“’I love my police officers, I really do’ said Carmen Quinones, a member of the project’s volunteer resident watch and a public housing resident for 40 years. ‘But they’re not protecting our buildings. We’re still being robbed. We’re still being mugged.'” And there you have it: proof positive that the police can’t prevent crime. Well, proof positive for anyone with a brain. Gun control advocates and their statist supporters would insist there aren’t enough police. Or education or economic opportunities for disadvantaged youth. Something, anything other than the simple idea that people in public housing should be armed against robbers and muggers. In fact, grass roots gun ownership is so antithetical to their world view they can’t see it. Check this out . . .
About two-thirds of crimes in public housing are violent, compared with about one-third citywide. So far this year, 55 of the city’s 328 homicides and 144 of the 1,365 rapes have occurred in public housing. (The number of robberies so far this year in public housing — 1,140 out of 18,634 citywide — is roughly proportional to the population.)
The locations of public housing, often in higher-crime neighborhoods, and the layout of the complexes heighten the need for more policing, said Fritz Umbach of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who wrote a history of the housing police, “The Last Neighborhood Cops.”
“Public housing is a unique policing context, not because the residents are more criminally prone, but because the architecture is distinctive and where it is in the city is distinctive,” he said. “This presents unique police challenges that can only be met with these over-and-above services.”
No, of course the population living in New York City housing projects aren’t more “criminally prone.” It’s the fault of architecture! But seriously folks, this New York Times article – Policing the Projects of New York City, at a Hefty Price – doesn’t even mention the possibility that increasing the number of law-abiding residents exercising their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arm could reduce criminal predation and, thus, lower the crime rate and demand for police services.
New York City residents live under a de facto concealed carry ban. (Less than 500 residents have permits.) So that’s out. As for a housing project resident keeping a legal gun inside their apartment, they can do so – once they jump through the usual hoops. They need to complete an online application (including four notarized references), submit their fingerprints (taken at police HQ), undergo a background check and pay a $340 fee. The New York City Police Department Licensing Division tells TTAG applications are currently being processed in around six months.
That’s a lot of time, money and travel for an aspiring gun owner. Not to mention the computer and education required to fill out the forms and the possibility that the applicant will be denied. All of which means legal gun ownership in the projects is, as you’d expect, low. More than that, the Times’ blind spot on the subject reflects the city’s all-pervasive culture of dependency. It never even occurs to the Powers That Be that the answer to a problem lies with the people afflicted. Two Americas.