prison and wanted to keep Batt's loansharking operation so prior to the night's events he most likely directed Henry to pour a bunch of booze in Batt's glass to make Batt's easy to take out and for Tommy that Jimmy was going to whack Batts that evening with Tommy required to help Jimmy on that. Had Batts not been in Jimmy's way so to speak Tommy would have crossed somebody else along the way but it may have taken five or ten years for that to happen. In terms of the movie Tommy got many more years breathing because he was useful to Jimmy than he would have if he were more in the shadows of that crew such as Frankie was.

I think Tommy wasn't going to last long anyway. If it wasn't Billy Batts, it would've been someone else. He was getting more out of control and the mob was getting more paranoid. Not a good mix.

It's a good question and there really is no way to tell.

I'm guessing that if Tommy hadn't whacked any made guys then he would have gone to prison along with those Henry ratted on and died in the slammer or maybe even killed by another inmate.

If you notice, Tommy only kills those who are soft targets, unarmed or when they don't expect it.
He never engages anyone in a shootout, which is the way to carry out hits, so yeah, he probably wouldn't have gotten killed by anyone else if he hadn't killed Batts.

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Batts didn't have to cry to anybody about Tommy. Batts was a Made Man in the Gambino Family, if he felt Tommy was out of line, all he had to do was get him whacked. And the Lucchese Family, would not risk an all out war for a guy like Tommy, who wasn't even a made man.

Tommy knew this, and was one of the reasons he decided to kill Batts before Bats would kill him. And in real life, Batts is killed a few weeks after their initial confrontation, not the same night.

Im almost positive Tommy would have gotten killed sooner or later anyway even if nothing happend with Batts. He's too much of a loose cannon, big-mouth, rubs people the wrong way. He was pretty much a nobody to the higher-ups in the mob so him being whacked for even the smallest thing wouldn't be an issue in the slightest.