There are more than 8-million people living in New York City, and every adult is subject to a rash of gun-related restrictions that make it nearly impossible to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
Possessing a gun without a license can land someone in prison for years, but good luck getting a premises permit or a permit to carry in a timely manner; not to mention navigating a maze of red tape and forking over hefty fees to exercise a fundamental civil right.
Casting a wide net of criminality over a constitutional right makes sense if the goal is to deny people access to that right, but from a public safety perspective it's completely unnecessary. A small portion of the city's population is responsible for the majority of violent crimes, and a better approach would involve targeting those prolific offenders while ensuring that the average citizen has the means to protect themselves.
District Attorney Alvin Bragg unwittingly bolstered this point of view with the recent indictments of three Harlem-based gangs; “Fast Life”, “LA World” and “Wuski”, which prosecutors say are responsible for about half of the shootings in the community in recent months.
“Bringing these indictments and removing individuals from the community who we allege repeatedly endanger the lives of others, including other young people, is a necessary step to achieve lasting public safety,” DA Alvin Bragg said.
The three crews were involved in a nasty gang war, which allegedly caused more than half the gun violence in East Harlem between March 2024 and September 2024, according to prosecutors.
Some 16 members of both crews were allegedly involved in 21 shootings, according to the indictments of the LA World and Wuski crews. Members of the Fast Life crew are also alleged to have been involved in shootings in a separate indictment.
“It’s an impactful case, but also illustrative of the problem that can happen when two gangs are really, really get going,” Assistant DA Pierre Griffith said.
Assistant DAs Chris Prevost and Pierre Griffith argued that by building cases against these crews, prosecutors are attacking the structure that encourages violent crime.
“Gun violence, particularly spikes in gun violence, are often concentrated within certain neighborhoods … it can be linked to particular criminal enterprises within a neighborhood that are engaged in some sort of ongoing feud with another gang,” Griffith said.
Which is why it makes no sense whatsoever to punish the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of New Yorkers who would like to exercise their Second Amendment rights by making it too challenging to do so. These gang members are getting guns despite the restrictive laws in New York City and the state of New York. It's the law-abiding who find it exceedingly difficult to purchase and possess a pistol for self-defense, and downright impossible to lawfully possess an AR-15 or other popular semi-automatic rifles.
A handful of gangs driving up gun violence wasn’t just a fluke, according to prosecutors.
Members of the “200/8 Block,” “6 Block”, and “Own Every Dollar” crews terrorized Inwood and Washington Heights for six years, allegedly having been involved in a combined 18 shootings that took the lives of seven people, according to prosecutors.
They were also responsible for half the shootings in the two neighborhoods for 2024, much like the gangs in Harlem, prosecutors said.
The story is the same in neighborhood after neighborhood; a small cohort of prolific offenders who are responsible for an outsized number of violent crimes. And the solution is the same as well: targeted deterrence efforts aimed directly at that core group of violent offenders that are designed to stop the shootings and, if necessary, remove these individuals from society for as long as the law allows.
New York City doesn't need to send Dexter Taylor to a maximum security prison for ten years to make the city a safer place. Targeting non-violent gun owners like him with possessory crimes like making his own guns without the government's permission is an affront to our civil liberties, but it's also a distraction from the proven public safety strategies that really can make New York City a safer place. Sadly, too many politicians in New York City aren't willing to give up their war on legal gun ownership, because for them it's not about public safety. It's about eradicating that fundamental right.
Editor’s Note: Zohran Mamdani is an avowed Democratic Socialist and has a real chance to become the next mayor of New York City.
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