New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has declared a state of “disaster emergency on gun violence” in the Empire State. The liberal governor, who was celebrated by liberal media for his heavy-handed approach to COVID, announced his plan for $138 million in new spending to combat gun violence. In unveiling his seven-point plan, Governor Cuomo borrowed from the rhetoric he and other Leftists used in announcing policies related to the COVID pandemic.
In what appears to be an effort to continue riding the wave of power made possible by declaring something as a “public health emergency” — as was the case for more than a year of COVID hysteria — Governor Cuomo made his announcement Tuesday, saying, “If you can beat COVID, you can beat gun violence. We’re in a new epidemic, and it’s gun violence, and it’s a matter of life and death also.” He also said, “Gun violence and crime should be the top priority for every mayor in this state because every city has been affected by it,” and added, “It’s a matter of saving lives — and New York’s future depends on it.”
Of course, while shifting the blame of crime away from his soft-on-crime policies and pointing the finger at guns, Governor Cuomo conspicuously avoided addressing the easiest — and surest — way to combat the rise of violent crime in his state; he made no mention of hiring more police officers. In this, he appears to be in lock-step with his New York City comrade, Mayor Bill de Blasio, who last week defended his decision not to use any of the $6 billion in federal COVID relief his city received to hire more police officers, saying: “That’s not the whole reality”; and, “The money that the president focused was for certain cities that were dealing with much more profound gun-violence problems than New York is.”
That portrayal is patently false, since New York City experienced not only a 22-percent increase in murders over last year, but also a nearly 65-percent increase in shootings. It also simply avoids the real question: Since the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue specifically stated that those federal dollars could be used to hire more police officers, why would Mayor de Blasio refuse to use them for that?
It appears that at least part of the answer to that question can be found in the systemic liberalism that holds New Yorkers in a vice-like grip. After all, de Blasio and Cuomo are clearly birds-of-a-feather and comrades-in-arms. They have walked alike and talked alike through the pandemic, the summer of terror in which BLM and Antifa rioted, burned and pillaged more than 200 American cities, and now again as a major spike in violent crime is being used as a pretext to strip more and more Americans of the right to keep and bear arms.
While — as stated above — Cuomo studiously avoided any mention of hiring more police officers, he did say he wants to “rebuild the police-community relationship” — a buzzphrase for even placing even more of the blame on police officers and departments.
Governor Cuomo’s blame-guns-not-criminals approach is deadly not only for residents of the Empire State, but also for the entire country. Because the darling of the leftist media is launching what seems to be a pilot program intended for the other 49 states, as well. In fact, in announcing his out-of-touch-with-reality plan, Governor Cuomo stated, “Treat gun violence as it is — which is really a public health emergency,” adding, “That’s what it is, and that’s how we’re going to treat it. So today, first state in the nation, is going to declare a disaster emergency on gun violence.”
So just as Governor Cuomo was pitched by liberal media as “America’s governor” for his [mis]treatment of COVID (leading to the deaths of thousands of elderly nursing home residents), he is now being pitched as the man to follow in combating “gun violence.” What remains to be seen is how many thousands will die in New York as his anti-police and anti-gun policies continue to lead to rising crime there — and how much of that flawed policy will be duplicated across the country as liberal politicians follow his lethal lead.
Given his track record in dealing with things that both matter and have serious consequences attached, perhaps we could say that the nine scariest words in the English language are now, “I am Andrew Cuomo, and I’m here to help.”
