Despite a change in leadership, New York City has continued to confiscate and destroy motorcycles officials have deemed illegal. Pioneered by ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio (formerly Warren Wilhelm Jr.), the practice has been continued by Eric Adams. In fact, the new mayor was so enthusiastic about the trend that the city held a press event where a bulldozer crushed over one-hundred bikes as he waved a checkered flag — effectively turning them all into garbage in a matter of seconds.
As a motorcycle enthusiast and recovering New Yorker myself, this story has been one your author has followed since the beginning as an excuse to professionally gripe about something personal. The city set out to confiscate dirt bikes and ATVs that are relatively common to see (and hear) zipping through traffic or cluttering sidewalks. De Blasio even made it one of his biggest traffic-enforcement initiatives in 2021, adding a bit of spectacle to the new vehicle bans. However, a cursory examination of the vehicles involved has shown a significant number of vehicles being destroyed are regular motorcycles that would have been legal under NYC law and all-electric scooters used by low-income commuters and restaurant delivery services.
But it’s the seemingly arbitrary nature of the confiscations and utter wastefulness of their destruction that has me grinding my teeth. Determinations of what makes a bike illegal are largely left up to individual NYPD officers who have been tasked to get as many two-wheeled conveyances off the street as possible. This has resulted in regular street bikes (basically anything that doesn’t look like an old-fashioned cruiser) and electric scooters getting caught up in the mix.
While de Blasio also hosted numerous press events where bikes were publicly crushed for the media, this appears to be Mayor Adams’ first rodeo. On Wednesday, he and the NYPD lined up roughly a gross of motorcycles to be destroyed for the sake of photographers. Adams pointed to dirt bikes and ATVs as being a dangerous nuisance, though anyone looking at the lineup of doomed vehicles would notice there were plenty of other completely legal designs lined up for the bulldozer’s treads.
During the event, NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell stated that the city had seized over 2,000 vehicles citywide in 2022 so far — noting that this represented an 80-percent increase over the same timeframe in 2021.
City leadership has been attempting to link motorcycles to an increase in violent crime and robberies since 2020, often adding that the vehicles themselves are loud and driven recklessly. While the latter claims are indeed true (though not always), custom automobiles with exceptionally loud exhausts are also relatively common in NYC and can frequently be heard screaming through the night air.
Steps have likewise been taken to crack down on that issue. But two-wheeled transportation has arguably become the preferred scapegoat for everything that’s gone wrong over the last few years. That does not excuse the city from confiscating legal bikes and e-scooters. It also doesn’t explain why NYC would opt to crush these vehicles, instead of auctioning them off to make itself some money.
“The motorbikes are destroyed rather than resold or donated in order to prevent them from returning to our streets and not allow them to be operating again,” Adams said during the event. “So again, we want to thank all those who participated and assisted in the retrieving of these dirt bike [sic]. So we see this every year, it’s the first day of summer, the increases go up. That’s why we are using this day as a day of putting in place concrete actions to make sure that we get all of these illegal bikes and vehicles off our streets.”
Again, these were initiatives pioneered by Adams’ predecessor. But you don’t put on a spectacle like this and not try and take some of the credit. However, the current mayor has attempted to expand on those efforts by working with nearby cities and utilizing new camera technologies to locate more vehicles. He and the NYPD confirmed on Wednesday that this summer will include a crackdown assumed to dwarf the city’s previous confiscation efforts.
“We’re here at Erie Basin Auto Pound to send a very strong and very clear message to anyone who illegally operates an ATV, dirt bike, or other such vehicle on the streets of New York City. We will seize that bike and we will destroy it. We take this very seriously because driving these motor bikes on city streets, on sidewalks, or in parks, and within housing developments is dangerous. It’s reckless and it’s illegal. It puts everyone at risk. Other drivers, passengers, pedestrians, and not to mention the bike riders themselves,” Commissioner Sewell told the press.
“Our city will not tolerate this, and the NYPD will use every tool at our disposal to rid our neighborhoods of these hazards. It is the people living in these communities who are making the majority of complaints. They are telling us loud and clear to get these motorbikes out of our neighborhoods and keep them out. The NYPD got the message and that’s exactly what we’re doing today.”
New York City Mayor Eric Adams waved a checkered flag to start a bulldozing event, where 100 illegal dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles, confiscated by the New York City Police Department, were crushed pic.twitter.com/DuzKOnWwAN
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Ah liberals. Taking from you what they think you shouldn’t have and destroying it.
A microcosm of what they are doing to the country.
“The motorbikes are destroyed rather than resold or donated in order to prevent them from returning to our streets and not allow them to be operating again” Adams said during the event.”
What an absolute grandstanding piece of dog $h!t.
Couldn’t have sent them overseas, couldn’t have donated them to a college to work on and learn from, couldn’t have sent them to other states, donate them to a charity, etc. How is this green you complete fraud?
This clown is a raging c u next tuesday.
I agree. How many shop or automotive classes could have benefited from receiving these bikes to teach students how to repair them?
Instead it’s now landfill material. The level of waste should be an embarrassment to all of NYC and the leaders that silently went along with this.
> Ah liberals. Taking from you what they think you shouldn’t have and destroying it.
Conservatives do that too. I.e., every Republican administration since Nixon’s thought you shouldn’t have drugs, and therefore confiscated and destroyed them using massive paramilitary operations at huge cost to taxpayers.
This has nothing to to be being liberal. I’m a liberal (mostly) but still think the bike-crushing is stupid. It’s not like “getting these off the streets” means there aren’t another 1,000 motorbikes/ATVs/scooters that won’t quickly take their place. If you’re not going to donate them, at least pull the parts apart and recycle what you can rather than creating a toxic landfill somewhere to put your crushed bikes.
First off, this is absolutely not an exclusively “liberal” thing to do, and to claim otherwise is exceedingly ignorant. Conservatives have done the same nonsense when grandstanding their ‘values’ for things like drugs, pornography, books, and even popular music they don’t like (remember when John Lennon made the ‘bigger than jesus’ comment?).
Secondly, Adams is hardly a ‘liberal’ – he simply ran in a big city where party politics is a machine and has barely any alignment with the political lines of the national parties. Anywhere else, Adams would have been run as a Republican.
The core of your argument, however, is valid: any sort of a public destruction from either side is a silly, self-promoting, pointless and wasteful stunt.
” Conservatives have done the same nonsense when grandstanding their ‘values’ for things like drugs”
Ah yes. That harmless fentanyl.
The correct approach to motorcycles is to never build them in the first place.
Spoken like someone who has never known the sheer joy of riding on a nice morning. People say bikes are dangerous, this is true if you don’t pay attention to your surroundings. I have ridden for over sixty years and the last accident I had was thirty nine years ago. I ride every day in Mexican traffic with no problems. I am pissed at the bikes being crushed in New York, but it is not personal. Since I am not there and will never live in the US again,I just don’t care too much. I do love riding, whether morning, noon or evening. It is just a wonderful feeling. Don’t say bikes should not be made until you have tried one. If you can’t try one, then shut up as you don’t have a clue what you are talking about.
I use to ride a motorcycle and enjoyed them as well but I no longer own one. This NYC law is an extreme measure. For those causing a problem with motorcycles they should be dealt with but not at the expense of those who own and ride motorcycles in a responsible and lawful manner.
I tried one once – in a field with no helmet – and promptly broke the chain. So I considered that as my personal message from the Universe.
Possibly Related: My foster brother enjoyed cocaine – ‘a wonderful feeling’ he might have said. He died of an overdose.
I respect your opinion regarding two-wheeled motorized transport, but it doesn’t pass the risk/reward test for me, especially given the moronic behavior of other vehicle drivers (who have safety cages and airbags).
Was reading outside yesterday in the American sun and heard a yout on a crotch-rocket a couple miles away — given the rpms and the duration you could just about estimate his speed — and if he has a personal death wish that’s bad but he’s also endangering others around him in the process which is worse. And while I’ve never worn a lot of leather in the hot sun the idea doesn’t appeal to me — at all.
My aunt spent her entire career at a hospital with a Level I trauma center and they got a steady stream of organ donors from motorcycle accidents (young healthy attractive body in good shape except for fatal head injury).
I’ve seen a shift from young men getting seriously hurt to older riders getting hurt. Fellows in their mid-50’s and 60’s going out and buying 1,000 pound Harley’s and failing to make corners. The whole “It’s a girly bike” mentality is rampant for anything sensible as a starter bike.
The saying “dress for the slide, not the ride” applies too. The 70’s Bell helmet campaign comes to mind too. “If you have a $10 head, wear a $10 helmet.”
@Lou–That is what my older brother taught me and I always wore a Bell helmet, jeans, Wellington steel toed boots, and leather gloves and yes I have taken a slide on gravel scratching my leather jacket and damaging my boots but I was ok. Better the cows hide than my own. As for bikes I had a Suzuki 450 GS and then a Yamaha Vision equipped with a Vetter fairing, Continental tires, and Krauser side bags and trunk. The Yamaha was set up for travel and my older brother once used it on a trip out West. The Yamaha was just perfect for me with the water cooling and the shaft drive. Very smooth running motorcycle.
@Jeff S – I’m an Arai fan. I was at a bike show and spent an hour with a rep trying on the helmet and reviewing how to change pads and liner to fit the shape of my head. They are very expensive and are worth it. Arai engineers helped write current helmet standards.
@Lou_BC–As you made your point well about helmets. Always shake my head at those who don’t wear helmets and those who wear shorts and sneakers when riding a motorcycle. They are definitely candidates for the Darwin Award.
@ToolGuy–No problem drive what you like. My wife was not too thrilled with me riding and getting older my reflexes are not what they use to be. I still have motorcycles on my driver’s license but I doubt I will ever ride again.
Idiotic especially electric scooters which make little noise if any. Glad I don’t live in NYC. Matt is it true that NYC has been losing population since the Pandemic? Seems that if people can work from home then why live there or anywhere near there. Less expensive housing elsewhere and better quality of life. Might be time for more of those rust belt cities to promote the less expensive and less regulation in their cities and offer incentives to residents of NYC to move to their cities.
@Jeff Yes. The city started losing citizens in record numbers after lockdowns started. Manhattan lost something like 6.6 percent of its entire population between 2020 and 2021. But the exodus allegedly continues as people quality of life plummets. Homelessness is visibly up, many businesses that closed never reopened, there are still “outdoor eating areas” (built to comply with absolutely untenable COVID mandates) occupying parking spaces, and violent crime has exploded. It’s not as bad as some people on the TV want you to believe, but it was more than bad enough for residents to notice.
It all ended up being too much for me and plenty of other people. The city was already unsatisfyingly expensive with some of the most restrictive laws in the union. Two years of closing down shops, cancelling events, and telling everyone trying to stay away from each other basically nullified NYC’s surviving perks. I’ll be heading back in a few months to see if parking is better after the great exodus and whether or not masked people are still fighting each other inside of grocery stores for not socially distancing. But I have little hope that Adams is going to turn anything around. Building more bike lanes and crushing motorcycles isn’t going to change anything.
@Matt–Don’t blame you for leaving sometimes a place gets too big, too expensive, and too unpleasant to live in. My wife’s nephew and his wife were native Californians and her nephew was a native East Bay in San Francisco and could not afford a house and got disgusted with San Francisco. He and his wife built a new house outside of Wilmington, NC and are much happier. Her nephew worked for years at a BMW dealership as a service adviser in SF and was making over 100k a year and could barely afford to live there. He also wanted to get away from the homeless living in the streets, garbage everywhere, and the rise in crime. Not saying San Francisco is all bad but he got disgusted and wanted to leave.
I had some friends on the West Coast making similar decisions. But times seem to be tough just about everywhere these days. I am still holding out hope that NYC turns thing around, as I lived there for ages and have loved ones that still do.
Perhaps if they cool it on some of their restrictive legislation, especially the road and vehicle stuff, I’ll venture back there to live. But I have noticed just how far my dollar goes in other parts of the country.
My wife and her siblings were born and raised in NY and none are presently living there. Her brother moved to NC to get away from SF and he originally moved to CA to get away from NYC and for job opportunities. You are correct that your dollar does go further.
I am getting my house ready to sell in Northern Kentucky which I have lived in for 21 years. I live in a nice neighborhood with walking paths, tennis courts, swimming pools, and a club house. My wife and I want to downsize from an almost 4,000 sq ft home with a 3 car garage to a 1,600 patio home outside of Tucson AZ with no maintenance but it will be early next year before it is completed. We have had realtors constantly bugging us to list now. There are lots of people from California and out of state moving in and compared to where they are moving from our home prices are cheap and our property taxes are very inexpensive. Homes listed go quickly and many above asking price. I am preparing to move in the next month before school starts and before interest rates go up again. I am 5 minutes away from the Greater Cincinnati airport, 20 minutes away from downtown Cincinnati, and Amazon has expanded its warehouses and has added a terminal to the airport bigger than the prior airport making it one of their largest hubs.
Good to see New York is tough on the crimes that matter lol.
It is a waste of resources. One would have to look at the legalities of title transfer with donations or resale. Bureaucracy is expensive so wrecking is probably cheaper.
You’re probably right it is cheaper to destroy but still very wasteful.
Couldn’t they just donate them to refugees or folks in poor countries? Why they destroy valuable things and waste C02 while wining about climate change. And same about guns – they should send them to Ukrainian Army. They just waist valuable resources.
Or give them to the Taliban! Our government loves arming and giving free stuff to terrorists.
They already did, to the tune of billions of dollars, several functional Blackhawk helicopters..the list goes on!
Comrade EBFlex we could send you over to Afghanistan to deliver those motorcycles to the Taliban.
Surely you realize that when you call me a “comrade” you are calling yourself one too right?
Big city liberal mayor does something galactically stupid.
In other news, water is still wet.
After Cuomo, De Blasio, Hochul, AOC, and this clown, everyone in New York should lose the right to vote. They clearly cannot handle the responsibility and keep electing adult children.
I can equally justify a like statement to that one, on a national scale, for anyone who voted for Trump and the GOP. At least the NYC mayors aren’t trying to take away certain groups/individuals voting rights under the lies that that 2020 election was stolen.
To be fair to the voters, nobody voted for Hochul as governor. She just got the job because Cuomo left in disgrace after so many scandals.
“To be fair to the voters, nobody voted for Hochul as governor.”
As governor. But she was voted in….
Blaming motorcycles for the crimes the riders commit is like blaming a hammer for a sore thumb.
@Haywire – Where have they blamed motorcycles for crimes?
They crushed them. They addressed a symptom as part of a political publicity stunt, and she nothing to address the problem.
https://www.westsiderag.com/2021/04/28/a-rare-dinner-out-with-the-roar-of-atvs-and-motorbikes-on-the-side
“Blaming motorcycles for the crimes the riders commit is like blaming a hammer for a sore thumb.”
That’s a good point. This is the equivalent of blaming guns for murders. Liberals never want to hold PEOPLE accountable, just the inanimate object that they can sling their misguided outrage at.
“This is the equivalent of blaming guns for murders”
Most murders or suicides can be classified as “crimes of passion”. An overwhelming emotion like anger or despair sets the stage for the act. If one can delay one’s ability to respond, it markedly reduces the odds of the act occurring. Guns have an incredibly short “point of no return”. Once the trigger is squeezed it is too late. That’s why suicide and murder rates dropped in Australia once they banned most guns.
@Lou_BC–Agree but thanks to the US Supreme Court those of us who don’t own guns will buy them to protect ourselves from the hotheads and nut jobs who have them and are now protected by the Court. I have no problem with responsible gun owners but don’t look forward to being in a restaurant, train, or possibly airplane with an armed nut job. Might just stop going out since I as a citizen cannot rely on the Government to protect its citizens from crazies with guns. The next time a group of insurrectionists storm the Capitol they will do it with automatic weapons and there will be lives lost.
“Might just stop going out since I as a citizen cannot rely on the Government to protect its citizens from crazies with guns.”
Yes because people like you defunded them…
“Yes because people like you defunded them…”
Ah yes, the “defund” argument. The same batch of people will whine about “defunding” and in the same breath complain about the “militarization” of the police.
There needs to be a multifaceted approach to crime. It is less costly to get people into safe shelter, and to provide mental health and addiction services than arrests by police, processing in the courts, and finally incarceration . Police are still necessary to deal with those too far gone to help or choose not to rehabilitate.
It isn’t one or the other. A blend is needed based upon the needs of the community.
“ The same batch of people will whine about “defunding” and in the same breath complain about the “militarization” of the police.”
Please show me where I’ve complained about the militarization of the police.
Contrary to your misinformation, I am fully in favor of the police having any available tool they need to effectively handle the animals they come into contact with every single day. It’s a shame Xiden gave the Taliban all that equipment in Afghanistan and not donated it to US police departments.
Blaming motorcycles for the crimes the riders commit is like blaming a hammer for a sore thumb.
Well now you can carry around a gun anywhere in NY after the Supreme Court ruling. We could all go around with loaded guns in holsters like they did in the Wild West and have a gun fight in the street. Trump could come back on Time Square and shoot people as he previously bragged about and still have people follow him. You have more rights carrying a loaded gun around than owning and riding a motorcycle in NYC. One Summer when I was living in Houston people were getting shot on the freeways. My fear is the next time someone declares that they lost an election the crazies will decide to storm the Capitol with their assault weapons and the police will not be able to stop them. The NRA will defend their right to carrying weapons and blame the victims. Crazy World when motorcycles become illegal then confiscated and destroyed but guns can be carried openly and used to kill with little if any recourse.
This is getting quite off topic. But I would like to say that I have lived in states where open carry is legal and you never see anyone doing it. As for NYC, the city already had some of the most restrictive gun laws imaginable. It still does, frankly. Owning some of the most common firearm types in the nation is enough to make you a criminal there. However, like Chicago, per capita gun crime has remained exceptionally high. My big fear was that this blame-the-tool-not-the-user mentality would eventually expand to cars and that seems to have happened as the area has started instituting motorcycle bans, mandatory congestion charging, additional road tolls, schemes to ban combustion vehicles, and deploying new types of traffic enforcement cameras. You even hear leadership talking about the need to discourage driving to make the city more walkable. But it was already probably the most walkable city in the entire country by far.
EB started the discussion of guns both can kill in the wrong hands but guns and motorcycles otherwise are not related in that motorcycles are designed as transportation and guns are designed to kill or to do bodily harm. No one points a gun at someone without the intention of doing bodily harm.
With the recent Supreme Court decision, I propose the following solution to America’s crime woes. Statistics demonstrate that the ‘visible minority’ population experiences greater crime rates.
The NRA advocate for citizens to carry firearms to ‘protect themselves from crime’.
Therefore in order to reduce crime rates the US government should immediately initiate a program providing free of charge semi automatic firearms and ammunition to all visible minority citizens of the USA.
And naturally these citizens should be allowed ‘open carry’ of these firearms.
According to the NRA and 2nd Amendment advocates that program should very quickly result in a rapid reduction of crime in the USA.
Arm everyone…yeah, that’ll fix it!
@Arthur–We could all go around with semi automatic weapons and target practice on each other. We don’t have to worry about women getting abortions or birth control we can just shoot each other. Now we just have to hire some municipal workers to pick up the body parts.
I would support any initiative that armed civilians wholeheartedly. Now let’s bring the conversation back to cars.
“I would support any initiative that armed civilians wholeheartedly.”
Great idea, Matt. In fact, I think we need to try it in your backyard first. Think about it…8 million chronically p*ssed off New Yorkers, in the most chronically p*ssed off place on Earth, all packing heat. God, what glory.
In fact, let’s start the mass arming in the Bronx first. In July. And let’s make sure everyone is carrying on the subways too. Heck, Bernie Goetz is still alive…make him the spokesman for the whole thing.
Nothing could ever go wrong with any of this…not a chance.
@Arthur–The Proud Boys, White Supremacists, and the Klan would definitely be against minorities defending themselves.
“However, like Chicago, per capita gun crime has remained exceptionally high.”
In fact, New York ranks 59th out of 100 in terms of violent crime rates by city. Chicago’s violent crime rate is almost twice as high.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate
As the largest five American cities go, NYC is the safest one…by far. It’s a hell of a lot safer than Denver…which isn’t known as an unsafe city by any means. The worst city by far is my hometown, St. Louis, and gun laws in North Arkansas (whoops, I mean Missouri) ain’t exactly stringent.
@Freedmike: quite confusing Matt with actual facts and statistics.
Apparently, NYC’s crime rate has gone up recently, but that’s true pretty much everywhere. NYC has been one of the safer big cities for quite some time. I think it’s suffering from its’ old crime rep, which was definitely well earned.
(Not coincidentally…the “crime is skyrocketing in NYC” line has been big on Faux News lately.)
““However, like Chicago, per capita gun crime has remained exceptionally high.”
In fact, New York ranks 59th out of 100 in terms of violent crime rates by city. Chicago’s violent crime rate is almost twice as high.”
So what Matt said is correct. Got it.
Also, crazy with some of the strictest gun laws in the country, Chicago’s violent crime rate is twice as high as NY’s.
It’s almost as if those that are bent on committing a violent crime will get the guns regardless. If only the criminals just followed the gun laws.
Yep. To clarify, as an American I 100% support everyone having the ability to be armed in NYC or anywhere else. This includes and is not limited to all ethnic minorities. I also (and this might REALLY blow your mind) support people owning any vehicle that fits on the road.
Cities may pass whatever noise, parking, or safety ordinances they want and people may continue voting as they please or moving if they don’t like it. But restrictions on what people can own is always a bad look in my opinion. Crushing these bikes is a clown move and will screw over five low-income New Yorkers for every hooligan caught doing wheelies down the parkway.
Since we’re going into the weeds, no discussion on the 40mm people in the US on anti-depressants? How about the The Truth About Prescription Drugs as a catchy new offshoot of TTAC?
What about the exceptionally large number of Americans on ‘disability’?
Sure, Arthur, hit us when we’re down.
By the way, Tim Hortons food is bland! (And hockey is needlessly violent.)
The needless violence of hockey represents the traditional Canadian psyche. If you check the performance of Canadian troops during WWI, WWII, Korea, Somalia and Afghanistan, you would find multiple examples of our ‘propensity for violence’.
This includes initiating the first ‘trench raids, the execution/torture of prisoners, the refusal to take prisoners who had fired their weapons, calling artillery fire onto their own positions, and training/employment of the most lethal of snipers.
Canadians ‘play nice’ only to a certain point.
@Arthur Dailey – “They” had put the Airborne troops on guard duty. It made no sense having special forces killers assigned to that task. That was a recipe for disaster. I knew 2 Airborne veterans. Both were “different”. I can say the same for any veteran I’ve known that’s seen combat.
“no discussion on the 40mm people in the US on anti-depressants?”
The USA the only country on the planet with depression? That typically increases the odds of suicide not murder. Read my comment up-thread.
Mental health is the default gun fatality scapegoat used by Republicans in the USA. Those same individuals don’t support any measures to improve health care. If that’s the issue, fix it.
@Lou_BC–Those politicians are against spending any money on mental health just like they are against abortion and birth control but don’t want to provide any help for those women who cannot afford to have a child or if a woman has no other choice when its her life at jeopardy. Their attitude is better 2 deaths than 1 murder. Those politicians don’t want to fix anything they just want to take the money from the lobbyists and continue to bloviate. The difference between most of these Republicans (not all) and prostitutes is that one is more honest about what they do and the other one is much less moral and less principled. I have more respect for used car salesmen than I do for most politicians.
I have wondered about prescription drug abuse and rising rates of depression contributing to the uptick in fatal car accidents. But it’s been really hard to find good data on the subject.
@Matt Posky – a positive drug screen in a fatality might get included in substance abuse statistics. Drug screens will show narcotics and associated analogs, benzodiazapines(Valium etc.), amphetamines and associated analogs, barbiturates, cocaine, cannabis, and maybe a few others. It would depend on the quality of the testing. Mass spectrometry will be much more accurate that a typical reagent test strip. A suicide via a car crash might not get captured as such. Just another high speed crash.
“Well now you can carry around a gun anywhere in NY after the Supreme Court ruling.”
So you didn’t read the opinion. Got it.
You probably think abortion was outlawed too.
Jeff S. Your comments are at best ill informed. The Supreme court decision appears fairly narrow in it’s limitations of NY’s many unconstitutional gun laws. NY has for over a century said you had to have a permit just to own a pistol. To get this permit in the counties ruled by democrats you had to either be connected to powerful democrats or show a specific reason why you needed to own one. In Eric county (buffalo) if you put (because it is my 2nd amendment right ) on your application as reason for applying it would be denied. In NY City you can forget getting a permit unless you are very wealthy or well connected to one of the many crooked democrats that run the dump. That’s just some of the many stupid laws passed by democrats that violate the 2nd amendment and succeed only in keeping law abiding citizens from exercising their rights. Restricting constitutional rights of law abiding citizens has never and will never reduce crime. Failing to punish bad/illegal behavior on the other hand is guaranteed to encourage more of the same.
I am not a gun owner but if everyone is carrying a gun then I will to defend myself. I don’t like extremes whether it be from those who want to eliminate all guns to those who want to carry a gun everywhere. In my county you now have the right to carry a gun into the county and municipal offices will you eventually have a right to carry a gun into a courthouse or on an airplane. Seems we go from one extreme to the other. I do agree that one has the right to protect their home and property but this is beyond that. What is to prevent someone from carrying a semi automatic weapon on a airplane and if someone offends you just shoot them. I am afraid of the extreme. Again my reason for wanting to own a gun is to defend myself and if everyone is going to openly carry a gun then I will get one but I would rather not.
I think the issue that made the difference for the Supreme Court was the inherent unfairness of picking and choosing who gets to carry a concealed weapon based on NYC’s own determination of “proper cause” to have that permit. It boiled down to being basically at the pleasure of NYC, which makes the system extremely prone to bias and corruption.
Looking at it another way, would you want gun rights in a one-horse southern town to be decided at the sole pleasure of the sheriff? It’s too easy for that to become a tool to punish the “wrong kind of people”.
I don’t think legal carry on a passenger plane will be opened up to the general population, because of the danger of mass casualties. But even if it was opened up, everyone still goes through a scanner, and permits could be checked right there. It’s vastly different from a public street where anyone could be anywhere, with anything in their pocket. There should be sensible limits, but it’s clear that not everyone agrees on what those limits should be.
Agree with sensible limits but that will not happen especially with the NRA. What has happened in the aftermath of some of the mass shootings is the victims and their families are made into scapegoats. In Uvalde law enforcement hesitated to go into the school because they did not want to face the automatic weapon even when they were wearing bulletproof vests. We have become so use to mass shootings that we no longer blink an eye at them and we expect them to happen.
Hi there NYC. You get what you vote for. Enjoy!
I’m probably the only commenter here who has seen these multiple times. Here’s what it is, and there is no political aspect, it has happened under every single mayor forever, even that moron who recently fell from grace hard in the last administration…..You are sitting in NYC grid traffic, the Zero Vision lights pacing you at 22 mph. Suddenly, you hear the zing-ding of two strokes…a blast from my past ! Anywhere from 5-30 dirt bikes and Quads with open exhausts converge on you from out of nowhere…when the light goes green they wheelie off in all directions. Cops can’t easily catch them as they go where-ever, use sidewalks, etc. It is a public safety nightmare for the PD but the majority of the riders get away easily. These that got caught probably had a mechanical fail or just guessed wrong on the getaway..
If you don’t love the ring ding as I do, it scares the crap out of the normals….and makes things look out of control, feeding the Fun City narrative so many like about NYC….having lived there the nonsense that is propagated about the place to outsiders is actually funny.
I’ve seen this since 1979, and it probably existed earlier. Most have never been registered in any sort of legal way, so finding the owners isn’t so easy….
Very occasionally they clip and injure an innocent, but the main result is be a thumb in the eye to NYPD.
Very good point. Large groups of bikers (and lately some ATV riders) have been a fixture of the New York summer for as far back as I can remember. There are also numerous biker clubs and hangouts around the city. I even used to frequent some, though I never much liked group rides. It’s all exactly as described above and can indeed be a nuisance, making it easy to imagine why some residents would embrace the spectacle of crushing bikes… even if they’re not the ones making the noise and the governor’s show doesn’t actually do anything to solve the problem.
Agree with your post. When I first saw this on the news, I agreed with the crushing, but after seeing so many electric bikes etc. in the pile which would have nothing to do with the problem, I’m not sure this will address the issue. I have no suggestions on what to do.
My thought (as an outsider) is that, the public safety aspects are being emphasized, but have little to do with the matter. A person on a dirtbike or quad can only do so much damage. The *showing off* is the real problem. People are getting annoyed and they want to put those young whippersnappers in their place. “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down” is a proverb associated with Japanese or other Asian cultures, but I guess it applies here too, to some extent.
Adams is a buffoon. A former transit cop trying to parlay his service into that of a professional law and order man. Like most all politicians today, Adams is an empty suit, will sell his mothers eyes to stay in office but cannot make an intelligent or difficult decision to save his life. They say American’s get the Government they deserve… apparently we deserve imbeciles.
So much for backing the blue…
Mike, you’re better than this.
I’m standing up for a guy who served, versus the OP, who was trashing Adams’ law enforcement service because he was “only” a transit cop. That’s disrespectful, particularly in NYC, where being a transit cop is no picnic. Transit cops there deal with PLENTY of bad guys.
And that crap wasn’t even accurate – Adams served a total of 22 years between the transit police AND the NYPD. What’s the OP’s law enforcement service history look like?
I respect the service of police officers. The OP clearly doesn’t. I called him on it. Perhaps you should be telling the other guy to up his game?
Meanwhile, in automotive news that has nothing to do with Matt Posky’s political worldview, Ford and Stellantis just recalled *****OVER 3 MILLION CARS***** because they can roll away while in park, and Honda recalled hundreds of thousands of Ridgelines because the gas tank has a bad habit of divorcing itself from the vehicle’s underbody. Neither of these egregious safety-related items has been reported on.
But I suppose neither of these stories would generate political haterade.
And on the subject of stupid local politics…Douglas County, Colorado has announced it wants to annex a piece of the city of Denver because it doesn’t like the city’s gun laws. No word on whether the county council was listening to “Dixie” when they came to this decision.
So “meanwhile in automotive news” is a jab to Posky to stick to stories you deem germane but you couldn’t resist the Colorado Gun bit. Though doth protest to much FM :)
“So “meanwhile in automotive news” is a jab to Posky to stick to stories you deem germane…”
No, it’s a jab to Posky to cover stuff that doesn’t fit his political narrative.
And as far as the “Colorado gun bit” is concerned…stupidity is stupidity, whether it’s NYC crushing motorcycles or one county in Colorado looking for Lebensraum in another county because the other county’s gun laws give them the bad feelz. Deal with it.
“So “meanwhile in automotive news” is a jab to Posky to stick to stories you deem germane but you couldn’t resist the Colorado Gun bit. Though doth protest to much FM :)”
He’s an adult child. He could just scroll on but wont. He’s a grade A hypocrite.
I think you misread the Colorado thing. Whatever is decided, no part of Denver will be annexed.
As I understood it, the City of Denver owns some land in Douglas County (outside Denver city limits), which it uses as a Denver city park. Denver has decided to apply gun restrictions in all its city parks, including the one outside its limits. Denver has no legislative authority there, but it does have authority as property owner.
So some people in Douglas County government are considering using eminent domain to purchase that land from the City of Denver, because they don’t like the idea of restricting the carrying of guns on that land.
Personally, I think that’s a bit silly, and I don’t think it will actually happen.
I think the more realistic question it raises is whether it’s appropriate for a municipality to own land outside its own limits. And if it should try to apply city policies within the boundaries of another government entity.
Eminent domain can only be used to purchase private property; this is a park, so it’s public land. Therefore, this would be an annexation.
Eminent domain is covered by the Fifth Amendment. You’d think that people in charge of a county in the Denver area would know that this would be an annexation before they shoot their mouths off – every time they get on a plane, they’re on land annexed by Denver County from Adams County. But – God bless their rock-ribbed souls – I guess they stopped reading the Constitution after Amendment Number Two.
It’s not uncommon for one jurisdiction to own land in another jurisdiction’s territory.
(Snark aside, what bugs me most is getting all Constitutional when they clearly haven’t read the document.)
A pointless waste of good machinery to prove some idiotic political point , not to mention the pollution of the ground below by the residue of internal fluids that weren’t drained if they were at all to begin with . I’d rather see misguided law enforcement go after the loud pipe crowd much like they pulled me over for my loud Chevelle SS with Trush mufflers back in the day(1970s) .
I get that people broke the law on these machines , but at least sell them to salvage yards for parts instead of this idiotic political theater ! This numbskull practice just helps to drive up the price of used bikes for those who can’t afford a new motorcycle .
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