Another week, another grotesque act of violence in one of New York’s least sensitive places.
According to news reports, around 7p.m. on Sunday, May 6, a deranged man attacked five victims with a knife in the N.J. Transit Concourse section of New York City’s Penn Station. According to the New York Post, the violence “left at least one victim seriously wounded, two with moderate injuries and two others with minor injuries.” The Post article contains a picture of the wound one gentleman suffered to his face, while two other victims were struck in the neck.
The alleged attacker has a lengthy criminal history. The Post explained,
His at least seven prior arrests – six of which unfolded in New Jersey – include busts for aggravated assault, unlawful possession of a weapon, use or possession of drugs, assault, domestic assault and criminal mischief.
Moreover, the suspect has a history of violence with knives. The alleged attacker was reportedly sentenced to a mere two years probation following a February 8, 2022, stabbing in Newark, NJ. The Post also pointed out that the suspect “faces an active assault and criminal mischief case from 2025 in Newark.”
While New York and New Jersey have shown little appetite for protecting the public by incapacitating dangerous criminals, the jurisdictions have worked ceaselessly to prevent the law-abiding public from protecting themselves.
Following the landmark Second Amendment U.S. Supreme Court case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), which made clear that law-abiding Americans have a right to bear arms outside the home for self-defense, New York erected a host of barriers to exercising this right.
In the Bruen decision, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote,
the historical record yields relatively few 18th- and 19th-century “sensitive places” where weapons were altogether prohibited—e.g., legislative assemblies, polling places, and courthouses—we are also aware of no disputes regarding the lawfulness of such prohibitions … We therefore can assume it settled that these locations were “sensitive places” where arms carrying could be prohibited consistent with the Second Amendment. And courts can use analogies to those historical regulations of “sensitive places” to determine that modern regulations prohibiting the carry of firearms in new and analogous sensitive places are constitutionally permissible.
On July 1, 2022, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) signed the Empire State’s mistitled “Concealed Carry Improvement Act.” Regardless of Justice Thomas’s command, in the wake of the Bruen case an intransigent New York set about prohibiting firearms in all manner of what the state dubiously defined as “sensitive locations.”
Perhaps the most transparently ludicrous so-called “sensitive location” is in and around public transit.
NY PENAL § 265.01-e. “Criminal possession of a firearm, rifle or shotgun in a sensitive location,” prohibits firearm possession at:
(n) any place, conveyance, or vehicle used for public transportation or public transit, subway cars, train cars, buses, ferries, railroad, omnibus, marine or aviation transportation; or any facility used for or in connection with service in the transportation of passengers, airports, train stations, subway and rail stations, and bus terminals;
Of course, the areas in and around public transit share almost nothing in common with the “sensitive places” the Court outlined in Bruen.
Consider an August 2024 New York Post article titled, “Why throngs of NYC’s homeless are choosing Penn Station over shelters — and leaving commuters in a constant state of fear.”
The paper noted, “the invasion of shelter-refusing homeless, many of whom are mentally ill, has brought increasing squalor, open drug use and the lingering threat of random violence to Penn Station.” The outlet quoted one unhoused individual who said, “If you’re homeless and you need someplace to go, you go to Penn...” A commuter told the Post, “The scariest part of my day is coming in and out of Penn Station.”
During a 2021 press conference about Penn Station, Gov. Hochul said of the transit hub, “it is hellacious, it’s crowded, it’s disgusting.” A 2022 New York Times article reported that Hochul has called Penn Station a “hellhole.”
Despite reasonable objections to what may go on inside, “legislative assemblies, polling places, and courthouses” are not typically squalid “hellhole[s]” where mentally ill vagrants are allowed to congregate and misbehave with impunity.
Despite repeated losses at the U.S. Supreme Court, New York continues to prioritize its anti-gun ideology over compliance with the Constitution or the safety of its residents or visitors. Train and bus stations are not invariably violent “hellholes.” It takes especially bad governance for that to happen, and New Yorkers should demand better.
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