As usual, the anti-gunner left couldn’t wait more than seven seconds after news reports about the mass shooting in Manhattan surfaced. Once the news broke, they did their usual routine of jumping on the airwaves and interwebs to scream at the rest of us about why we should give up our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
Instead of offering actual solutions that might save lives from bad actors like the individual who killed five people on Monday, they focus on making it harder for responsible Americans to purchase and carry firearms.
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), during an appearance on CNN, was one of several sounding the gun control gong after the shooting. “Despite the progress we've made toward reducing crime, New York remains a prime target for terrorism,” he noted.
“My understanding is the city faces an average of one terror plot a month. And I find it to be absolute insanity that we allow weapons of war to just flow freely on the streets of America,” the lawmaker continued. “And even though New York State and New York City have the strictest gun laws in the nation, those gun laws can only take you so far if guns can easily cross state boundaries. And this is exactly what happened here.”
Rep. Ritchie Torres argues for stricter gun control laws after the NYC shooting despite New York already having some of the strictest gun laws in the country.
— MRCTV (@mrctv) July 29, 2025
Funny how criminals don't often follow the law in the first place.pic.twitter.com/VaSa9Y10qR
Torres is right. New York has some of the most restrictive and dangerous gun control laws in the nation. And 27-year-old Shane Tamura broke at least five of these ridiculous laws before carrying out the mass shooting.
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The laws he broke include illegal possession of an “assault weapon,” possession of a handgun without a permit, possession of a loaded firearm in a vehicle, illegal transport of firearms by a non-resident, and possession of a semi-automatic rifle without a license.
As we can see, none of these laws did what Democrats claimed they would do. Tamura flouted these restrictions with impunity, gunning people down without hesitation. He didn’t go online to see if he would be breaking any of New York’s gun control laws — because evil people bent on murder don’t care about the law.
But, as frustrating as it is, it makes sense that anti-gunners are cynically exploiting mass shooting victims to convince people to give up their right to keep and bear arms. The reality is that at this point, this is the only tactic they have left.
The political environment in America has changed in ways that have prompted more Americans to reject the Democrats’ efforts to disarm them. For starters, there have been numerous cases in which gun rights groups have struck down unconstitutional gun control laws since the Supreme Courts ruling in New York Rifle & Pistol Assocation v. Bruen.
The most recent casualty of the Bruen decision was California’s ludicrous law mandating background checks on people who wish to purchase ammunition. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday struck down the law in a 2-1 decision noting that the law did not pass the Bruen historical analogue test. The Supreme Court’s ruling mandates that for a gun control law to stand, there must be a similar law that was enacted during the Founding era.
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated the federal ban on non-violent felons owning firearms in most cases. It opened the door to future challenges to laws prohibiting felons from owning guns.
A federal judge in Syracuse issued a preliminary injunction in 2022 against parts of New York’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act, which sought to prohibit people from carrying firearms in “sensitive places,” including subways, zoos, summer camps, domestic violence shelters, and others. The judge also found that the provisions of the law did not have historical analogues.
These examples represent a small smattering of the gun control laws that have met their demise due to the Bruen ruling.
But wait, there’s more!
Gun ownership in America has skyrocketed over the past five years, according to several studies. A 2021 study from the Annals of Internal Medicine found that 7.5 million adults became first-time gun owners between January 2019 and April 2021. About half of these new owners were women and about 40 percent were Black or Hispanic. In fact, I was one of that 40 percent when I purchased my first firearm in 2021.
Even further, about 16.7 million firearms were sold.
So, not only are the Democrats’ favorite anti-gunner laws being toppled like a house of cards, but more Americans are finally seeing the wisdom in arming themselves. This is terrible news for those who despise the Second Amendment. Even worse, this trend isn’t reversing any time soon, which is great for those who believe in gun rights.
To put it simply, we’re winning and the anti-gunners are losing. This is why their only real weapon is exploiting victims of mass shootings. As macabre as it is, it is still a sign that we are heading in the right direction.
