By Steve Levy
Suffolk showed a 44% increase in shootings this past month and a large part of it were shootings by individuals under the age of 18.
Immediately, not-for-profit groups were quoted in various articles, claiming how the only way to make the streets safer and prevent these shootings was more nonprofits getting an increase in funding.
If only it were that easy.
There’s very little proof to show that these well-intentioned groups actually do much to affect these shootings. They often serve an important purpose and can be very worthy, but we shouldn’t fool ourselves into believing that more midnight basketball programs will stop shootings among 16-year-olds.
The thing that is causing the rapid increase in young people getting shot is that more young people have been carrying guns and shooting them. It’s thanks to a crazy law called “Raise The Age” that was passed by the state legislature, and then signed by then-Governor Andrew Cuomo, which dramatically reduced penalties for people under 18 committing violent crimes.
This foolish law has been mirrored in other blue cities throughout the country, including Washington D.C., where the murder rate is higher than any state in the union. Judge Jeanine Pirro, who is now serving as the Department of Justice attorney for the district, notes that a person 24 years of age can commit attempted murder, but not be tried as with an older person unless the person actually died.
Sixteen-year-olds who commit heinous crimes are diverted from the general court system and go to Family Court, where they are sought to be rehabilitated with ice cream socials.
Let’s stop the naïveté and get serious. Change these laws to where they were in the Giuliani administration so that 16- and 17-year-olds know that if they go out in the streets and do the bidding of the older kingpins, they’re going to be tried just like the kingpins would.
It’s important, not only to protect innocent potential victims, but also to protect the young people themselves. It’s this lowering of the age that prompted the gangbangers to start using the younger kids more frequently. We are culpable as a society if we allow these laws to continue.