New York City has never really appreciated the gun rights of its citizens. The Sullivan Act has been on the books for more than a century, for example, and gun control still reigns supreme over the city–at least for now.

Meanwhile, none of that gun control has done a damn thing to prevent the city’s long, deep slide into violence.

Yet as the Second Amendment Foundation’s Alan Gottlieb notes, it could actually benefit taxpayers in the city.

New York City’s police overtime crisis—brought on by surging violent crime—might be alleviated if the city would support, rather than restrict, the gun rights of its law-abiding residents, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

Published reports have detailed how the city is expected to exceed its overtime budget by an estimated $143 million by the end of this fiscal year.

“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.

Go read the rest of it over at Ammoland, but the gist is simple. If citizens of New York City were free to carry firearms, then the criminal element wouldn’t be so active and the police wouldn’t need to work overtime to deal with the problem.

Which they’re still not able to do because it’s too big for the police to handle.

When criminals figure they have a disarmed populace to deal with, the only thing that holds them back is fear of the police and their own moral codes.

Criminals, however, have a much different moral code than the rest of us. If you can even call what they have a “moral code.” Basically, you can’t trust them to restrain themselves.

As for the police, well, they can’t be everywhere. This is something we all know.

Yet if New York City respected the gun rights of its citizens, armed New Yorkers could be in more places and be able to meet threats to their own life.

Luckily, it seems the Supreme Court is set to change how the Big Apple issues gun permits. However, I also believe we’re going to see the city adopt the most restrictive permitting scheme they can concoct out of a misguided idea that gun rights are bad.

If only they’d recognize that armed citizens aren’t a threat to good public order, but a solid way to maintain it. If they did, the police wouldn’t have to work as much overtime–saving the taxpayers millions each year–and the crime rate would drop.

This is what we call a “win/win.”

Too bad they’re unlikely to see it that way.