“There have been a number of incidents where parents did not know that the printers located in the rooms of their children were actually producing guns. So, this has placed a new dynamic upon the challenge of fighting ghost guns,” Mayor Adams advised amNew York Metro lifting up a handgun. “This is printed by a 3D printer.”
Picture by Dean Moses
From the second I used to be sworn in as your mayor three years in the past, our main mission has been to create safer streets, safer subways, and a safer metropolis for New York households. Meaning tackling the difficulty of gun violence head-on and dealing to get unlawful weapons out of the fingers of criminals earlier than they’ll trigger extra hurt.
The numbers are in, and I’m proud to say that our administration made vital progress in getting weapons off our streets and out of our communities. As of final week, we now have confiscated greater than 20,000 unlawful firearms since we first took workplace. That’s 20,000 weapons that now not threaten the protection of our neighborhoods, our households, and our kids; 20,000 fewer possibilities {that a} New Yorker is shot or killed; and 20,000 rivers of violence dammed up earlier than they flood our metropolis. This statistic is extra than simply a big quantity — it’s a significant milestone for our metropolis and a transparent shift in the best course.
We’ve additionally taken 3,000 extra weapons off our streets from 2022 by way of 2024 than within the earlier three-year interval. And of the 20,000 weapons we now have seized, greater than 1,400 of them have been recognized as ghost weapons — the untraceable firearms which are far too straightforward to acquire and assemble. We’re eradicating harmful weapons off our streets and protecting our communities secure — and our technique is working.
For 3 years in a row, the variety of homicides and shootings have each declined by double digits: homicides are down by nearly 23 %, and shootings are down by greater than 42 %. Meaning we’ve saved 268 further lives and seen 1,500 fewer capturing victims.
And final 12 months noticed the bottom quantity of gun violence within the historical past of Brooklyn, whereas total crime plummeted by 15 % in December throughout your entire metropolis. Due to our steadfast concentrate on eradicating gun violence, New York Metropolis continues to be the most secure large metropolis in America.
As we start the New 12 months, our precedence stays the identical: protecting New Yorkers secure by persevering with to deal with gun violence and eradicating unlawful firearms from our metropolis. NYPD officers have already confiscated over 350 firearms within the first few weeks of 2025. However we are able to — and we’ll — go additional.
In the previous couple of months, we now have seen random acts of violence which have shaken many New Yorkers. Everyone knows security is about extra than simply statistics — folks have to be secure and so they should FEEL secure. Nothing does a greater job in translating notion to actuality than the presence of that acquainted blue uniform. So, we’re placing lots of of further law enforcement officials out on patrol, together with two officers on each single subway through the in a single day hours to maintain New Yorkers secure.
That was my promise to you three years in the past and continues to be my promise to you at the moment. When others wished to defund the police, I defended them, as a result of combating to your security is what you elected me to do. And the NYPD will preserve working exhausting — seizing weapons, dismantling trafficking pipelines, and stopping shootings earlier than they occur — to make New York Metropolis even safer.
We’re additionally supporting efforts to cease recidivists from committing extra crimes, constructing stronger bonds between the police and the communities they serve, and creating alternatives for younger folks to remain secure and discover function. With initiatives like our Neighborhood Security Groups and the Gun Violence Prevention Job Drive, we’ll proceed to make the sensible, upstream investments that dam the rivers of violence and forestall crime from occurring within the first place.
As I mentioned in my State of the Metropolis tackle earlier this month, we should make New York Metropolis the most effective place on this planet to boost a household — and that begins with safer streets for our households to stroll down, safer transit to experience on, and safer parks to play in. Each gun we take off our streets will get us one other step nearer to that aim. And daily, I’ll proceed to work to finish gun violence in our metropolis and our nation.
