“A glaring weakness in our effort to combat gun violence is the fact that you have Raise the Age which still allows 16- and 17-year-olds to own loaded firearms,” Albany District Attorney David Soares told The Post in a review of of public safety objectives Gov. Kathy Hochul described in her State of the State address.
Exactly: It’s another huge omission when Hochul claims to put public safety first.
Soares, a progressive backed by George Soros, has long highlighted problems with Raise the Age, a 2018 law that sends most teenage criminals to Family Court rather than the adult justice system.
He also blamed Hochul and the Legislature for the no-bail law and other reforms that Soares believes have “normalized” violence. “No meaningful legislative action has been taken to address bail reform and raising the age, which has been shown to impact violent crime in our most vulnerable neighborhoods,” he thundered afterward. two more fatal shootings in Albany last fall.
The cookies and hot chocolate approach to teen gun violence just doesn’t work, Soares told The Post.
Last fall, a bombshell analysis by the NYPD revealed that the number of teen shooters and victims in New York has tripled in the past five years — a deadly trend that coincides with the passage of the Raise the Age Act. The report also noted that teenage recidivism has increased since 2017.
That is: Teenagers are the main driver of the alarming increase in gun violence across the city. Even worse, it means more young people are starting a life of crime – which means big trouble for the future, with a growing criminal class.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie prides himself on being a “number,” but ignores the data showing that the Raise the Age Act has been a disaster for minority teens. Instead, he theorizes that teenage brains simply cannot learn self-control, so it is wrong to hold young people responsible – regardless of the consequences for society or their.
So he won’t consider fixing the RTA, and Hochul is apparently reluctant to force the issue. And the number of young victims in minority communities in the state will continue to rise.
Never mind that the government has enormous power in budget negotiations insist for legal changes: She is determined to work with the legislature, no matter how few lawmakers want to work with her on anything other than spending and taxing more and more.
The worst is yet to come, New York.
