Judging Freedom - Do NYC Subways need Metal Detectors?

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

Mayor Eric Adams on Monday said he is considering three types of metal detectors to be used in the subway system#NYCSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello there everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, April 19th, 2022. It's about 2.25 in the afternoon on the east coast of the United States. Last week in the New York City subway system, there was a horrible death-defying event. I say death-defying because 16 people were shot and nobody died, in which a crazy guy set off a canister of smoke, which terrified and terrorized everybody, and then he started shooting them. Eventually, the subway stopped and people ran out. 32 hours later, they caught this guy,

and they caught him largely because they followed his social media, in which he ranted and raved against just about everything under the sun, not the least of which was racially based. The guy had a gun which was an unlawful gun. It was a very, very strong Glock gun, handgun, so powerful and so expensive the police don't even use this weapon because it would cost the government too much, most governments, to buy these for the police. When they went to find this guy, the police did what they ordinarily do, which is go to the security system and the security cameras in the subway system. And as it turned out, the security cameras weren't working. Either the cameras themselves were defective or the Wi-Fi wasn't working or something went wrong between the camera capturing who this guy was as he ran out of the subway. And their ability to reproduce that capture. I don't even think it's been resolved yet what went wrong.

I myself condemn the idea of government surveillance. This is nothing but a crutch for the police. The police demonstrated they were able to catch this guy without cameras. Cameras produce a surveillance state, a thing under observation changes on account of its being observed. That applies to flowers and animals and to human beings. We don't need to be in a society where the government watches us all the time. Now, as if to compensate for the failure of his own security system, Mayor Eric Adams, himself a retired New York Police Department captain, has decided on his own, not with any vote by the city

council, because the council would vote against this, to install metal detectors on certain entrances to the city subway. There are over 500 city subway stations and three or four times that amount of turnstiles that you can go through to get on the subway system. Putting metal detectors on any of them will, of course, allow people to circumvent the metal detectors. Putting metal detectors on all of them would be cost prohibitive without a vote by the city council because the mayor's discretionary funds are not large enough to pay for this many

metal detectors. But do we really want to go through metal detectors in order to get on a subway? What is the root of this problem? Is the root of the problem that bad guys can get guns? Or is the root of the problem that good guys can't? I firmly am of the view that if the people that wrote the Second Amendment could somehow be around today, they would be shocked that governments prevent us from protecting ourselves. All it would have taken is one person in that subway car who was carrying a handgun and who knew how to use it. And this guy would have been stopped whether the cameras worked or not. Instead, getting on a subway is going to be like

getting on a plane, where someone's going to stop you and wand you. And then if you have metal in your body or on your person that's not a gun, you're going to have to reveal what it is. If it is a gun, you're going to have to prove that you can lawfully carry it. I don't see this working. I see this as an intrusion on privacy. And yet again, another example of the government giving the impression it is doing something to keep people safe. How about keeping our liberties safe? You don't need a permit from the government to stand on a street corner and tell the public how bad government is for human liberty. Why do you need a permit from the government to carry a small sidearm to protect yourself? Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.