U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “NYC’s surge in gun violence sees spike in kid, teen and young adult victims,” WNBC-TV 4 reported Monday. “New York City has been grappling with an outstanding increase in gun violence over the past few months.”
Shooting stats are up overall and across all age range categories. The increases are “jaw-dropping,” we are told, and all socialist Mayor Bill de Blasio can seem to think to do is “decry the recent violence [and express] deep condolences.” While former New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton’s contention that the department is no longer allowed to do “things that work” is revealing (he no doubt means on-demand suspension of the Bill of Rights) what clearly does not work is New York City’s draconian citizen disarmament mindset.
It’s not for lack of de Blasio and his fellow gun-grabbers trying. After giving Michael Bloomberg a scare by not immediately signing on to Mayors Against Illegal [read “Your”] Guns, the mayor ultimately got with that program and started implementing Intolerable Acts of his own. What that means to a socialist is taking money from the productive sector and then transferring the wealth, like the $12.7M de Blasio earmarked for a pilot program with “violence interrupters,” which is a transparently manipulative way of saying “ex-gang members” (with a big question mark on the “ex”).
Seeing how well that didn’t work, de Blasio came up with another plan to spend other people’s money:
“Seeking to quell stubbornly persistent gun-related violence in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday will unveil a new system for handling such cases, creating a dedicated gun court in Brooklyn and a 200-officer police division focused on gun crime.”
And you have to admit, he offered one hell of a creative benchmark for success:
“Bill de Blasio Says Face-Slashing Epidemic Probably a Result of NYPD Gun Seizures”
Not that seizures actually had any long-term effect, but no matter. The “man of the people” mayor not only has his own taxpayer-funded armed bodyguards, but he also has enough to spare to help his son move into an Ivy League university (one that costs more than the median household income in this country).
That’s some “classless society”!
Not done spending money he never earned but has the power to claim, de Blasio took further crime and safety measures, like tapping another $10M to attract and embed ex-cons into the populace:
“No one will be disqualified from the program based on their past criminal history, even if they have gang ties or were sex offenders, according to Department of Correction Commissioner Joseph Ponte.”
That would be the same Joe Ponte who resigned over ethics “lapses.” In his defense, with de Blasio setting the tone, how was he supposed to know exploiting taxpayers for personal gain was verboten?
Still not content with making New York an even more dangerous place, de Blasio set about raising the “base price of a pack of cigarettes to $13.” Noting “New York City’s dangerous, multimillion-dollar cigarette black market,” what could go wrong?
With any of de Blasio’s “policies”…?
Like suing the Department of Defense for failing to report discharged service members who are prohibited from possessing a gun – while the police department he appoints the commissioner for refuses to disclose information on its lost or stolen guns.
Or partnering with David Hogg to add anti-gun voters to the rolls.
Or getting “busted” quoting communist murderer Che Guevara? Or “allow[ing] illegal immigrants in [the] taxpayer-subsidized housing pool”? Or releasing a “migrant who then raped and murdered [a] 92-year-old woman”? (And “migrant”? Really?)
“Mayor Bill De Blasio defends policing policies as NYPD statistics show rise in shootings, other major crimes,” CBS New York reported in February. No matter, there are churches and synagogues (but not mosques?) to close. And speaking of closures, he has presumed himself the arbiter of whose lives and livelihoods are, to use his words, “important,” and Black (Marxist) Lives Matter wins.
For the rest of us, he has established snitch channels (with hilarious unintended consequences).
All this is just de Blasio. We could go back to the Bloomberg administration, or to all the anti-gun mayors before him, and further back to the Sullivan Act, and subsequent New York State edicts and specialized New York City prohibitions (look at what’s required just to get “permission” to own a gun – forget about carrying one “legally” unless you’re connected or a celebrity).
Yet with all this, what do we see? The violence is on the upswing and everything thrown at it has been shown not to work – including a police chief taking a knee for the mob and getting the hell beaten out of him anyway. People who can’t protect themselves can’t protect anyone else and have no legal duty to anyway. So much for the mayor’s “leadership” on this, which consists of painting “Black Lives Matter” on a public street in front of Trump Tower.
What this shows though, is something that every rights advocate ought to be sharing with everyone, including their political representatives: New York City is a laboratory where all the experiments the gun-grabbers demand imposing on a national scale are shown to have failed. Let the riots deceptively characterized as “protests” continue and grow, and let the police continue to become demoralized and disgusted with the city‘s “leadership,” and when it comes to more so-called “gun violence,” we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Especially with de Blasio bragging about emptying the jails.
And predictably, they’ll blame the guns.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.