Last week, I pointed out how New York City mayoral candidate Eric Adams’ big win was another signal that “Defund the Police” was essentially dead as a movement. As a former police officer, he campaigned on a platform of getting serious about crime in the Big Apple, and not by hiring more social workers or holding campfire sing-alongs.
However, I also pointed out there were reasons to not be fond of Adams. And to think, I wrote that before he said crap like this.
New York City Democratic Mayoral candidate Eric Adams on Sunday criticized Democrat lawmakers efforts to curb gun violence are “misplaced” talks in Congress to overhaul the nation’s policing laws continue to stall.“I believe those priorities, they really were misplaced. And it’s almost insulting what we have witnessed over the last few years,” Adams told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union,” when asked about his party’s priorities. “Many of our Presidents, they saw these numbers. They knew that the inner cities, particularly where Black, brown and poor people lived, they knew they were dealing with this real crisis. And it took this President to state that it is time for us to stop ignoring what is happening in the south sides of Chicago, in the Brownsvilles, in the Atlantas of our country.”On the issue of gun control, Adams also said it the focus should not only be on assault rifles, but also on handguns.“The numbers of those who are killed by handguns are astronomical and if we don’t start having real federal legislation, matched with states and cities, we’re never going to get this crisis understand control,” he said.
Now, let me start off by saying that if you think gun control is the solution to anything, you should agree with Adams. Handguns are used more often in crimes than so-called assault weapons. They’re also used more often in mass shootings. The idea of focusing on “assault weapons” is one of optics. Modern sporting rifles are scary looking, thus they can be used to scare people into accepting gun control.
However, that’s not to say that Adams isn’t completely off-base. As a former police officer, though, he should know better.
The handguns used by criminals aren’t coming from the lawful market. These people aren’t walking into gun stores and buying them right off the shelf. At best, they’re using intermediaries to conduct straw buys.
Most of them, though, are buying from other criminals and thus completely bypassing all the checks and roadblocks established by gun control advocates.
The average gun used in a criminal act is at least eight years old and is not being carried by its original owner. Further, criminals themselves say they mostly get their guns through illicit means, namely the black market.
So the onus is on Adams to explain why increased regulations on handguns would somehow impact criminals who circumvent the whole system and not just law-abiding citizens.
The truth is, he can’t. That’s now how it works and he should know better.
The only people who will be impacted by new gun control laws are the law-abiding citizens who have done nothing wrong. Disarming them won’t create the situation Adams wants, either. Criminals, knowing they won’t face armed opposition, will be free to do as they wish so long as they can keep the police from being called.
Nothing about that is a good thing. Again, Adams should know better.
But, then again, he’s not a police officer anymore. He’s a politician running to be mayor of the nation’s largest city (by population). That means making it clear he has enough of the right thoughts to be considered. Screw whether those thoughts work or not, right?
