When the Bruen decision dropped, it noted that there were some areas that could be gun-free zones due to being "sensitive." Unsurprisingly, New York City moved to use that. One area they declared "sensitive" was Times Square.
Yeah, this is a popular tourist stop when people visit the Big Apple, but is there a real reason for it to be gun-free?
I suppose that a strong enough police presence would be enough to keep the peace, at least. Or so you would think.
Yet a video from early Wednesday morning suggests that's not as easy as some might think.
🚨 BREAKING: Massive Gang Fight Erupts in Times Square 🚨
— Viral News NYC (@ViralNewsNYC) August 6, 2025
A violent fight broke out in Times Square, leaving multiple people bloodied. Witnesses say chaos unfolded quickly as several individuals began swinging. NYPD rushed in and arrested multiple suspects at the scene.
For… pic.twitter.com/WL77uwdwtw
Now, this is just a fist fight between two groups of people--to say this is a "gang fight" might be one of those cases where the wrong implication comes across...or maybe not--but the video is two minutes long. It starts with the fight already in progress, which means we don't know just how long it took for someone to pull out their phone and start recording.
Let's say it was just 30 seconds.
That's still a good couple of minutes before the police respond to a violent altercation in one of the largest tourist spots in a major American city. These were officers who were also in the area.
I can't help but wonder how much damage could have been done if this had been something like what transpired in Cincinnati, where a single mother was nearly beaten to death by a group of four people. What if this had been something worse?
It's not like New York is immune to mass shootings, after all.
But two police officers, just a couple of minutes away, are going to protect everyone there? I mean, you can't lawfully protect yourself in Times Square, even if you have a carry permit for New York. It's a gun-free zone. It was one of the first declared so after Bruen.
Those two could stop a mob beating a woman senseless for no justifiable reason?
Those two could thwart a terrorist attack on a busy day before innocent blood was spilled by the gallon?
I'm not bashing those two officers. It's not about them as individuals. They could be literal supercops, and they still wouldn't be enough unless they're freaking superhero cops, and maybe not even then.
Times Square is a place that a lot of people want to go and see when they're in the city, and I understand why. It's iconic.
But the police can't keep the peace. They can only restore it after something breaks out. The worse the "something" is, the harder restoring peace will be. Anyone with half a brain knows that.
New York's anti-gun elected officials don't, though, which probably tells you a great deal about their intellect.
Gun-free zones need to vanish forever. They don't actually stop violence. They don't actually stop shootings, even, though some will claim this altercation would have been worse without the signs all around. It's not OK to be that stupid, though. Gun-free zones do nothing except create a fine place for predators to hunt for prey.
This isn't a major issue. Fights happen. This one just happened to get caught on video and posted to X, where it came across my feed thanks to a bit of sensationalism. I mean, it's not that massive of a fight, at least to my eyes, but it got my attention just the same.
Yet it does illustrate the issue with police response times to violent situations. Even in the best-case scenario, such as something in Times Square, it's still a couple of minutes.
And people want us disarmed, stuck in gun-free zones, just waiting for the police to arrive?
Hard pass.
