[A]t about 5:30 p.m. Thursday, as workers were hurrying to catch trains home and tourists were ambling toward hotels and Broadway theaters, a 22-year-old Bronx man was fatally shot near a Shake Shack restaurant on Eighth Avenue at West 44th Street.
The shooting was the first since the creation of the expansive, signposted zone, the police said in a statement, and it immediately renewed questions about whether such a designation can truly protect the area.
“People feel emboldened to carry guns on the street,” said Tom Harris, a retired New York police inspector and the president of the Times Square Alliance, which promotes businesses and coordinates major events.
“A gun-free zone is not going to stop a criminal from carrying a gun,” Mr. Harris said. …
The state passed the law establishing the zone after the Supreme Court's decision last June striking down New York's century-old gun law, which had placed strict limits on the public carrying of firearms.
The measure designated government buildings, places of worship, health care providers, libraries, playgrounds, public parks, the subway and Times Square specifically as places where people would be prohibited from carrying guns.
In October, Mr. Adams, who has said he owns three guns, signed a City Council bill that defined Times Square broadly and made it illegal to carry a gun between Sixth and Ninth Avenues and 40th and 53rd Streets. He said the legislation would help “dam those rivers that” are bringing firearms into New York.
“This is the heart of our city,” Mr. Adams said at the time, noting that 56 million people were expected to visit the city in 2022, with many of them likely to come through Times Square.
“We want to make sure that they're safe,” the mayor said, explaining that the law would create an environment where visitors “won't have to be paralyzed with the fear of knowing that someone is carrying a gun in this area.” In a statement on Friday, Mr. Adams said that under his administration, the police are removing illegal guns off the street daily and the sale of untraceable firearms without serial numbers — known as ghost guns — to the city through five online retailers had stopped.
“But this shooting underscores the need to ensure Times Square remains a sensitive location” under the state's law, he said.
— Read the article in its entirety at The Truth About Guns.
Is there any meaningful penalty for violating “Gun Free” zones in NYC? Such laws are useless if there is no penalty enforced for violation; or is there any actual law involved with posting the signs?