3 shot in "gun-free" Times Square

AP Photo/Mary Altaffer

Following the Bruen decision, New York City started trying to figure out all the places they could deem “sensitive places” and thus ban guns.

One of those selected was Times Square.

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The popular tourist spot is just a section of the city, open-air and with zero ability to control who brings what into it, but New York City officials just knew they could make it a gun-free zone.

Yeah…about that.

Three teens were injured when bullets flew in Times Square following an argument between a gunman and the young victims, according to police.

The shots were fired late night Monday, just before midnight, on Seventh Avenue between 41st Street and 42nd Street, police said. Police were not sure if the shooter was with the teens or not, but at some an argument broke out between the suspect and the trio.

A 15-year-old and an 18-year-old were both shot once in the thigh, according to police. A 17-year-old later walked into Harlem Hospital with a graze wound to the arm that police believe was connected to the same shooting. All three were expected to recover.

So far, it appears the shooter is still at-large.

However, this kind of thing isn’t supposed to happen. This was a gun-free zone. I mean, it was Times Square. It’s got signs all over the place saying not to bring a gun in. So what happened?

Well, the answer seems pretty obvious. Signs can signal anything you want them to signal, but they can’t keep guns out of a place like Times Square. It’s just not going to happen.

If anyone can come and go at will, you’re not keeping firearms out, as we see here.

But what you can do is dissuade law-abiding citizens from carrying their own firearms into such areas. By definition, law-abiding citizens obey the law. They’re not going to carry in a gun-free zone.

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So then you have someone like this dipstick who starts shooting and there’s no lawful resistance to it.

In this case, it looks like the result of an argument versus a mass shooting or a terrorist attack, but it could have been literally anything else and been far, far worse.

That’s the problem with gun-free zones in general, but especially with ones that can’t control who enters or leaves in any way, shape, or form.

This could have been so much worse, yet with New York City officials rethink what they’ve done with Times Square? Absolutely not. If anything, they’ll double down on the anti-gun rhetoric, pretend that their signs still actually do something good, and never acknowledge the benefit of armed citizens to society.

Times Square will remain a gun-free zone and Mayor Eric Adams will continue to pat himself on the back for having made it so.

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and New York City will see a repeat of this, though potentially on a more horrific scale, all because they don’t trust ordinary people to be law-abiding if they’re carrying a firearm…all while expecting them to be law-abiding and not bringing the gun to Times Square.

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