Draconian to the point of stupid

De Blasio Doesn’t Get It

Y. C. P. offers a narrow escape hatch from New York’s punitive gun laws, which are among the harshest in the country. 

The state imposes a 3½-year mandatory minimum prison sentence for people who are convicted of the maximum charge for possessing a loaded gun without a license. 

In some states, possessing a gun without a permit isn’t even a crime. 

Other states treat the offense as a misdemeanor or make exceptions for having an unlicensed gun in one’s home. 

But in New York, gun control has taken a form that includes mandatory prison sentences.

The New York Police Department has long credited “Guns = Prison,” as the slogan goes, for much of New York’s amazing crime drop. 

And it is amazing: Crime has fallen steeply in New York over a quarter century, to a level not seen since the 1950s. 

In 1990, there were 2,245 killings in the city. In 2018, there were fewer than 300.

Yes, there is evidence that civil laws requiring gun permits reduce gun deaths. 

But it’s much harder to find the same effect for mandatory prison sentences. 

Eighty percent of New York City’s drop in homicides happened before the strict mandatory sentences for gun possession went into effect in 2006. 

Researchers have failed to find evidence that compulsory prison time for gun possession resulted in a drop in violent crime in Florida, Virginia, Massachusetts and Chicago.

. . . .

Almost everyone who gets locked up for possessing a gun comes home within a few years, less equipped to get a decent job or housing. 

Brooklyn’s willingness to offer an alternative is Y.C.P’s great innovation.

To reduce and someday end mass incarceration, the country is very much in need of models like this one. 

But Mayor de Blasio doesn’t get it. 

“We should not confuse the goal of diversion, which for nonviolent offenses, is a valid tool,” he said, criticizing Mr. Gonzalez’s commitment to Y.C.P. 

“The N.Y.P.D. is doing amazing, amazing work. 

They need the prosecutors to be just as aggressive.”

But that’s not what the people of Brooklyn opted for when they elected Mr. Gonzales their district attorney in 2017. 

He ran on a progressive platform, promising to make Brooklyn safe by making its communities healthier. 

Y.C.P. is part of that mission. 

Mayor de Blasio could distinguish himself — in his city and in the Democratic presidential field — by standing up for it.