Love him or hate him, one thing you have to give New York City Mayor Eric Adams is that he’s equal opportunity when he DGAF. In his first year as mayor, hizzoner hasn’t backed down from critics (including here at The Root) of his pro-cop stances, his NYPD-honed beliefs about how to fight rising violent crime in NYC, his liberal attitude toward legalized weed or his defense of New York as a so-called sanctuary city for undocumented migrants.
And so likewise, Mayor Adams don’t care about the gun lobby or federal courts when it comes to trying limit guns from “sensitive areas” in New York, namely it’s biggest, most annoying tourist trap, Times Square. Adams is slated to sign into law a city ordinance banning carrying a firearm in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood, which for purposes of the bill is defined as the blocks between Ninth Avenue on the west, Sixth Avenue to the east, West 40th Street to the south and West 53rd Street to the north.
(To the only vaguely familiar with NY geography, that’s a pretty much a big, irregular rectangle that starts about six blocks south of Central Park, where all the big billboards are).
Adams knows he’ll be dragged into court, likely by the same gun-lobby affiliated group that successfully challenged New York’s previous gun law that forbid carrying a concealed gun in the most crowded city on earth. The Rootin’ Tootin’ Gun Nuts of America (not the group’s real name, but close enough), thought it a bad idea to infringe on New Yorkers’ right to not have to worry about everyone they run into being armed to the teeth, so they ran to Uncle Clarence and the other five conservatives no the court, who generally believe in states’ rights on things like abortion restrictions and a Southern legislature’s ability to pass discriminatory voting laws, but not when it comes to a left-leaning, northern state’s ability to keep folks from having guns everywhere, and here we are.
The Supreme Court’s ruling striking down New York’s more than 150-year-old concealed carry ban left one big loophole, that a state or municipality could ban guns from “sensitive areas”, which they left undefined. Into that vacuum, the New York State Assembly and New York’s City Council have tossed schools, parks and now, Times’ Square. Adams will sign the city’s new ordinance in a ceremony today alongside New York Attorney General Letitia James, and then they’ll wait for the next court challenge.
In the meantime, folks who hold the Second Amendment in as high esteem as they do the 10 Commandments will hurl their anger in Adams’ direction and they can expect the same response as every other Eric Adams critic: Go f*ck yourself.