NYC’s Tough Gun Laws Aren’t Stopping Teens From Arming Up

If you want to legally carry a handgun in New York City, it’s going to take hundreds of dollars, 18 hours of training, and months of twiddling your thumbs before you might receive your Second Amendment permission slip. But if you don’t mind breaking the law, carrying a gun is a piece of cake. In fact, it’s so easy a teenager can do it.

A 15-year-old boy has been arrested for fatally shooting another teen in Harlem.

The teenage suspect, who is not being named because of his age, opened fire on Clarence Jones, 16, near the corner W. 124th St. and Lenox Ave. about 1:30 a.m. on Oct. 24, cops said.

Jones was hit in the torso and was rushed to Harlem Hospital, where he died. He was one of five teens killed in the city within five days last week, police said.

A pair of gunmen on Razor scooters opened fire on Jones, witnesses told police.

The New York Daily News reports that the teenager was identified as a suspect, and was arrested by officers on patrol in Harlem on Thursday night. 

While authorities haven’t said much about the suspect or a potential motive for the murder, they have disclosed that the 16-year-old victim was no stranger to police and prosecutors. 

Police have yet to disclose a motive for the killing, but the victim was on probation for a case involving at least one robbery in which it’s believed he displayed a gun, and was a suspect in another armed robbery that took place in 2023, two blocks from his home.

In that latter case, in which nobody has been arrested, four crooks entered a store, jumped over the security glass and removed currency from the cash register, with one of the robbers brandishing a gun.

Jones had numerous other prior arrests, police said.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has been boasting about declining crime rates across the state, but authorities in New York City say they’re seeing a rise in serious crimes committed by under-18s, including a 52% increase in juvenile robberies between 2017 and 2023, and a tripling of homicides involving juvenile suspects. 

The spikes, which have been particularly pronounced as the city emerges from the disjointed pandemic years and which mirror a national trend, have reanimated a decades-long argument over how to deal with young offenders.

Until recently, the criminal justice system in New York treated many young people accused of serious crimes as adults. But in 2017, when youth crime had fallen to lows not seen for decades, legislators in Albany changed the way the cases of 16- and 17-year-olds were handled, passing a law known as “Raise the Age.”

Police officials in New York said the law, which diverted most cases of 16- and 17-year-old defendants from adult courts to Family Court or to judges with access to social services and special training, was at the root of the crisis. The law, they said, has made it harder for prosecutors and the police to provide evidence of prior serious offenses that may have gone through the sealed Family Court process, often leading to the release of young people with violent backgrounds. Chief LiPetri called it “a revolving door of justice.”

New York lawmakers are putting legal gun owners under the microscope at the same time they’re turning a blind eye to juvenile offenders. Why should anyone be surprised that, as the criminal justice system has been “reformed” to provide fewer consequences for juvenile offenders, juvenile crime has increased dramatically? 

Given the lockgrip that Democrats have on the political process in both New York City and Albany, positive changes to the dysfunctional juvenile justice system aren’t likely to happen anytime soon. With many of New York’s most restrictive gun control laws being challenged in court, however, there’s at least hope that New Yorkers will one day be able to exercise their Second Amendment right to legally keep and bear arms as easily as teenagers can illegally get and carry a gun.