(Bloomberg) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams struck a different tone than fellow Democrats who focused on gun-control laws after Tuesday’s school massacre in Texas when he said the key to stopping shootings starts in the home.
Most Read from Bloomberg
The mayor joined nationwide pleas for stricter gun laws during a press conference Wednesday, but used the majority of the briefing to urge parents of schoolchildren to search their kids’ bags and rooms for firearms, ammunition and other weapons. He said he doesn’t want to blame them or the children for violent incidents, but that parents were a “missing piece” in the efforts to stop school gun violence.
The Adams administration seeks to add $1.4 billion in new public safety funds from fiscal years 2023 through 2026, according to a report Wednesday from the New York City Independent Budget Office. The administration plans to increase the overall NYPD budget, but doesn’t plan to increase uniform police headcount, the report said.
On Wednesday, the first-term mayor referenced a 2011 video that surfaced during his campaign — for which he was mocked — where he gave instructions to parents for how to search their child’s belongings for contraband. He said he planned to release an updated version of that video focusing on social media.
“Looking in the rooms of your children, if you see AK-47s, something is wrong,” Adams said at the briefing. “If you see boxes of bullets, something is wrong.”
The comments are indicative of his uncharacteristic approach to public safety, which is more akin to Bill Clinton-era politics than today’s Democratic mainstream.
In the Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer suggested he would seek a vote on gun legislation, while President Joe Biden criticized the gun lobby and urged congressional action as well.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, also used a Wednesday press conference to push for legislative solutions to the epidemic of gun violence gripping the country. Hochul said she would press the state’s legislature to raise the age to buy assault weapons from 18 to 21 and suggested that if the US Supreme Court rules, as expected, that most people have the constitutional right to carry a handgun outside of the home, she would call for a special session to address the ruling.
“I’ll do whatever I have to do to protect people in this state,” Hochul said.
The two New York leaders did acknowledge their limited power to make wholesale changes given Republican resistance to restrictions on gun purchases and laws that vary from state to state.
On Tuesday, 19 schoolchildren, two teachers and the gunman were killed in a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. It marks the latest mass shooting in the US, coming days after 10 Black shoppers were killed in an attack at a Buffalo, New York supermarket and a man was killed and multiple people injured in an attack at a Taiwanese church in Southern California.
(Everytown for Gun Safety, which advocates for universal background checks and gun-safety measures, is backed by Michael Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent company Bloomberg LP.)
(Updates with details of IBO report in third paragraph.)
Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
