The “you’re violating peoples Second Amendment rights” argument hasn’t swayed New York City politicians into abandoning the city’s draconian “may issue” system that denies the average New Yorker their right to armed self-defense, but maybe appealing to their bottom line will do the trick.

Nah, I doubt that too, and I’m pretty sure Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (where I serve as an unpaid board member) knows that the only way New York City is ever going to recognize the right to carry is through a Supreme Court edict, but I applaud him for pointing out the fact that the city is facing a massive problem with funding police overtime while refusing to let people protect themselves on increasingly dangerous streets.

“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. “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.

“We don’t expect Mayor Adams to immediately understand this common-sense approach to crime,” Gottlieb continued. “After all, the mayor has armed police bodyguards, but average citizens don’t. He enjoys a level of security that has been withheld from his constituents for decades. He paraded around the Met Gala in a tuxedo emblazoned with the words ‘End Gun Violence,’ which is symbolism over substance.”

The New York Post recently reported that the NYPD is expected to exceed its overtime budget by as much as $150-million this year, all while major crimes continue to flourish across the five boroughs. The department has budgeted roughly $607-million for overtime this year, but according to police sources at the current pace the department will rack up $750-million in overtime costs by December.

The new estimates are for all of the department’s overtime, including civilian employees and uniformed cops, the latter of whom account for about 80% of the added cost, according to the IBO.

Police sources have told The Post over the last few weeks that paychecks were soaring with the added shifts, but the IBO has given the first glimpse this year of the NYPD’s overtime.

… “We are focused on ensuring the Department uses overtime, which is a critical and essential tool, particularly now given the nearly 1200 cut to our uniformed headcount, in the most effective and efficient ways,” a police spokesperson said.

Gottlieb says that NYPD officers are “fighting a war against a violent criminal element that has gotten used to leniency,” adding that “the city’s Draconian gun controls have created a nearly risk-free working environment for violent criminals, and that needs to change. If Adams wants safer neighborhoods, he should spearhead a movement to give his constituents the tools, and support from the legal establishment, to fight back.”

Adams himself said when he was campaigning for mayor that if elected he would not have a security team but would instead carry a gun himself, but backtracked on that pledge after he was sworn in. And if, as expected, the Supreme Court delivers a ruling in a few weeks that declares New York’s “may issue” permitting system unconstitutional, I’m sure he’ll do everything he can to keep the average New Yorker away from their right to bear arms. Symbolism over substance, as Gottlieb mused, but the symbolism comes with a human cost; not only to the loss of our rights, but in lives lost as well.