Tuesday, February 21, 2023

The dangers of big "blue" cities from a different perspective

 

Last week I warned (again) of the very real and growing dangers to be found in large "blue" cities, and urged readers to get out of them at once.  Now Francis Porretto brings his own perspective to bear on the dangers threatening his peaceful life in Long Island, New York.


Two new developments are calling into question whether any part of New York State will remain at all safe, especially for us old farts. The first is the state’s determination to strip New Yorkers of their right to keep and bear arms, in defiance of U.S. Supreme Court decisions ... But when combined with this initiative, it grows geometrically worse:

Hochul’s biggest proposal, the Housing Compact, is another misguided attack on local control and single-family zoning. It would compel each town and village in the New York City metro area to increase its housing stock to meet a uniform, state-imposed target and rezone for high-density housing — apartment buildings — within a half-mile of every Metropolitan Transportation Authority train stop.

Say goodbye to quaint downtowns lined with two-story buildings and older houses.

If a town fails to meet state targets, the compact will allow developers to build big in defiance of local zoning boards in almost all cases.

. . .

New York City’s suburbs, most emphatically including Long Island, are opposed to Hochul and her cronies by a large margin. Therefore, we must be compelled to bend the knee. The Housing Compact and the state’s attempt to destroy the right to keep and bear arms are aimed at precisely that.

With single family zoning abolished, large multi-unit dwellings would swiftly follow. With those would come greatly increased traffic, pressure on local infrastructure, and crime. Predators would inevitably multiply, for Long Island’s residents are far more affluent per capita than those of the City. We would suffer an explosion of crimes against persons and property, for New Yorkers are already deprived by law of most of the means of self-defense. It’s close to absolutely illegal for a private New Yorker to acquire a handgun, and the state is moving against previously legal rifles and shotguns as well.

I’ve written on this subject before. My opinions have not changed since then. Neither have the statistics about the frequency of crime in population-dense regions, where multi-family housing is prevalent. But today they’re “coming home” for me in a most unpleasant fashion. My desire to live out my life untroubled might be cross-cut by New York’s vampiric ruling class.


There's more at the link.

Nor is New York state's attack on firearms ownership an isolated affair.  Many "blue" states are pursuing similar objectives.  They can afford to, after all.  They have their own taxpayer funds to call upon to defend those measures in court.  Even if they lose every time, they have deep enough pockets to simply impose new measures and enforce them until they're overturned, and so on, and so on.  They'll make it as difficult and inconvenient as possible to buy and own weapons, knowing that those defending our Second Amendment rights have nowhere near as much money to make their case in court every time.  They'll do their best to bankrupt us in the process.

The federal government, under the Biden administration, is complicit in this process.  We learned this past week that the ATF is now using any violation of federal firearms licence requirements, no matter how trivial or inconsequential, to revoke those licenses and shut down the dealer(s) concerned.  It's no longer a matter of bringing dealers into compliance;  it's making sure their businesses are destroyed.  It's as bad as that.

Think of this from a practical perspective.  If there's no licensed firearms dealer near you, where are you going to buy a gun?  Private transactions can be mandated to go through a dealer, so that a background check on the purchaser can be performed.  That's already law in some jurisdictions - but if there's no dealer available, that short-circuits private sales.  Also, if you need ammunition or other supplies, what will you do if there's no local source for them?  Sure, you can order them by mail, but that's slower, and if you need the ammo in a hurry, that won't do.  Furthermore, some states have already made it illegal to buy ammunition in that way, or imposed onerous bureaucratic requirements on the process.  The same could happen in any "blue" state at any time, or even be imposed by the federal government for nebulous (and almost certainly spurious) "security reasons".

Friends, all that I said in my earlier article remains true.  I'll add this to it:  if you live in a city or state that's contemplating similar anti-gun measures, act now.  If you haven't got a firearm, or enough of them (i.e. one per adult family member, preferably one long gun and one handgun apiece at a minimum), get them now while you still can, and lay in a stash of ammunition while you're about it.  Firearms and ammunition are like parachutes.  If you need it, but don't have it, it's too late to go and get it!  They're not your best defense, of course - that would be moving to a safer place while the going's good - but it's a whole lot better than nothing.

One last point.  If you've built up your collection of firearms over time, think of what will happen to them when you die.  I've seen some collections thrown away for pennies on the dollar because those who inherited them didn't appreciate what they had, or didn't care.  Why not determine in advance who will get them, and spread them around as widely as possible to people who'll value them - and, if necessary, use them to defend themselves and their loved ones?  You could even do this before you die, by passing on to others guns you no longer use yourself.  In this way, you'll leave a legacy of greater security and self-sufficiency to the next generation.  I've been doing that for some time, and I'll continue to do so.  At the very least, it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to equip others to stand on their own two feet.

Peter


17 comments:

Aesop said...

NYFC and NYFS are outliers, like their brethren in Chicongo, Philthydelphia, the District of Criminals, the Baltimorons, and for some time now, Lost Angeles, the People's Republic of Portland, and Seattlegrad.

That would be eight nuclear strikes that would improve the country, not harm it, in the long run.

Anybody inside those environs has had their own rewards. People who think being slumlords at the top of those dungheaps is a great occupation skipped the history lesson on what happens when the peasants and lumpenproletariat revolt every several years, as they always do in most banana republics.

Those domestic sh*tholes may provide a template for other areas and a few misguided idiots in far-flung regions, but anyone who wanted that paradigm is already there, and the rest who don't moved away and out of range a long, long time ago.

And those outside them know that those inside are the ones with the most to lose by trying to upset the applecart.
Starting with interruption of power, water, and food, and followed in short order by World War Z-like conditions until the problem fully self-corrects.

Fredrick said...

Colonization via centralized zoning. Baltimore was farming out section eight voucher recipients a decade ago. This simply allows "blue" developers to avoid local zoning and cash in on government subsidies before selling out the development a few years later. Running away is hardly a victory solution.

RHT447 said...

Peter,

You might consider adding DTI to your blog roll. Given the topic of this post, I found this quip interesting--

https://defense-training.com/willful-ignorance/

You can sign up to receive quips by email. Lots of good info there.

John and Vicki are personal friends of a buddy I served with.

Anonymous said...

Part of the problem is is that it seems even red states are contemplating something similar. I read Porettos column and it hits close to home, seeing as how I too live in the Marxist shithole of New York and not far from a train station. How long until my investment tanks in value simply so the inner-city ferals can get hauled out to my neck of the woods, so that the district will be flipped back to blue? Because that's really what's going on here.

Peter said...

@RHT447: Yes, I've cited John's quips several times in these pages. Good people and valuable advice.

boron said...

I have only one question that I've been asking for a while now:
Why are these people so determined to turn this country into a 3rd World sh1thole?

Beans said...

And it's not just blue states.

Gainesville, Florida, city commission voted, over the wishes of a lot of residents, to go multi-dwelling and abolish single-family housing, including eliminating single-family districts that have been long-standing SFD.

If you look at a voting map of Florida, that would be that blue county (Alachua County) in an otherwise sea of red in the north central section of Florida.

Anywhere the Blues have power, and power to make the rules over the wishes of residents, the Blues will try this bullscat. ANYWHERE.

Gainesville and Alachua County have already collectively had their peepees slapped by Governor DeSantis over lots of issues, from the Covidiocracy to Arms issues (thankfully the State has preemption over weapons.)

But that doesn't stop our dear Blue Leaders from forcing garbage down our throats. And once voted in, in secret or in open (though lots of this stuff happens in secret in violation of Sunshine rules) it is almost impossible to stop.

RHT447 said...

@Peter. Indeed you have, now that I am properly reminded. I at least wanted to let folks know that his quips are available for the asking.

Paul, Dammit! said...

Most of the support staff for my company's New York based tugboat and oil barge fleet live on Long Island and make the 2 hours each way commute daily into Brooklyn where the office is. I fly. I don't want to live within commuting distance of a leftist state.
I feel for the office staff. Even in my home in S. FL, developers can bypass certain zoning restrictions in otherwise nice suburbs and put up apartment buildings where they're not wanted, by setting aside some of the units for affordable housing.
I left a community that was made affordable by force, in MA, years ago. It's since become a ghetto. That's what happens.
I feel for people who don't want their neighborhoods urbanized. My community has an average home price somewhere north of $600,000. Took me years of planning and sacrifice to be able to live here. Of course I'm giving the hairy eyeball to some New York d-bags who are trying to put a 50-unit Moscow Gulag-looking concrete apartment high rise full of section-8 people in a town where structures over 2 stories aren't otherwise allowed. As I said in DiveMedic's site before, IDGAF if people can't afford to live where they want. People in hell want ice water.

Anonymous said...

the long term comforts of "big cities" produces boiled frogs, even out of the most staunch " conservatives"... put your physical self where your "mental" self says everything is great, say Texas of Idaho, otherwise its all just coffee house bullshit

Old NFO said...

I can see a new version of Memphis writ large with the criminal 'spread' to the suburbs...

Mind your own business said...

If you need ammunition "in a hurry" it's a sign you don't stockpile enough of it.

Anonymous said...

I wonder what would happen if the localities in question refused to help with building if they were overridden?
Threats of no trash, no water, no sewer, no LE could make developers think again...

MrGarabaldi said...

Hey Peter;

They want to shoehorn "The Hoi Pelloi" into multi family dwellings, and limit our travel options, make us easier to control while they live far away from the crime and filth such conditions bring because they are "our Betters". They strip our guns away so we have no say in this and have to do what they tell us. they have to strip us of our wealth, our 401K's so we have to depend on them for everything, once that happens, they own us, Modern day feudalism. I believe this is the plan.

Jonathan H said...

Unless you commute to work, there is very little value in living close to a train station. In my opinion, there is a considerable disincentive in the form of additional noise, traffic, and crime.
But then, the nearest I lived to a major city was 20 miles away as a kid and I have progressively moved farther away as an adult.
Currently, I am 200 miles from the nearest city over 25,000 people - but my biggest concern is an interstate that goes straight from that city through the nearby town.

Hamsterman said...

Calfornia has already banned online ammunition sales, as they must be done in person at an ammunition dealer and a "background check" run. You can bypass this by getting a C&R FFL licence and a state COE, which costs $$.

Aesop said...

@Hamsterman,

That was the first inning.
Pray Judge Benitez of the Ninth Circus has a long and uneventful life, and watch the box score change.