BROOKLYN-USA.ORG MESSAGE FROM BOROUGH PRESIDENT ADAMS 3
Message from Borough President Eric L. Adams
Borough President Adams addressed students from PS 261 Philip Livingston in Boerum Hill who marched to Brooklyn Borough Hall in a reenactment of Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s March on Washington.
School shooting massacres in Parkland, Florida and Santa Fe, Texas, which left
20 students and 5 teachers dead, have unearthed a gaping wound in the social fabric
of America this year. It also woke up a young generation mobilized in a movement
for meaningful gun reform. Tens of thousands of young people who braved the cold
across Brooklyn during the National School Walkout in March bring hope that this
may be the moment when things will finally shift on this issue.
But on the same day as the nationwide rallies, four family members, including
a one-year-old infant girl, were shot and killed in their Brownsville apartment in an
apparent murder-suicide. The weapon used in that heinous act was a handgun. It
was yet another shooting in Brooklyn, and one which could have happened in any
urban center in America. In the midst of all this carnage and the cacophony of a
national debate on gun violence, there’s a major piece of the puzzle that’s missing in
this fight, without which we will not be able to solve this problem.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 36,000 Americans are
killed in shootings every year. Every day, 90 deaths and 200 injuries are attributed
to this deadly weapon. The United States accounts for 82 percent of the world’s
firearms deaths, and an American is 25 times more likely to be shot dead than in
any other industrialized country. Most strikingly, 81 percent of all firearms homicides
in the United States occurred in urban communities. Inner city neighborhoods
that have been plagued by gun violence for decades, from Chicago’s South Side to
Miami’s Liberty City, are ones that have been largely ignored in the current debate.
Guns have been flowing to these and other communities in the mid-Atlantic and
New England from the South for decades in an “Iron Pipeline” along Interstate 95.
A report from the Attorney General of the State of New York found that 74 percent
of the 52,915 guns used in crimes in New York between 2010 and 2015 came from
states with weak gun laws, particularly Florida, Georgia, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania,
South Carolina, and Virginia. The problem is an underground gun sale market,
mostly comprising handguns, that leads this weapon to originate in a Georgia
pawn shop and ultimately land on a street corner in Brownsville.
The current debate around gun control in the media, among legislators, and the
public, centers around expanding background checks, banning assault rifles and
AR-15s, and eliminating bump stocks. These aims are the right approach, but they
do not address the underlying gun problem in America: the handgun. This deadly
and ubiquitous killing machine was the firearm of choice in 65 percent of 7,106 homicides
in 2016, according to data from the FBI’s annual “Crime in the United States”
report. In contrast, the shotgun, rifle, including AR-15s, and other types of firearms
only accounted for four percent of that total combined.
Photo Credit: Erica Sherman/Brooklyn BP’s Office
While mass shootings have shocked suburban communities from Aurora to Sandy
Hook, the public discourse cannot discount that Black and Brown mothers have
buried too many of their own children due to senseless gun violence for decades,
yet those tragedies largely caused by the handgun have not inspired the same visceral
public reaction. The weapons that are attributed to four percent of gun-related
crimes — shotguns, rifles including the AR-15, and semi-automatic weaponry — are
getting 100 percent of the attention from elected officials, the media, and throughout
our national discourse. For years, Black and Brown children have marched in the
streets of their communities to demand action from their elected representatives
only to be left in the dust of empty promises and little action. It is important for
legislators who represent urban communities to not get caught up in satisfying the
slogan while failing to resolve the underlying problem impacting most Americans
on a daily basis — the handgun.
The time for action is now, both at a community and legislative level, not only to
say enough is enough on senseless gun violence, but to approach this issue holistically
from every angle with an eye in every community — urban, suburban, and
rural. This is not just an issue impacting students in schools in suburban America.
The issue of gun violence is tearing communities apart in our cities, particularly in
places like Brownsville, Crown Heights, or East New York — communities in Brooklyn
that have known all too well the devastation wrought by handguns. If we cannot
talk about this critical issue that permeates at the deepest levels of American society,
then we will not be able to have an impactful movement for change impacting
the most number of people.
From all the debates on what our city, state, and country should be doing to stop
this madness from continuing, let’s take a moment to reflect on how every child in
every community is touched by gun violence. In crafting a roadmap that brings our
country together on this issue, we cannot forget the violence that plagues urban
communities every single day. If we cannot tackle the gun violence problem that
faces most Americans in our cities, then we will not move the needle on this critical
issue.