NYC MAYOR ERIC ADAMS HAS HIS OWN ARMED PROTECTION; WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF US?

MULTI SERIES ON NEW YORK CITY MAYOR ERIC ADAMS

PART TWO

It is important for Americans to recognize—especially for those Americans who reside in New York City—that the City’s Mayor, Eric Adams, is no friend of the common man even as his image-makers project him out to be just that.

Adams isn’t a cut above his predecessor, Bill de Blasio. Rather, he is cut from the same cloth even as he attempts, albeit half-heartedly, to hide that fact.

Of course, every Mayor goes about trumpeting his concern for the welfare of his City and the safety and well-being of the residents in it.

Dealing with mounting crime in a community is a major component of a Mayor’s responsibility to his or her community and to the people who live or work in it.

So, then, as crime in general and violent crime, in particular, continues to plague and soar in New York City, one must pointedly ask what Eric Adams is doing about it?

Well, he is doing two quite different things: one thing for himself and one thing for the little people; the commonalty; the preterite: over 8 million people, at last count, according to the NYC Department of City Planning.

As for his own life, safety, and well-being, Adams has pursued one course of action. It’s one that receives little publicity and precious little attention. And both he and Progressive/Marxist establishment leaders who pushed for his election, over that of Curtis Sliwa, want to keep it that way.  See also Fox News story.

But, for the public at large—the common people of the New York City—Adams’ Administration has taken action that has drawn much publicity. And that is as he, and his myriad “behind the scenes” consultants, image-makers, and powerful Progressive/Marxist/Globalist Leadership Class do want.

Let us look at the two different approaches to the matter of personal safety in New York City.  

For himself, Eric Adams has surrounded himself with firepower—literally—and a lot of it.

In that regard, it is apropos to note that, during his campaign, Adams said he would eschew a security detail.

Yet even during the campaign, Adams equivocated. The Daily News reported, in June 2021:

“Eric Adams once vowed he would carry a gun and ditch his security detail if elected mayor.

 Despite his pistol-packing pledge, the former NYPD captain was joined by a phalanx of off-duty cops Tuesday who shadowed the mayoral front-runner as he greeted voters across the city.

 Spokeswoman Madia Coleman said a handful of off-duty police volunteered to shadow Adams after a campaign volunteer was stabbed in the Bronx over the weekend.

 But Adams suggested the detail came at the NYPD’s direction.

 ‘I only do what the police tell me to do,’ he said and laughed when asked if he was traveling with a detail.”[Of note] Adams didn’t have much to say about the beefed-up security accompanying him.”

And now that Eric Adams is Mayor, having successfully duped most New York City residents to vote for him, he has even less to say about his personal security.

But he is still laughing. Adams is ever the jovial frontman; the slippery and convivial con man.

Dramatically emoting before the cameras, opening his suit jacket, pulling up a leg of his trousers, and dancing around in a circle, Eric Adams means to demonstrate, like a stage magician, that, after all, “there is no gun up his sleeve.” See the article in Bearing Arms on this.

Obviously, the NYC Mayor doesn’t need to carry a handgun for personal protection. He doesn’t have to be armed, for he has substantial firepower standing all around him. And this is something the public isn’t supposed to notice.

Like the adept stage magician he is, Adams distracts the audience. He directs the audience’s attention solely to himself; away from the stone-faced NYPD security contingent standing around him, guarding him, who, to be sure, do have much up their sleeves—those kinds of things that Eric Adams makes clear he doesn’t have, at least on his person.

One need not guess, but know, that this security detail has much firepower hidden in their belts and around their ankles. And they care not to exhibit that fact to the public. Unlike the Mayor, they don’t jump up, jump down, turn around, opening suit jackets, and raising the trouser legs, treating the dire business of personal protection like a humorous streetside vaudeville act. But, then, everyone knows the reason why.

The Progressive/Marxist Leadership Class, of which Eric Adams is a part, doesn’t like to advertise the fact—an open secret among its members—that the best protection against violent predatory attack is, after all a pistol in the hands of someone proficient in its use. That little fact runs counter to the running narrative that guns are bad, that no one should have them, even as criminals and the well-connected and powerful have no problems obtaining them, and the average law-abiding citizen is routinely denied one.

But, the Mayor’s hypocrisy doesn’t end there.

Contrary to his assertion that he doesn’t take an active interest in the manner of personal security, the reality is quite different, and that reality includes a bit of good, old nepotism. Adams has appointed his brother to head his personal security.

Reuters explains:

“New York City Mayor Eric Adams has reassigned his younger brother to a job overseeing his physical security, the New York Times reported on Wednesday, days after naming him deputy police commissioner of the largest U.S. police department.

Bernard Adams, a retired police sergeant of the New York Police Department, will serve as executive director of mayoral security, a job with a typical salary of $210,000, the Times reported. He was most recently a parking administrator at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, it added.

The 56-year-old could have made $240,000 as an NYPD deputy commissioner. The security director role falls within the structure of the department, from which he retired after two decades on the force, the Times said.

The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The hiring will require a waiver from the Conflicts of Interest Board, the city agency tasked with enforcing government ethics.

Mayor Adams, a former police captain who took office on Jan. 1, on Sunday fended off concerns of nepotism, saying his office had started the process to clear his brother’s appointment with the ethics board.”

All right. We get it! New York City is a dangerous place and the Mayor qua citizen of New York City needs armed protection: a handgun at least, and, perhaps, a submachine gun, as well, discretely tucked away in one or more of his security escorts’ jacket or coat.

But what about the average New York City resident? Is one to conclude that the average “John Q Public” or “Jane Q. Public” doesn’t, apparently, need a firearm for personal protection in the concrete jungle of New York City, or ought not need a firearm for personal protection in the concrete jungle of New York City?  The Mayor’s position on this has become painfully obvious.

Mayor Adams does nothing to support the common peoples’ quest to secure a handgun for their own protection as they venture out into the jungle that New York City has devolved into.

So, then, what is the Mayor’s game plan for securing the safety and well-being of average New York City residents?

Obviously, the City cannot, logistically and monetarily, provide NYPD armed security for the average New York City resident.

Furthermore, under the doctrine of sovereign immunity, community police officers have no duty, except under limited and carefully defined circumstances, to provide armed protection for individuals.

This is a significant, consequential point that neither Government officials nor the Press ever mention.

On the subject of police responsibility and sovereign immunity, see the Arbalest Quarrel article posted on our website on October 25, 2019, and reposted on Ammoland Shooting Sports News, on November 6, 2019, titled, “What Is The Duty Of A Community’s Police Force Toward A Citizen Whose Life Is In Imminent Threat Of Attack?” The article references a 1989 article co-authored by David Kopel and Stephen D’Andrilli, appearing in the magazine, “Women and Guns.” A reprise and update of the October 25, 2019, Arbalest Quarrel article was posted on AQ on November 21, 2019. See also the Arbalest Quarrel companion article, posted on our website on July 31, 2020, and reposted on Ammoland Shooting Sports News, on August 6, 2020, and titled, “The Government Cannot Protect You!” You Must Protect Yourself!”  

What was true, then, is no less true today. Ultimately, the responsibility for one’s health, safety, and well-being falls to oneself as well it should; and as it always has. And, taking that premise as self-evident, true, the answer to the problem of increasing violent crime in the City is plain.

The Mayor should allow—and, more to the point, should encourage—the law-abiding, responsible individual to take that responsibility upon him or herself.

The Mayor should simplify the application process for those individuals who wish to secure a handgun for self-defense. And, it goes without need to dwell upon that a responsible person who wishes to take responsibility for his or her own safety and well-being and the safety and well-being of one’s family by carrying a handgun should become proficient in the safe handling and use of it.

The old adage, “what is good for the goose, is good for the gander,” aptly applies to this situation. The Mayor is no less a New York City resident, and no less or more deserving of protection from predators than anyone else who lives and/or works in the City.

If the Mayor has the right of armed protection—be it through the carrying of a handgun personally or through services rendered by an armed NYPD security detail—he should strongly urge, not deter, the average, rational, responsible, law-abiding New York City resident or worker from securing a handgun for his or her own protection as that person ventures out in the City, a dangerous environment that no one denies.

Adams has much to say about clamping down on illegal gun possession and criminal use of guns, but he says nothing—absolutely nothing—concerning revising the City’s draconian gun laws that prevent rational, responsible, law-abiding people from possessing handguns for their self-defense in a City that has seen an explosion of violent crime against the innocent since de Blasio served as Mayor.

Standing side-by-side with Lori Lightfoot, the infamous Mayor of Chicago, whose City has been continuously ravaged by violent crime for years and is deteriorating rapidly, Eric Adams has made clear from whom he obtains his guidance: those of like-mind: Radical Marxists.

On March 18, 2022, the New York Post wrote, as the New York Mayor stood next to the Chicago Mayor, at a Press Conference that took place in Chicago,

“Mayor Eric Adams promised Friday that he would take his campaign against gun violence national during a press conference with Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot in the Windy City, which has been hit hard by a surge in homicides and shootings.

‘We need help from Washington, DC. We need to staff the ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] appropriately. We need to do information sharing. We need to focus on those illegal gun manufacturers that are producing these guns that are proliferating our cities,’ [Eric Adams] told reporters there. ‘I’m gonna visit all my mayors across this country that get it.’”

Adams later added that he would be ‘going to travel throughout the country and see what others are doing” when it comes to tackling gang and gun violence.’”

Yet, for all the bravado about tackling “gun violence,” Adams says nothing about allowing the innocent victims of that “gun violence” from employing the best means available to defend themselves against that “gun violence.”

The Justice System of New York City and the NYPD itself are in tatters after the insult the Communist Globalist de Blasio inflicted on those two venerable institutions.

It will take a substantial amount of time to repair the damage after years of targeted defilement of both at the hands of Bill de Blasio.

And, it doesn’t appear Eric Adams’ heart is truly in setting things right, as he feels compelled to mollycoddle the Radical Left elements.

These elements are firmly entrenched in the core of City politics. And Adams continually demonstrates his allegiance to them.

All the more reason then for the Mayor to accede to the wishes and needs of the average person who stands ready, willing, and able to take personal responsibility for his or her own safety and well-being and that of their family and business.

The incessant threat of predatory attack—a condition that pervades and permeates throughout the City—is not to be denied, and it is not going away anytime soon regardless of what the Mayor does or intends to do about it. In fact, the Mayor tacitly, if grudgingly, admits it, as he must. Yet he adamantly refuses to recognize the fundamental, natural right of the individual to bear arms for his or her own defense. This is evidenced by the Mayor’s continual silence on the subject, leading one to draw the following disturbing but undeniable conclusion:

Adams intends to deny to the average person the unalienable, immutable, illimitable, fundamental, natural right of armed self-defense; callously and capriciously dismissing out of hand the very cornerstone of our Nation as a free Constitutional Republic.

The Mayor’s stance is unsound and indefensible but there it is nonetheless and the irrefutable fact of it belies anything Mayor Adams says or does to suggest he does care about the life and well-being of the people and that he does cherish the Constitutions of the United States and of the State of New York that he has sworn an oath to serve.

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Copyright © 2022 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved