I get that emotions are high for a lot of people in New York right now. The mass shooting at a Park Avenue office building is going to rattle more than a few folks, including those who thought the state's gun control laws would shield them from such horrors.
But, they didn't. They never do.
Of course, some people will never understand that.
For example, we have New York Congressman Dan Goldman, who offered this little tidbit.
He drove from Las Vegas to New York with an AR-15, which cannot be purchased in New York.
— Rep. Dan Goldman (@RepDanGoldman) July 29, 2025
He walked into an office building and started spraying the lobby with that AR-15, killing the police officer whose handgun was no match for the AR-15.
This isn’t about New York.
This is… https://t.co/8pYhs9AS9F
Post continues:
This isn’t about New York.
This is about Republicans persistently blocking common sense gun safety reform, including an assault weapons ban, that a super majority of Americans support.
Considering Gallup shows just 52 percent of Americans favor an assault weapon ban, I'm not sure which part of his rectum he's pulling the term "super majority" from. That doesn't get into the fact that we don't determine our rights based on mob rule anyway, so no majority is relevant when it comes to gun rights.
Now, with that said, let's look at the rest of his commentary.
He drove from Las Vegas to New York with an AR-15, which cannot be purchased in New York.
You can most definitely buy an AR-15 in New York. They're absolutely legal, though in a modified form. So far, there's no reason to believe that a New York-legal AR-15 wouldn't have done just as much damage as one purchased in Nevada.
He walked into an office building and started spraying the lobby with that AR-15, killing the police officer whose handgun was no match for the AR-15.
Well, that's about the dumbest thing I've seen yet on this, and that's really saying something.
Now, I get that the lobby of a NYC office building isn't exactly tiny. According to this post on X, we're looking at 25 yards from the door to the front desk.
I know the lobby of 345 Park Ave like the back of my hand. U enter and there is a reception desk 25 yards in on the left side. All elevators r secured u need an Employee ID card to get thru any turnstile. This is an ex employee. 🏀
— Mike Hoops 🏀 (@hoops_mike) July 29, 2025
Now, we don't know exactly where the officer was standing, but it stands to reason that he was probably close to that area. That means he's look at 25 to 30 yards, guesstimate, between him and the gunman when the killer walked in.
That's well within effective range for a handgun.
It might not be an easy shot, but it's doable.
What Goldman doesn't understand is that the big advantage with rifles isn't so much power--though that is a factor in most cases--but range. It doesn't take a rifle caliber to kill someone. There are a lot of people who have died from handgun rounds, after all. As such, there's no real case of being outmatched due to the power of a rifle versus the officer's sidearm mattering here.
Because of the distances involved, though, that range advantage doesn't matter.
What did matter, though, was who had the initiative.
The officer in question was going about his day. He's standing in the lobby of an office building where he's expecting, at most, someone's irate customer to need to be escorted from the premises. He's expecting people to be rude. Maybe the odd assault.
He's not expecting someone to walk in and just start blasting.
The bad guy, however, knew exactly what he was going to do. He walked in there with the intention of killing people, and there's no way he wasn't going to target a police officer in the lobby.
While the officer had the firepower to meet that threat, he had to react.
It's unlikely he got much of a chance before he was shot and killed.
It wasn't the gun that did it. It wasn't the type of gun that was responsible. It was a confluence of events that were outside of the officer's control that all conspired to rob him of his life, but it wouldn't have mattered if the bad guy walked in with a pump-action shotgun. The result would likely have been just the same.
Goldman, though, like so many other gun control advocates, is more than willing to use the bodies of the slain as a soapbox to pontifcate for something that not only wouldn't have changed a blasted thing, but is also blatantly unconstitutional.
Editor’s Note: Anti-gun Democrats can't wait to use tragedies like this to try to strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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