NYC Mayor Eric Adams Has His Own Armed Protection; What About The Rest Of Us?

Opinion

New York – -(AmmoLand.com)- It is important for Americans to recognize—especially for those Americans who reside in New York City—that the City’s Mayor, Eric Adams, is no friend of the common man even as his image-makers project him out to be just that.

Adams isn’t a cut above his predecessor, Bill de Blasio. Rather, he is cut from the same cloth even as he attempts, albeit half-heartedly, to hide that fact.

Of course, every Mayor goes about trumpeting his concern for the welfare of his City and the safety and well-being of the residents in it.

Dealing with mounting crime in a city is a major component of a Mayor’s responsibility to his or her community and to the people who live or work in it.

So, then, as crime in general and violent crime, in particular, continues to plague and soar in New York City, one must pointedly ask what Eric Adams is doing about it?

Well, he is doing two quite different things: one thing for himself and one thing for the little people; the commonality; the preterite: over 8 million people, at last count, according to the NYC Department of City Planning.

As for his own life, safety, and well-being, Adams has pursued one course of action. It’s one that receives little publicity and precious little attention. And both he and Progressive/Marxist establishment leaders who pushed for his election, over that of Curtis Sliwa, want to keep it that way. See also Fox News story.

But, for the public at large—the common people of the New York City—Adams’ Administration has taken action that has drawn much publicity. And that is as he, and his myriad “behind the scenes” consultants, image-makers, and powerful Progressive/Marxist/Globalist Leadership Class do want.

Let us look at the two different approaches to the matter of personal safety in New York City.

For himself, Eric Adams has surrounded himself with firepower—literally—and a lot of it.

In that regard, it is apropos to note that, during his campaign, Adams said he would eschew a security detail.

Yet even during the campaign, Adams equivocated. The Daily News reported, in June 2021:

“Eric Adams once vowed he would carry a gun and ditch his security detail if elected mayor.

Despite his pistol-packing pledge, the former NYPD captain was joined by a phalanx of off-duty cops Tuesday who shadowed the mayoral front-runner as he greeted voters across the city.

Spokeswoman Madia Coleman said a handful of off-duty police volunteered to shadow Adams after a campaign volunteer was stabbed in the Bronx over the weekend.

But Adams suggested the detail came at the NYPD’s direction.

‘I only do what the police tell me to do,’ he said and laughed when asked if he was traveling with a detail.”[Of note] Adams didn’t have much to say about the beefed-up security accompanying him.”

And now that Eric Adams is Mayor, having successfully duped a majority of New York City residents to vote for him, he has even less to say about his personal security.

But he is still laughing. Adams is ever the jovial frontman; the slippery and convivial con man.

Dramatically emoting before the cameras, opening his suit jacket, pulling up a leg of his trousers, and dancing around in a circle, Eric Adams means to demonstrate, like a stage magician, that, after all, “there is no gun up his sleeve.” See the article in Bearing Arms on this.

Obviously, the NYC Mayor doesn’t need to carry a handgun for personal protection. He doesn’t have to be armed, for he has substantial firepower standing all around him. And this is something the public isn’t supposed to notice.

Like the adept stage magician he is, Adams distracts the audience. He directs the audience’s attention solely to himself; away from the stone-faced NYPD security contingent standing around him, guarding him, who, to be sure, do have much up their sleeves—those kinds of things that Eric Adams makes clear he doesn’t have, at least on his person.

The Progressive/Marxist Leadership Class, of which Eric Adams is a part, doesn’t like to advertise the fact—an open secret among its members—that the best protection against violent predatory attack is, after all a pistol in the hands of someone proficient in its use. That little fact runs counter to the running narrative that guns are bad, that no one should have them, even as criminals and the well-connected and powerful have no problems obtaining them, and the average law-abiding citizen is routinely denied one.

But the Mayor’s hypocrisy doesn’t end there.

Contrary to his assertion that he doesn’t take an active interest in the manner of personal security, the reality is quite different, and that reality includes a bit of good, old nepotism. Adams has appointed his brother to head his personal security.

Reuters explains:

“New York City Mayor Eric Adams has reassigned his younger brother to a job overseeing his physical security, the New York Times reported on Wednesday, days after naming him deputy police commissioner of the largest U.S. police department.

Bernard Adams, a retired police sergeant of the New York Police Department, will serve as executive director of mayoral security, a job with a typical salary of $210,000, the Times reported. He was most recently a parking administrator at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, it added.

The 56-year-old could have made $240,000 as an NYPD deputy commissioner. The security director role falls within the structure of the department, from which he retired after two decades on the force, the Times said.

The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.”

All right. We get it! New York City is a dangerous place and the Mayor qua citizen of New York City needs armed protection: a handgun at least, and, perhaps, a submachine gun, as well, discretely tucked away in one or more of his security escorts’ jacket or coat.

But what about the average New York City resident? Is one to conclude that the average “John Doe” or “Jane Doe” doesn’t, apparently, need a firearm for personal protection in the concrete jungle of New York City. That has become painfully obvious.

Obviously, the City cannot, logistically and monetarily, provide NYPD armed security for the average New York City resident.

Furthermore, under the doctrine of sovereign immunity, community police officers have no duty, except under limited and carefully defined circumstances, to provide armed protection for individuals.

On the subject of police responsibility and sovereign immunity, see the Arbalest Quarrel article posted on our website on October 25, 2019, and reposted on Ammoland Shooting Sports News, on November 6, 2019, titled, “What Is The Duty Of A Community’s Police Force Toward A Citizen Whose Life Is In Imminent Threat Of Attack?” The article references a 1989 article co-authored by David Kopel and Stephen D’Andrilli, appearing in the magazine, “Women and Guns.” A reprise and update of the October 25, 2019 Arbalest Quarrel article was posted on the AQ website November 21, 2019. See also the Arbalest Quarrel companion article, posted on our website on July 31, 2020, and reposted on Ammoland Shooting Sports News, on August 6, 2020, titled, “The Government Cannot Protect You!” You Must Protect Yourself!”

What was true, then, is no less true today. Ultimately, the responsibility for one’s health, safety, and well-being fall to oneself as well it should; and as it always has. And, taking that premise as self-evidently true, the answer to the problem of increasing violent crime in the City is plain.

So, then, what is the Mayor’s game plan for securing the safety and well-being of average New York City residents?

The Mayor should allow—and, more to the point, should encourage—the law-abiding, responsible individual to take that responsibility upon him or herself.

The adage, “what is good for the goose, is good for the gander,” aptly applies to this situation. The Mayor is no less a New York City resident, and no less or more deserving of protection from predators than anyone else who lives and/or works in the City.

The Mayor should simplify the application process for those individuals who wish to secure a handgun for self-defense. And, it goes without need to dwell that a responsible person who wishes to take responsibility for his or her own safety and well-being, and the safety and well-being of one’s family, by carrying a handgun should become proficient in the safe handling and use of it.

The incessant threat of predatory attack—a condition that pervades and permeates throughout the City—is not to be denied, and it is not going away anytime soon regardless of what the Mayor intends to do about it. But he adamantly refuses to recognize the fundamental, natural right of the individual to bear arms for his or her own defense.

The Mayor’s stance is unsound and indefensible but there it is nonetheless. The irrefutable fact of it belies anything Mayor Adams says or does to suggest he does care about the life and well-being of the people of New York. Or that he does cherish the Constitutions of the United States and of the State of New York that he has sworn an oath to serve.

Can you say… Only Ones!

About The Arbalest Quarrel:

Arbalest Group created `The Arbalest Quarrel’ website for a special purpose. That purpose is to educate the American public about recent Federal and State firearms control legislation. No other website, to our knowledge, provides as deep an analysis or as thorough an analysis. Arbalest Group offers this information free.

For more information, visit: www.arbalestquarrel.com.