In New York there are about 60 ATF agents.
Foto:
Win McNamee / Getty Images
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Armed violence has become a national crisis that must be addressed with effective measures such as gun law reform. This was stated by Mayor Eric Adams during his participation on Tuesday in a morning program.
This crisis forces us to fight on several fronts and with different strategies. One of them is, according to the New York mayor, doubling the staff of the Agency for Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in New York. Currently, the number of ATF agents nationwide is 2,400.
“About 60 of them are here in New York. We have to double that number. We have to have a leader there to be able to share information like we do every day in New York to talk about the dangers of people with guns and to focus on gangs,” Adams told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“That’s how we’re getting these guns off the street. That is why we have a 30% decrease in shootings in the city during the month of April. We want to achieve the same in the month of May because we have police control over dangerous people who carry and use weapons, but we have to keep them off the streets. That’s part of the problem,” he added.
Adams, who is co-chair of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a nonpartisan coalition of more than 1,000 mayors, believes the real crisis in America is the gun.
“That’s what Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta, New York are experiencing,” he stressed, adding that one of the biggest problems to deal with is ghost weapons. The mayor was of the opinion that although they are unarmed they should be treated as real weapons. The ATF estimates that since 2016, approximately 45,000 ghost weapons have been recovered in criminal acts.
May, which has been designated as Gun Violence Awareness Month, has been plagued by deadly shootings.
Currently, Americans are still shocked by the massacre that occurred in Uvalde, Texas, last Tuesday, which left 21 victims, 19 minors and two teachers. New York has been no stranger to gun violence. On May 14, a young man walked into a supermarket in Buffalo, killing 10 people. Two weeks ago, in the Bronx, an 11-year-old girl -Kyhara Tay- died as a result of a stray bullet.
And precisely amid rising gun violence, the Supreme Court is soon expected to rule on a pending case over New York state’s strict concealed-carry gun laws.
“We have to really look at the ruling that is about to come out of the Supreme Court. The open carrying of weapons is a crisis. Can you imagine being on the 4 train with someone who openly carries a firearm?” asked the Democratic politician who took office on January 1.
other states
The problem goes further because, according to Adams, other states have more lax laws for access to the purchase and carrying of weapons.
“In the City we have strict gun laws that we can lose through the Supreme Court. But when guns are allowed to be bought in Georgia, Atlanta and other places, and then brought into the city through the ‘iron pipeline,’ that’s a real problem,” he said, recalling that in Atlanta they basically dismantled all the rules about background checks and identification.
“That is a problem we have to deal with. But background checks must go beyond simply looking at someone’s ID. We need the social media industry to be a part of this by using artificial intelligence to identify those who use dangerous terms, so we can run proper background checks. Not just what’s on paper and documented, but what they’re doing on social media,” she stated.
“We need to be honest about this issue and we need to make an effort to really stem this tide. [de las armas]”, stated the Mayor.
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