Instead of trying to overthrow urban hotspots like Chicago and New York City in his bogus bid to combat violent crime, President Trump should take a more simple approach.
He should embrace meaningful gun control.
Because, if there is anything that the shooting incidents plaguing these troubled neighborhoods have in common, it’s the prevalence of guns.
Fewer guns, fewer shootings. It’s as simple as that.
Even Mayor Adams, the mayoral candidate least likely to say a bad word about Trump, favors gun control over troop patrols.
“We have to be proactive with this stuff, because these young people are getting more and more involved in gang behavior, and they are finding themselves having just an overproliferation of guns that are coming into our city,” said Adams in response to a late-summer explosion of violence that has rocked several Bronx neighborhoods.
“When you take 23,000 guns off the street and you’re still able to have access to guns, that’s a real national problem that must be addressed.”
Say it with him: “National problem that must be addressed.”
But the national leader, who’s just dying to start a war somewhere, would rather deploy troops like toy soldiers to reduce crime in cities where crime has already been reduced.
Sure, there have been flare ups in pockets like the Bronx and parts of Washington, D.C., but the answer isn’t to replace the police in those areas with a police state.
The answer is to get the guns off the streets.
When it’s as easy for a kid to get a gun as it is to get a Kit Kat out of a vending machine, America has a problem no troop deployment can solve.
“I need people to tell me how they are getting these guns here in the Bronx,” said Bronx DA Darcel Clark.
“We don’t have gun makers here in the Bronx, but meanwhile, 13-year-olds are shooting guns, 15-year-olds, 18-year-olds. They have to be getting them from somewhere They’re not old enough even to purchase them. So, somebody is giving it to them. Those are the cases now that I’m now also focusing on and tracking down as to how the guns are getting here.”
Trump sent nearly 2,300 armed National Guard troops to Washington, DC, after declaring a public crime emergency in the nation’s capital on Aug. 11.
Meanwhile, data from the city’s police department shows violent crime was down 26% from last year.
Trump has also threatened to send crime-fighting soldiers to New York City, Chicago, Baltimore, Oakland and Los Angeles, cities that have more in common than just crime and large populations.
“The only cities that have been mentioned have mayors that look like me,” Savannah, Georgia Mayor Van Johnson, president of the African American Mayors Association, told MSNBC.
Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, tried to assure residents in those cities that troop deployment would only be a temporary measure.
“We don’t want, indefinitely, to put National Guardsmen on the streets of our cities,” Vance told USA Today. “We just want to make those streets more safe.”
Adams said thanks, but no thanks.
“I don’t see the need for it, at all,” said Adams, a retired police captain. “We are doing an amazing job.”
According to the Associated Press, the D.C. troop deployment will cost taxpayers an estimated $1 million a day.
So, what kind of bang are we getting for our buck? U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said that more than 120 firearms have been seized in D.C. since the deployment, weapons that will only be replaced by new ones in the absence of meaningful gun laws.
Meanwhile, video has surfaced of the National Guard picking up trash.
Trash.
So much for a crime emergency.
But Trump’s takeover bid couldn’t have gotten a better metaphor.
