New York City Mayor Eric Adams may have the tough-on-crime messaging that Democrats are hoping to emulate on the campaign trail, but so far his rhetoric has match the reality that violent crime in the city is trending in the wrong direction, with a 32% increase in shootings reported in the city compared to January of 2021.

In fact, according to the NYPD, violent crime is surging in almost every category.

New York City experienced a 38.5% increase in overall major crimes last month compared to the same time period last year, according to the latest statistics shared by the NYPD.

For the month of January 2022, the city reported 9,566 overall incidents under the major index crime categories compared to the 6,905 cases in January 2021.

According to the NYPD, every major index crime category saw a surge for that time period with the exception of murder, which fell by 15.2% (28 v. 33).

Robbery increased by 33.1% (1,251 v. 940), and grand larceny increased by 58.1% (4,047 v. 2,559), the statistics show. Citywide shooting incidents increased by 31.6% (100 v. 76).

Assaults increased by 12%, reported rapes were up by 27%, and grant larcenies of vehicles soared nearly 100% compared to January of last year.

All of which begs the question; is there anything in Adams’ plan that will truly make a difference? At the moment, liberals willing to give Adams’ new strategy a chance are focused on one of the more controversial proposals from the new mayor; a resurgence of the stop-and-frisk tactics used (and abused) by former mayor (and current gun control sugar daddy) Michael Bloomberg.

The mayor’s plan vows that the unit will operate differently and more responsibly now — although it fails to say how it would do so. Nor does it acknowledge that at the height of stop-and-frisk, in 2011, the city still recorded 1,511 shootings, an increase over the previous two years.

As Alex Vitale, a sociologist at Brooklyn College who studies policing, put it, the plan “is almost completely lacking in evidentiary basis.”

As the New York Times’ Ginia Bellafante reports, the various factions on the left in New York City may be divided on some of Adams’ strategies, but they’re largely united in their desire to “do something” about guns.

Where reformists and serious law-and-order adherents easily find common ground is in the need to reduce the influx of guns into the state and city, which the new mayor is committed to doing. Here the plan calls in part for collaboration with state police to implement spot checks at bus and train stations, which may turn out to be a big success although it’s hard to imagine how many gun runners are moving their arsenals via the Megabus from Philadelphia.

It sounds to me like even Bellafante is less than impressed with Adams’ strategy, not because of any pro-Second Amendment views (can you even work for the New York Times if you have those?) but because she doesn’t think the strategies are going to be particularly effective.

I can’t say I disagree, though I doubt the NYTimes columnist would be willing to go along with my strategy of empowering New Yorkers to exercise their Second Amendment right to armed self-defense. New York’s unconstitutional anti-gun laws mean that criminals have an easier time of illegally acquiring a gun than a law-abiding resident does trying to lawfully obtain a pistol for self-protection, and as long as that’s the case then the city’s violent criminals are going to be emboldened and empowered to view the city as a target-rich environment with millions of unarmed victims as their prey.

Hopefully the Supreme Court will soon dare to do what Eric Adams never will; throw out the state’s subjective and capricious “may issue” carry laws and respect the rights of law-abiding New Yorkers to exercise their right to bear arms in self-defense. That alone won’t solve New York’s crime spike, but it would at least give the average New Yorker a fighting chance at being able to fight back when they’re targeted by the city’s many violent offenders.