A 16-year-old from Queens is in custody today after authorities caught him with a loaded gun at his high school, hours after he’d threatened to “shoot the school up” in a post on Instagram.
According to the New York Post, Instagram moderators flagged the post and alerted authorities, and the teen was searched by school resource officers within a couple of hours of his post going live.
He was found on school grounds with a loaded semiautomatic handgun just two hours after sharing the post, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said.
The 10th grader also had three cellphones in his backpack, including one sealed in a school-provided pouch, Tisch said.
The student has no prior criminal history, Tisch said.
“I’ll be honest – as a mother of two young school aged boys, I am shaken. But as your police commissioner, I am resolute in ensuring that the NYPD does everything in our power to keep our children safe,” Tisch said.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams celebrated law enforcement’s speedy work as “the perfect example of the system working properly.”
“We potentially saved the lives of a lot of students and staff today, and I don’t want to imagine a world where we would be making a different announcement right now,” Adams said.
FBI officials also praised the “successful outcome.”
“This swift response demonstrates the importance of close partnerships and the critical need for information-sharing to ensure our city and students are protected against unnecessary acts of violence,” the bureau said in a statement to The Post.
New York’s restrictive gun laws didn’t prevent this teen from illegally acquiring a handgun and ammunition, and they wouldn’t have stopped him from carrying out a shooting at Benjamin Cardozo High School. In this case, social media moderation worked as it should, law enforcement was promptly informed of the threat, and police were able quickly determine where the threat was coming from and take action.
There are plenty of responsible adults in Queens who’ve been waiting months, if not years, for the NYPD to grant them permission to legally carry a gun in the few places that aren’t deemed “sensitive” under state law. They’ve shelled out hundreds of dollars for the required training and application fees. They’ve submitted character references and sat for in-person interviews with the NYPD Licensing Bureau. They’ve done everything required of them, and yet their rights are still denied to them because of the glacial pace of approving carry permit applications in New York City.
This kid, meanwhile, had no trouble at all getting his hands on a gun and bringing it to school with him. It’s easy to keep and carry a gun in the Big Apple, so long as you’re willing to break the law.
I wish the authorities in New York would stop pretending that the state’s draconian gun laws are actually having an impact on criminal behavior, but I know that’s not going to happen. If anything, incidents like this will only lead to lawmakers calling for more restrictions on legal gun owners and those who are trying to exercise their Second Amendment rights for the first time in their lives.
Editor’s Note: There is no gun control law that goes too far for New York Democrats.
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