As we noted in a short editorial June 14, more people are shooting other people in New York this year than in past years. It seems intuitively obvious that this trend has something to do with the departure of tough-on-crime Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the arrival of mushy liberal Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio. Intuitively obvious, and probably true.
We said in June that while President Obama bemoans the continuing trend of school shootings, he and his fellow Democrats such as Mayor de Blasio are contributing to a much larger problem by “enabling a rising tide of street violence by abandoning the long-successful stop-and-frisk tactic used by police.”
During 28 days preceding June 8, shootings jumped 43 percent compared with the same period last year, according to a June 10 New York Post report. Police are recovering fewer guns despite responding to more reports of shooting incidents.
A month later, things aren’t getting better — and never mind about Chicago, which has been in the news for suffering through an unusually violent July 4 weekend. Let’s focus on New York, with Charles C.W. Cooke as our guide, quoting Fox News:
Even as crime has dropped slightly citywide, shootings have gone up 31 percent so far this year in New York City Housing Authority buildings. An outsized portion of that spike has been centered in 15 troublesome projects, which are responsible for 20 percent of the violent crime this year across 334 NYCHA developments.
Mr. Cooke opposes shop-and-frisk but takes responsibility for the increasingly evident results of its having been ended soon after Mayor Bloomberg left office:
My only hope is that if the trend does continue — and if the evidence suggests that it is linked to the decline of stop and frisk — those who oppose the policy (such as myself) will be honest enough to acknowledge it. Doing so does not require that one change one’s mind on the matter. Liberty and security are often at odds, and, in free countries at least, “but it works” is never enough to justify a particular measure. It is wholly possible to consider stop and frisk to be illegal, and to consider it an effective tool in fighting crime. Still, we should be open about what we’re arguing for. If the two are linked, let’s own it.
When was the last time you heard of a politician saying something like that? More common are mealy-mouthed utterances such as “mistakes were made.”
Well, I can think of one recent exception: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s refusal to meet with parents of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims after Christie vetoed a bill limiting gun magazines to 10 rounds. Here’s the story.
Seems to me we all want gun violence to be curtailed greatly, none of us knows exactly how to do it, and a great many of us nevertheless are absolutely sure our positions are the right ones.