Eric Adams, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, said Sunday that the Democratic Party’s priorities for gun control are “misplaced.”
Adams told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he felt efforts to focus on “assault weapons” were too much the focus of the current Democratic party strategy at the federal level. Instead, he said, Democrats should focus on violence where handguns were used.
“The numbers of those who are killed by handguns are astronomical and if we don’t start having real federal legislation, matched with states and cities, we’re never going to get this crisis under control,” he said on CNN. (RELATED: Eric Adams Wins Democratic Primary In Race To Be New York City’s Next Mayor)
Adams is a retired captain of the New York Police Department and has made his policing experience an important part of his campaign, according to CNN. He received the Democratic Party nomination in the New York City mayoral election July 6.
He criticized the party’s failure to address crime in major cities.
While Adams did not call for a full ban on handguns, he argued that the failure to focus on handguns was a misstep in his party’s response to the surge in violent crime.
Adams went on to praise the efforts of President Joe Biden to have the federal government partner with different states and cities with high numbers of gun crimes.
New York City mayoral candidate Eric Adams says Democratic lawmakers “misplaced” priorities on efforts to curb gun violence https://t.co/panYzgteHK
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) July 11, 2021
This is not the first time Adams has criticized his party. “You’re seeing a Democratic Party, basically they’ve thrown up their hands,” Adams stated on CBS This Morning. “We’re continuing to see the same problems in our inner cities.”