City officials in New York and Seattle might learn something from a retired New York police inspector whose remark to the New York Times the other day sums up a reality that appears to have escaped Mayors Eric Adams and Bruce Harrell.
Retired cop Tom Harris, now president of the Times Square Alliance, observed, “A gun-free zone is not going to stop a criminal from carrying a gun.”
Indeed, gun laws in general do not prevent criminals from being armed. Last Thursday, the Times reported, despite the designation of Times Square as a “sensitive location” where guns are not allowed, a 22-year-old man was fatally shot.
Go west 3,000 miles to Seattle, which passed a gun violence tax on the sale of firearms and ammunition in July 2015—when Harrell was on the city council—on the shaky contention the tax would generate big bucks to finance anti-violence projects. Since 2016, the first year the tax was in effect, the number of murders has climbed. In 2016, Seattle posted 19 murders. Last year, the body count was 52.
Seattle police released the 2022 crime report. According to KOMO News, the local ABC affiliate, “There were 739 shootings and shots fired incidents in the city in 2022, which is a 19% increase from 2021, according to SPD data. There was also total of 52 homicides in the city in 2022, which was the second-highest total (in recent memory).” In 2020, there were 53 murders.
New York saw a 22 percent increase in robbery, burglary and other crimes last year, according to the New York Times. However, homicides dropped to 411 last year, down approximately 11 percent from 2021, the newspaper said.
Predictably, Adams in the east and Harrell in the west are doubling down in their efforts to penalize law-abiding citizens for crimes neither man’s policies have prevented.
In New York, Adams told reporters in the aftermath of Thursday’s killing, “But this shooting underscores the need to ensure Times Square remains a sensitive location.”
In Seattle, KOMO is quoting a statement issued by Harrell’s office as police data is released: “Mayor Harrell remains concerned about the increase in gun violence and has long advocated for repealing state preemption on local gun regulations. This legislative session, he submitted a bill in partnership with Senator Joe Nguyen to remove statewide firearm preemption and allow cities the freedom to set their own commonsense gun safety laws.”
Nguyen’s Senate Bill 5446 hasn’t moved in Olympia, and its House companion, HB 1178, also appears stalled in the House Committee on Civil Rights & Judiciary. Washington’s preemption law is almost 40 years old and it has provided uniformity in state gun laws in a state with an estimated 1.5-2 million gun owners and nearly 700,000 active concealed pistol licenses.
It’s not as if they city officials in both municipalities hadn’t been warned. Back in May 2022, weeks before the Supreme Court’s landmark Bruen ruling striking down New York’s unconstitutional concealed carry permit scheme, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms blistered former Mayor Bill di Blasio and Adams.
“The crime situation in New York City is out of control,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Part of the blame goes to former Mayor Bill di Blasio, and part of it to new Mayor Eric Adams, but the real problem has been festering for generations, ever since the Big Apple erected big obstacles to the exercise of the Second Amendment right to both keep and bear arms.
“Nothing worries criminals more than legally-armed citizens, otherwise known as ‘would-be victims’,” he observed at the time. “If city officials from the mayor on down weren’t so determined to keep law-abiding citizens disarmed, instead of preying on the public, criminals would be praying they don’t get shot by an intended victim.”
Last November, following a fatal shooting at a Seattle high school in which one student was murdered, Gottlieb issued a statement: “Seattle is headquarters to a billionaire-supported gun prohibition lobbying group whose initiatives were passed on promises of reduced gun-related crime. Those restrictive laws have…miserably failed. The number of murders in Seattle and the entire state have gone up, not down, and the gun control crowd refuses to admit their strategies have accomplished nothing, while providing false hopes to the public.
“Keep in mind,” he continued, “the suspect in the Ingraham High School shooting could not legally carry a gun. He violated existing state and federal laws by bringing a gun into the school. He fatally shot someone. How many laws does someone have to violate before Harrell (and other officials) figure out that the problem isn’t guns, it’s people who commit crimes, and it is leadership that defunds law enforcement, pursues soft-on-crime social policies and then tries to shift the blame to guns because they can’t, or won’t, punish the perpetrators?”
While Adams and Harrell contend their fealty to gun control efforts is the right course, Gottlieb has called gun-free zones “feel-good fakery.” Only the year-end homicide statistics may tell who is right.
About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
Two of the driving tenents of Liberalism and of late Progressivism are the Revision of History and the Redefinition of Reality.
Interesting observation.
Thanks for reading and sharing this AMMOLAND report.
“If only there were laws against …”
Hazcat, fantastic, novel concept!!!
Let’s see, maybe…..”Thou shalt not kill.”
Nope, tried that God thingy, not working.
Surely, Man is smarter than God. Maybe…..Murder 1, Murder 2, Manslaughter, Gun Free Zones, 23,000 and counting 2A infringing laws…..
Nope, again, tried those, not working….as in Definition of insanity is doing same thing repeatedly expecting a different outcome.
When Democrats policies are a complete failure it’s always someone else’s fault or blamed on an inanimate object. Democrats never own thier failures they always play the blame game !
It’s their “Ism” game.
Racism, sexism, not-my-fault-ism, it’s-your-fault-ism…..
The BeetleJouice impersonator Shootcago Mayor lost recent election due to at least two “isms”. As expected, she stated racism and sexism. But, it was really incompetence-ism and stupid-ism.
Another great article Dave. As a fellow citizen of this crazy state, (I will never use the inslee term Washatonians), you must find it interesting that even the liberal fools over in King County have begun violating their own tenets about evil guns and are buying guns hand over fist. Tacoma, same thing. I’ve been called by 3 different women in as many weeks, to come over and give them a price quote to repair damage to their homes by criminals trying to gain access. One spunky gal was home when the brick came thru the window and she tried… Read more »
No suggestions of hurricane glass / anti-shatter film or extended hi-tensile screws for doors? Might be seen as self serving advertisement – since I’m guessing you’d offer to make the upgrades. However when this follows firearms and political advice, you are indicating priorities and may well help you upsell. Security upgrades will not stop a determined intruder, however they will turn away some – saving you from having to shoot them. Will slow the rest, buying you time to get out your gun and call 911 – after they’ve done more to break in it also offers you a better… Read more »
Nope. I don’t offer those kind of devices. I for one would move out of an area like Tacoma or Seattle, rather than live like that.
So you think the type of people bigfoot is talking about, subscribe to this blog and are therefore going to hire his services? Not a well thought out post. C’mon, man!
And you didn’t even try to sell them a new set of Ginsu Steak Knives? A missed opportunity. In all seriousness, I wish you would find a medium that you could use, perhaps with these three ladies to relay their stories, your advice to them and their follow-up on that advice and push it further throughout the state. You do remember that the FCC still allows you to have FREE Television and studio time? Maybe a late-night talk show to drown out the typical liberal trash?
Bigfootbob, it’s not the democRAT politicians to be feared as much as the free-Shit Addicted Useful Idiot Unproductive Government Plantation Dwellers voting those politicians into office. Never underestimate the power of stupidity en masse.
I don’t. I have a brain damaged LIBERAL niece. She once told me she was going to vote for John Edwards, because he was cute!
Several years later I was paying my 1st quarter taxes and freaking out because it was five digits, when the same niece came by to show us her new Hummer she used her inflated tax “refund” as a down payment, (her check was within $10.00 of the check I had just wrote!!!) and you know where this ends, right?…4 months later…REPOSSESSION..
The old days of the wild west never had these problems hanging after hanging after hanging… I think they called them, Swingers?
Laws, in and of themselves, cannot stop ANY criminal activity ; they only prescribe the punishment ( if caught) for the violation of said laws.
Play it again, Sam.
“Politicians with laws never stop bad guys with guns.
They only control the good guys, which is their true agenda.” – Me, for years.
“Killing is a matter of will, not means. You cannot control the intent by passing laws about the means.” – The late Col Jeff Cooper, 1958.
“What are we going to do if citizens are disarmed, and the government doesn’t obey its own laws?” – Jeffy.
In the aftermath of a “vigilante” shooter of 4 black “youths” on a NYC subway, I read in the local fish wrapper that crime on the subway the following month had fallen by 70%! This was 1984, before Giuliani saved the city. Bernard Goetz was a decent fellow who had been victimized enough. He had, as I recall, a 5 shot Charter Arms .38 special, for which he didn’t have a permit, because NYC didn’t issue permits unless you knew someone or paid someone off. These 4 youths, armed with screwdrivers and knives confronted him and asked him if he… Read more »
Seattle has long been detached from reality. What policeman are left from the on-going attrition, have no support from city council(one of the biggest “defund police” city councils in the US). Why SPD ranks aren’t at zero, is a puzzler to me. What used to be a fun city to visit is now a crime ridden, drug infested, blue tarp tent city hell hole.(all WA cities west of the Cascades are like this now, and they’re all blue) I avoid it at all costs.