Taking On Gunmerica

Former NYPD captain Eric Adams won NYC's ranked choice Democratic primary, and as such there's a 99.9% chance he ends up Mayor (something that has Trumpy Republican Curtis Sliwa very upset, folks) and everyone knows it. Adams isn't resting on his laurels either, not flinching from calling out national progressive Dems for focusing gun safety efforts on rifles like the AR-15 and mass shootings and for not more heavily regulating the weapons that compose most of street crime in cities like NYC: handguns.

New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Eric Adams said Sunday that national Democrats are focusing on the wrong issue in terms of gun violence.

Adams told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” that Democrats’ priorities on gun laws at the federal level are misguided, saying they’ve focused too much on banning assault rifles in the aftermath of mass shootings, while they should be focusing more on gun crimes committed with handguns, which are more common.

“I believe those priorities, they really were misplaced,” Adams said. “And it's almost insulting what we have witnessed over the last few years. Many of our presidents, they saw these numbers. They knew that the inner cities, particularly where Black brown and poor people lived, they know — they knew they were dealing with this real crisis.”

Adams officially won the Democratic mayoral nomination last week as the results from the city's first ranked-choice election were released. He ran as a moderate with a centrist message focused on public safety, police reform and reversing a surge in crime in New York City.

He stressed Sunday that Democrats need to increase focus on the trafficking of handguns, “just as we became energetic after we saw mass shootings with assault rifles in the suburban parts of our country.”

“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 under control,” he said.

Adams commended President Joe Biden’s increased focus on the rise in gun crimes in recent weeks, with the president announcing on June 23 that the Justice Department was launching five firearms trafficking strike forces in cities across the country. Last week, during a trip to Illinois, Biden addressed “the fight against gun violence” following a deadly July Fourth weekend in Chicago, where 104 people were shot and 19 were killed.

The Biden administration is grappling with an uptick in violent crimes in big cities this year, with guns driving much of that spike in violence.

“I believe, for the first time, we are going to see a coordinated effort between the president, the governor, the mayor to go after the flow of guns in our city, which is extremely important. But then, right on the ground, how do we deal with the intervention aspects of it?” Adams said on what New Yorkers can expect if he’s elected mayor.

 

Adams stresses he doesn't want to ban handguns, something that would never survive the Roberts Court anyway. He wants to go after gun dealers, their suppliers, and enforcing laws already on the books to save real people in neighborhoods rather than performative social media bleating.

What a concept.

Sorry, I missed having a pragmatic Democratic party that doesn't give in to the screeching hordes, and man is it ever good to see it again. New tag, as I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot from him in the years ahead: Eric Adams.