NEWYORK: New York city Mayor Eric Adams said that elected leaders, as well as the religious leaders, are a fair representation of what we are feeling in our country on the whole and we must start the process of healing not only our country, but healing our young people.
Talking with faith leaders to deal with the normalizing of political violence, Mayor Adams said that when a bullet leaves the barrel of the gun, it does not discriminate.
“There’s so many questions that I believe is lingering over us. What happens when a 20-year-old reaches a point where they believe the only way to settle their political differences and disputes is to use an AR-15 or AK-47 or any other form of handgun or weapon,”? he questioned.
“That sends a terrible message. It only mirrors the poll that I have been quoting for the last few months, that only 18 percent of 18 to 34-year-olds really love America,” he said.
He said that we have watched our children [be] radicalized to a place to be anti-everything. The extremes have basically hijacked what we feel as a country and what we stand for.
He said that we want to send out a clear and loud message on how do we live together as members of the greatest race alive, and that’s the human race.
“It was a chilling visualization as I watched what happened yesterday, inches away from the former president losing his life. It’s unimaginable that his children would have to experience that, his wife, those who love him and his family, and those who are politically aligned with him. To watch that in horror, to see the history of what bullets have done, how it has reshaped our past, and it could reshape our future,” he said.
“Ever since Abraham Lincoln, Dr. King, Ronald Reagan, the families of the Kennedys, both senator and President Kennedy losing their lives, Medgar Evers losing his life, we’re watching how the destructive power of a bullet can change the entire direction of our entire country. I am troubled by some of the responses we saw on social media on so many different levels,” he said.
“We have to ask ourselves, what are we doing to our young people and our families, and how do we regain that? I believe it’s by doing the accumulation of people who are here today, to start with this small group, and really put in place a letter that we’re going to send out and ask everyone to sign on to it, to stop this toxic violence that we’re seeing.”
He said that political violence is not how we settle, how we peacefully transfer power in this country. We have been a living example for the entire globe on the success of this country in its hundreds of years, as we’re on the eve of the 400th year celebration of how we have managed, even during difficult times, to show who we are as Americans.
“We must live together, we must start the process of healing not only our country, but healing our young people. A 20-year-old was in possession of an automatic weapon and was willing to use it to take the life of someone he had a political difference with. That is not acceptable, and it’s not who we are as a country, and it’s not who we are as an individual, and it’s not who we believe our children should become,” he said.
“There’s no place for hate in our city or our country. I’m going to commit myself to those who are standing here today, and those who are not here because they could not make it because of short notice, to state we will move our country in the right direction, he added.
To a question with regard to any threats to any local Trump-owned properties in the city, Mayor Adams said that there has not been any threats, known threats, to the property.
“I have a good team, a security team right now. They’re doing their job, and I have a lot of confidence in them. I don’t feel the need to do so, and so there’s not a purpose,” he said.
