A 24-year-old man who walked bleeding into Lincoln Hospital in The Bronx on Saturday night has pushed the city’s total number of shootings this year to 777 — topping the 776 recorded in all of last year, NYPD data compiled by The Post reveals.
And it’s only the first days of August, with five more months before the year is over.
“It only gets worse from here,” warned Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant and an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
“As the shootings continue, so will retaliation. It’s a vicious cycle that the NYPD worked hard to mitigate, but that they are no longer able and in some cases willing to do.”
The year’s plague of gunplay has touched every borough, killing or injuring 942 victims and cutting down not just hardened gang members but innocent children.
New Yorker’s hearts were broken when stray bullets ended the life of teen Bronx hoops star Brandon Hendricks on June 28, and 1-year-old Brooklyn boy Davell Gardner, shot dead in his stroller on July 13 at a Brooklyn barbecue.
Except for surpassing last year’s tally, the victim of the 777th shooting of 2020 would have drawn none of the attention of those tragedies.
Met by police at Lincoln Hospital, he explained that he was outside at 135th Street and Alexander Avenue, just outside the Mitchel Houses project in Mott Haven, and had heard the sound of gunfire, a law enforcement source told The Post.
He only realized he had been shot when he felt the pain of his injury.
“I’ve been living here 55 years, and I’ve never seen it this bad,” neighbor Mario Martinez said later Saturday night.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s (D) Chicago witnessed a 139 percent increase in murder during July 2020 when compared to July 2019.
ABC7 reported there were 105 murders in July 2020, up from “the 44 reported in July 2019.”
Moreover, there were 406 “shooting incidents” in Chicago during the month of July 2020, an increase of 75 percent “from the 232 last July,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
Over a longer span of time, murders were up 51 percent from January 1, 2020, through July 31, 2020, compared to murders for the same period of time in 2019, according to the Sun-Times.
Lightfoot blamed Chicago mayhem and bloodshed on gun friendly states during a July 26, 2020, appearance on CNN’s State of the Union.
According to The Hill, Lightfoot told CNN, “Our gun problem is related to the fact that we have too many illegal guns on our streets, 60 percent of which come from states outside of Illinois.”
She added, “We are being inundated with guns from states that have virtually no gun control, no background checks, no ban on assault weapons — that is hurting cities like Chicago.”
Lightfoot did not mention that the Chicago area already has an “assault weapons” ban via a Cook County ordinance. Nor did she mention background checks are a federal requirement, mandated for all retail gun sales in every state of the Union, whether that is Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, or California.
The mayor also failed to noted that her state, Illinois, requires everyone to obtain a Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) card before being allowed to possess a gun, and the process for obtaining that card includes a background check.
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