New York Subway Shooting
A passenger looks out onto the platform while riding a northbound train in 36th Street subway station where a shooting attack occurred the previous day during the morning commute in New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

The attack that occurred in New York City subway yesterday is proof positive that gun control, as envisioned by the Gun Control Industry and like-minded politicians, simply does not work. Honest, hard-working people were going about their day in Brooklyn, headed to work. Thanks to the intransigence of their local and state governments, these people were completely disarmed, left to the mercy of someone who’d planned his attack to do the most damage possible.

“First responders” were too late to do anything about the shooting. They always are.

As a former police officer, I know the sad truth. We virtually always respond to events after the fact. We rarely prevent them from occurring. What stops bad people from doing terrible things is good people. Good people who are there, at the scene, and armed.

New York City’s Mayor, Eric Adams, a former NYPD officer, knows this, but like so many before him, he chooses to ignore it. Instead, he spews the same old media-friendly prescriptions of increasing the number of police in NYC’s Subways. It’s all just security theater that will continue to leave the city’s residents vulnerable to the rising crime and violence that have plagued the city.

Subway crime is hardly unusual. From February 21 to February 27 alone, 55 subway crimes were reported. That’s compared to 18 in 2021. NYC had a 205.6% jump in crime. New Yorkers can actually track the crime that’s afflicting their city on the NYPD’s own website.

Subway crimes stats increased 72.4% for the most recent 28-day period, and 72.8% year-to-date compared to the same time last year, the data shows. Hate crimes have jumped up 200% and the total crime index jumped up 47%.

This has become the new norm for the city’s straphangers.

The irony of this is thick. In her arguments last year before the Supreme Court against lifting New York’s “may issue” concealed carry permitting system — which, in practice, is a no-issue system, except for the rich and powerful — New York Solicitor General Barbara Underwood cited the city’s subway system as an example of why legal concealed carry by average citizens must continue to be banned.

Here’s how her exchange with Justice Samuel Alito went . . .

The rote anti-gun rights arguments put forward by Ms. Underwood hinged on the false premise that the city, and the subway system in particular, are patrolled by law enforcement officers. That average citizens have no need to carry firearms because the police are there to deal with criminals.

(AP Photo/John Minchillo)

As anyone with a clear view of life in the real world knows, that’s almost never the case. Citizens are virtually always their own first responders and consigning their safety to police knowingly leaves them vulnerable to predators like the one who opened fire on the train in Brooklyn yesterday.

New York Brooklyn subway shooting
(Will B Wylde via AP)

The only thing that could have stopped or possibly reduced the carnage of this horrific act was good people, legally armed and able to defend themselves from a crazed killer.

The subways in New York City are a ripe target for ne’er-do-wells, criminals, and others wishing to pray upon innocent victims in an enclosed environment. Easy victims who are disarmed by government decree because, the government says, they’re safer that way. 

The only rational solution is to expand the right to carry firearms outside the home in New York City. Honest, law-abiding citizens there deserve to exercise the same right to keep and bear arms that their fellow Americans in Texas, New Hampshire, Utah or Ohio have. Just because they happen to live in the Empire State or the Big Apple doesn’t mean their rights are any less important or guaranteed by the Constitution.

 

Luis Valdes is the State Director of Florida and Director of Outreach for Puerto Rico & U.S. Virgin Islands for Gun Owners of America. 

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45 COMMENTS

  1. “Kill All The Whiteys” – Suspect In Brooklyn Subway Shooting Spouted Hateful “Black Nationalist” Rhetoric, Praised “Beautiful” 9/11

    When someone says they want to kill me, I take them seriously.

  2. This movement is not about gun control. It is a direct attack on human and civil rights. It is just as despicable as telling a person they cannot vote based on their skin color.

    Advocating for gun control should be a felony hate crime.

    • “Advocating for gun control should be a felony hate crime”

      So you don’t believe people have the right to speak freely about their advocacy for a particular set of legislation?

      Apparently, you believe in the Second Amendment absolute right, but not in the first amendment rights…

      Interesting perspective, comrade.

      • Kettle, meet pot. Ignore your own restriction on human and civil rights to point out another’s? You don’t believe in hate crimes or that they should be punished?

        Typical fascist.

        • …and ‘jwm’ the white supremecist and ‘I Haz A Question’ relief man knows what it is to be a ‘typical fascist’.

      • You may want to rethink this one Miner, advocating for the abridgement of most of the bill of rights gets into hate crime territory very quickly. Also wouldn’t seeking to use free speech to overthrow the constitution fall under sedition to begin with?

      • Blacks should be kept in chains and on cotton fields, gays should be thrown off roofs and female rape victims should be stoned for adultery.

        Or do you not believe that people have the right to speak freely about their advocacy for a particular set of legislation?

        • While there is 18 USC 241 conspiracy to violate rights of a citizen, whatever you are advocating for is a dangerous slippery slope.

          Rather, it should be normal that if you own a gun, it should be like you are saying you own a car. So what? Or, treat every deliberate gun control activist like a member of the KKK or Westboro Baptist Church.

  3. Why are almost all shot in the leg, was this a anti gun stunt or what, something is not right about this. The guy is in the car with all of them and can’t hit anybody but in the leg?

    Would not put it by Biden Crime Family to stage it.

    • Just because you hold a gun straight up and down with a proper grip and sight radius doesn’t mean everyone does.

    • Would you believe that this particular perpetrator was suffering from long-term mental illness and not thinking clearly?

      • Poor excuse…Not a viable reason. He had enough of his mental faculties to plan an elaborate attack. Including diversionary smoke canisters, gas mask, disguise and an escape plan.

      • Would you believe that if he were a Trump supporter who was suffering from long-term mental illness, you’d ignore everything except that he was a Trump supporter?

        But he’s got the wrong kind of racism for you to acknowledge, the wrong skin color to be criticized, so you’re left asking us for understanding that you’d never give

      • One of your BLM comrades?

        You are useful fools while the leadership embezzle the donations and enrich themselves by buying multi-million dollar mansions. They even gloat about it in their own videos.

        Obviously some pigs are more equal than others.

  4. Another known-wolf further indicates that law enforcement is either inept or has chosen not to pursue people of concern due to certain demographic traits that make them the current politically protected class.

    • “chosen not to pursue people of concern due to certain demographic traits“

      Well, we could follow Donald Trump’s gun control plan and take the guns away from troublesome people without bothering with that pesky due process constitutional rights thingy.

      Putin/Trump2024

        • In 2025, not 2024.
          Unless Harris is Impeached in January 2023, replaced by DJT and The Magoo gets removed too.

        • Lol ‘jwm’ hate filled fascist was making similar pronouncements about Trump in late 2020. And we all know how that turned out…

      • Democrats have been Russia Colluders since FDR in March 1933.
        Biden’s Oil Policies have increased Russia’ Oil Export Income by an average of $ 200,000,000 EVERY DAY over what it was under Trump.

      • Yeah, like your beloved “Red Flag” laws, MinorIQ, you flaming hypocrite. Obviously, your understanding of the 5th Amendment is as demented as your understanding of the 2nd, or of Article I, Section 8. You’re really not very good at this Constitutional exegesis, MinorIQ. Perhaps you should go back to Gender Studies or Lesbian Dance Theory; history and Con. Law are clearly beyond your meager capabilities.

    • I doubt that it’s due to demographic concerns. There are too many people who don’t fit “protected-class” demographics, that the FBI and local police know about, that are also not kept from doing things like this.

      Ineptness is really the only other option left on the table.

      And considering that some of these people have enough “red flags” to justify commitment even before “red flag laws” are passed, yet no one does anything to stop this, I doubt that so-called “red flag laws” are going to do anything to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future.

  5. i would enjoy nothing more than to chak your porfile save maybe brekking your keeburd ovar your hed.

    • *The “victims” SHOULD be.

      FTFY

      They love it. They love the city life. They love the complacency. They love not being able to protect or defend themselves. Fuck em. No sympathy.

      Try that shit in a pro-gun state and you might get the drop on a couple people before some boomer carrying a revolver under their fishing vest domes you from 100 meters away. There is a reason this type of shit only happens to easy targets. Less chance the crazy asshole doing the killing spree (regardless of weapon) will be stopped prematurely. Then again, anything beyond two people now days is considered a “mass”.

      • This is tough talk from a coward known to cut and run 🤣🖕🤡.

        • Ah, but now you’re assuming that everyone would be a coward in that situation, and just cut and run.

  9. How interesting it is that even a solicitor general to scotus says the police are on patrol in the subway. Obviously that is not always true. In Cedar Rapids Ia there was a shooting this past weekend that killed 2 and hurt 10. Not very well covered by the MSM. The other interesting thing that gun grabbers imply is that when a crime happens, law enforcement is only seconds away. And we say that law enforcement is usually minutes away. In Cedar Rapids the gun grabbers were correct, police were right outside the door of the night club, but that being said, they still did not stop the shooting and the shooters got away for at least 2 days before the first one was arrested.

  10. Always the same BS argument against people being able to arm and protect themselves. And always the same tragic outcomes because the police are very rarely on the spot when an act of violence occurs. I was a very lucky unarmed victim of a violent armed robbery long ago. When I got out of the hospital, I promised myself it would not happen again, and I would be able to defend myself or others if I walked into another crime like that. Unfortunately, the young mother working in the convenience store that morning was not as lucky. Had I been armed I may have been able to prevent her death and my near death.
    Had someone on the subway been armed, perhaps the shooter would not have been able to shoot so many folks, or set off his smoke bombs as easily. But, we will never know because the law abiding in NYC for the most part, are not allowed the option of being armed legally.

  12. I have asked this question of several people in the last two days.
    Do you think that there was anyone on that train, who heard/ saw their fellow passengers getting shot who thought “I’m so glad that I don’t have a gun”.
    From the democrat co-workers I get no answer, but the look on their face is priceless.

  13. Honestly this is one situation where the victims being armed would have done no good. In a crowded tube where the perpetrator popped smoke at the beginning of the attack and was firing blind, a citizen returning fire would likely do more harm than good.
    In other situations there is potential for citizens to stop massacres, and indeed it has been done before.

    • Not necessarily. Had the shooter known that the intended victims were possibly armed, the entire incident would have been avoided or occurred differently… in my opinion.

    • That is not an appropriate judgement for you or me to make, in our armchairs, reading about the even from the comfort of our homes. It should be left to the ideally armed people on the subway, who are subject to the smoke and banging sounds, to determine whether they could see through the smoke well enough to attempt to stop the shooting, or to act in some other way, considering the circumstances.

      We were not there, and the Law as it currently stands took the judgement out of the hands of those who were, who otherwise couldn’t act, even if circumstances would have permitted action.

      • That was obviously not to say that people shouldn’t be armed just because I think this was a not a case where it would have been useful. I don’t know why you would get that impression.
        As to the “don’t MMQB this, let the ccwers decide” argument: 1) of course they should be able to decide. 2) I’ve been in extremely dense environments, including a subway, and environments with obscured visibility, so my opinion that a good shot would be nearly impossible is based on that, as well as an honest assessment of my shooting skills, which are pretty good, but not the John Wick level you’d need to make a shot like that.

  14. I’m an upstate NYer with a carry license. You can carry throughout the state, except in nyc. I’ve always spent a lot of time in the city and I’m praying the Supremes start to get it that the people are fish in a barrel without the ability to fire back. Will it help in all cases? Of course not, but it sure as hell will help.

  15. Do washing machines wash clothes or do people do it? I like to ask that question when people ask me of guns kill people or people do it. In my opinion, it’s still the person who has to put the clothes in the washer and turn it on, unless it’s broken then you might want to visit this website for repairs, haha. Very interesting perspectives here and I’m glad I read the comments.

Comments are closed.