I’m on a kick of watching old episodes of Law & Order, old like seasons 1 – 4. These were the Mayor David Dinkins, tail end of the crack epidemic years of Law & Order. Season 4 took place in 1993.
What I like about the old episodes is that most of the crimes weren’t the politically charged “ripped from the headlines” conspiracies that newer episodes are centered on. The crimes being dealt with were muggings, robberies, gang shootings, and all the daily quality of life crimes that made New York City notoriously dangerous in the pre-Giuliani era.
Once NYC got cleaned up, Law & Order had to turn to more fanciful plots to keep the show going. There were some good later episodes, but the election of GW Bush and 9/11 kind of ruined the show in many ways.
The thing is, as I watch the old episodes, keeping in mind how Mayor de Blasio pissed away 20 years of social and criminal reforms in NYC, I understand why a Mayor de Blasio and his supporters would be against concealed carry, and especially out of state concealed carry, in NYC.
I wouldn’t consider being threatened with a knife on a subway or attacked by some crack addled pile of screaming hepatitis to be part of the NYC “experience.” The first homeless guy that jumps out of his cardboard box and grabs my wife while yelling incoherently is going to get shot. I’m not going to have time to consider the social justice of the situation of this person trying to redistribute my wife’s privileged property, it’s going to be Steel Challenge reflexes. If you are used to be hassled by squeegee men who shit on the street as just some of the sights and sounds of New York, than I really am the most dangerous thing in your city.
A lot of the hipsters and middle/upper class progressive snobs living in NYC weren’t there back in the late 80’s or early 90’s. Hell, some of my younger family members that still live back there don’t understand when us “older” (anyone over 32) people talk about how bad it was and how de Blasio is making the same mistakes that previous mayors made. It might take 5 – 10 years but if the city continues in this direction, it will return to the “Death Wish days”. A new type of popular drug with the hipsters may speed up that process.
This is also the problem with may issue dumps like Boston and Springfield Massachusetts.
The majority of the people who live in these cities are good people….but there is a huge number of violent gang members who run the streets (and the cops avoid the bad neighborhoods whenever they can, because they’d rather not get shot just for wearing a uniform) and the good people are disarmed.
There was a story run a few years back about the people who lived in the gang neighborhoods who walk with their heads bowed on THEIR OWN STREET lest they make eye contact with a drugged-out local Soldier who potentially might take it the wrong way.
Thus the problem only gets worse.
I went to NYC once, and once was enough.