NYC Shooting Emblematic of Surging Crime Nationwide

BUCK: Clay, I just gotta say as a New Yorker as we’re waiting to get the police update here on this shooting in New York City subway, it’s heartbreaking when you see how many people have been injured, shot, going to school, going to work, trying to live their lives.

In the background of all this, too, is a city that has gotten a lot less safe in general, like so many others across the country — Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco — crime feels like it just keeps escalating, violent crime. And, for a place like New York, the subway is the artery, if you will, it is the series of arteries that connect us all to each other. To go after this just feels like a kick in the stomach of a city that is already reeling.

CLAY: Well, this is just emblematic of the larger issues with crime that are occurring everywhere. I ran through the list, but I think it’s worth hitting because in addition to the 8.5% inflation, which is just every single day so many people out there feel it. You know, New York City obviously gets a lot of attention because there’s a large collection of media. And the subway itself has had so many viral, unfortunate incidents, it feels like, of late.

But when you look at some of these numbers — and I mentioned them, you know, they constantly are updating here. But, Buck, just listen to some of these cities and the rate of murder, right, because crime in general is sometimes difficult to track down. But when you actually look at year-to-year murder increases that are going on, they’re through the roof. I mean, what’s going on all over this country is absolutely terrifying.

And it’s going to be a big part of this midterm. Atlanta up 43%. Birmingham up 40%.

BUCK: Clay, can I just break in for a second here —

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: — ’cause they’re starting the press conference right now in New York City live. Let’s go to it. We’ll come back with those numbers, that data.

BUCK: All right. So we’re hearing there from Hochul, who is giving a speech, they didn’t go to any updates on the information here from her, the governor of New York there. Clay, people can get into the technicalities of this, whether or not — we don’t know why this person did it. We don’t have the person in custody. That’s the single most important thing.

They’re saying it’s not being investigated as an act of terror yet. That can change. I think it is likely to change. The range of possibilities that come to mind, obviously act of terror, we don’t know what the idea the ideology is behind it, a just deranged individual, more of a mass shooter incident, you know, something along the lines of what we’ve seen in other times, you know, the Colorado movie theater shooter, for example, someone who’s just completely insane or could be a hate crime situation.

We just don’t know. We don’t know who the individuals are who were targeted, but those seem like possibilities. It was clearly planned in advance. And it’s stunning and a piece of good news in an otherwise very troubling morning here, no one has life-threatening injuries from what —

CLAY: Which is pretty wild. Pretty wild to think about when you’re talking about the shooting taking place in such a closed situation. But to me all this coming together just continues — and I know any individual act of violence is hard to be attributed to any particular incident.

But this is to me, Buck, just symptomatic of larger issues of violent crime that are surging across the country at the same time that inflation is hitting eight and a half percent, a 40-plus year high, that the border is poised to be open, and that on the East Coast they are trying to bring back masks.

It’s just everything that can go wrong since Joe Biden has become president feels like it’s going wrong when you look at every situation, not only in the United States but around the world.

And I don’t know how we get back to a sense of normalcy, but the first hundred days for Mayor Eric Adams in New York City I know many people were optimistic that it was going to represent a substantial change from the de Blasio administration. You can speak to this far better than I can. But things do not seem to be getting better in New York City now.

BUCK: I was deeply pessimistic and everyone in New York who wasn’t is saying that I was right so far, unfortunately, about the new mayor, the new administration. I think that, you know, there’s been really a shift in the Democrat Party.

Until the mainstream narrative of the Democrat Party switches from we need to invest resources in the community to stop crime to we’re gonna back up our cops, look up criminals, and take the threat to public safety as an immediate crisis that we’re going to stop instead of a 10- to 20-year horizon of maybe if we do more, you know, youth programs and outreach efforts, that’s all fine.

I’m not opposed to any of that. But you gotta lock up the bad guys now. It is men who are committing these violent crimes, obviously, over 95% of violent crimes committed by men, it is young man in particular. There has to be a change in the ideology or a change in the approach and the focus.

I mean, Clay, you know, there will be a lot of speculation about this individual before we get more information about it. What are the chances that this person had either a long criminal record of some kind or a clear psychiatric record of people knowing that he, you know, needed the attention of the state shall we say? Very high.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Don’t know for sure, but the probability is high.

CLAY: That’s the problem, right? You are having so many of these people who are engaging in violent acts all over the country are people who should still be behind bars.

And the real amazing thing about the Joe Biden administration and really the 47-plus years that Joe Biden spend in office is probably the best thing he ever did was the 1994 crime bill, and he ran trying to pretend that he hadn’t done it. That’s honestly what we need, Buck. We need people back in jail. We need police back on the streets. We need district attorneys who are actually going to prosecute crimes.

And until that happens, this lawlessness is going to continue to skyrocket. And, by the way, it’s not just shootings. The lawlessness is taking place, the amount of shoplifting that is going on is unprecedented all over the country. I was reading the data on shoplifting is through the roof everywhere.

They’re shutting down stores in San Francisco, for instance, because there’s so much shoplifting they can’t make money in those stores. I mean, that’s unheard of.

BUCK: Redistribution of wealth, by the way. That’s what they think shoplifting is. That’s really if you go to the hard left, they believe that this is, you know, making up for inequity in society.

CLAY: Well, certainly it has not helped that we’ve set so high limits now on shoplifting. We went to start punishing everyone who is committing crimes of a high level.