New York Post - 27.08.2019

New York Post, Tuesday, August 27, 2019

nypost.com

22

[email protected]

E-MAIL: [email protected] or WRITE to The Editor, The New York Post, 1211 Avenue of the

Americas, New York, NY 10036. Include name, address and daytime phone number. No unverifiable

letters will be published. The Post reserves the right to edit all letters.

The New York Post is published by N.Y. P. Holdings Inc., 1211 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10036.

Rupert Murdoch, Chairman; Sean M. Giancola, Publisher; Stephen Lynch, Editor-in-Chief;

Mark Cunningham, Editorial Page Editor

Toughening Up Gun Laws:

President Trump’s Dilemma

THE ISSUE: President Trump’s waffling on enacting

stronger gun laws, including background checks.

President Trump should

not let the National Rifle

Association move him on

his initial call for universal

background checks for

gun purchases (“Don’s

Chance,” Jonathan Tobin,

PostOpinion, Aug. 26)

I am a firm believer in

the Second Amendment

right to own a firearm. A

protocol of common-

sense regulations and laws

to control ownership does

not impede that right.

The president has the

opportunity to make our

country safer in true bi-

partisan fashion. Listen-

ing to Wayne LaPierre is

not the way to go about it.

Peter Kelly

Hazlet, NJ

Trump claims not to be

a puppet of the NRA.

That is just not true. The

NRA is one of the most

powerful organizations in

the United States.

Its membership is in

the millions, mostly Re-

publicans, and many of

them likely voters.

There is absolutely no

reason for any citizen to

own a rapid-fire rifle. I

am not against hunting; I

am against killing inno-

cent people.

Trump says that rifles

don’t pull the trigger, bad

people do. Well, if bad

people could not get their

hands on an AR-15 or any

rapid-fire weapon, we

would have much less

killing. Ban the sale of

these weapons to civil-

ians, period. D. Mann

Miller Place

There is no possible law

that can be passed that

will solve the tragic di-

lemma of mass shooters.

The Post is advocating a

virtue-signaling waste of

time aimed at lawful gun

owners. “Stop and frisk”

policies have been aban-

doned, and street shoot-

ings in areas with strict

gun control, such as Chi-

cago, continue.

Heroin and cocaine traf-

ficking is banned. How is

that working out? Crimi-

nals can easily obtain

drugs. The same holds

true for weapons.

Imagine if gun-control

advocates got your wish,

and we magically banned

and eradicated all fire-

arms. We would simply

see mentally-ill persons

adopt the methods of the

recent Kabul suicide

bomber. Steven Eber

Coral Gables, Fla.

The president isn’t alto-

gether at fault by “back-

tracking” on stiffer back-

ground checks. Has it

not occurred to anyone

in Washington that back-

ground checks for pur-

chasers of semi-auto-

matic rifles and rolls of

ammunition are counter-

productive?

In fact, they would set

up a new, highly profit-

able business. What

would stop buyers who

could pass the strictest

background check from

purchasing these deadly

weapons and selling

them to demented mass

killers for double or more

the purchase price? What

a bonanza for the “clean”

buyers. Let’s outlaw the

semi-automatics alto-

gether. It’s high time.

Paul Laric

Manhattan

An Elevator Nightmare

THE ISSUE: A 30-year-old man who was killed by a

malfunctioning elevator in a building in Manhattan.

We’re all taught that

nonsense that “you get

what you pay for,” but

that poor man didn’t get

crushed to death by a

New York City Housing

Authority elevator in the

projects (“Elevator emer-

gency,” Aug. 26).

He was paying to live in

a luxury building, which

had two elevators that

had a history of prob-

lems.

Think of all the resi-

dents now trapped in

that building, scared to

ever take those faulty el-

evators again.

Uchena Shorey

Brooklyn

Elevator travel is gen-

erally safe, but as with

anything mechanical or

electrical, there can be

occasional faults.

In most cases, people get

hurt getting out of a mov-

ing elevator, which no one

should ever attempt to do.

You’re safer inside an ele-

vator waiting for a fire-

fighter to rescue you.

The poor man who

died would be alive now

if he just stayed inside

the elevator.

John Clabough

Pine Bush

President Trump

America’s oldest continuously published daily newspaper

P

resident Trump took French President

Emmanuel Macron’s Iran gambit in

stride as the G-7 Summit wound to a

close — probably because Trump saw

that Macron’s real game was pure politics.

The Frenchman’s policies have sent his

own approval ratings into the tank. Nearly

retired German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s

coalition is on life support; Canadian Pre-

mier Justin Trudeau is reeling from a cor-

ruption scandal. Italy’s Giuseppe Conte an-

nounced his resignation days before the

summit opened; Britain’s Boris Johnson just

took over as prime minister and holds a pa-

per-thin majority.

Japan’s Shinzo Abe is the only G-7 leader

whose grip on power back home might be

stronger than Trump’s — and he announced

a trade deal with Washington during the

meetings.

So the idea that the gathering would set

any long- or even short-term common pol-

icy for the world’s wealthiest nations was al-

ways a fiction, however much the media

sought to paint it as another round of “world

appalled by Trump.”

Macron, this year’s host, originally wanted

the summit to center on climate change and

inequality. But those are the very issues kill-

ing him with French voters, hence his shift

to pretending to try to resurrect the Iran

deal on the sidelines.

Whatever heads-up the French president

gave the American one about his invitation

to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Za-

rif, the stunt was never going anywhere: Ma-

cron and his allies have already consulted to

death with Tehran about ways to salvage the

accord, even as Washington has shown it

can keep tightening the screws despite the

appeasers’ best efforts.

Trump has also defeated Iran’s efforts to

provoke open conflict, finessing Tehran’s

shootdown of a US drone and its seizure of

various oil tankers. Yet Macron still sought

to paint the American as a warmonger by

reaching out to Zarif as if the central prob-

lem were Washington’s refusal to negotiate,

rather than its insistence on a deal that actu-

ally stops Iran from joining the nuclear club.

Bottom line: Macron was playing domes-

tic politics, but Trump turned statesman by

refusing to go ballistic over the empty ges-

ture. How about that.

D

o New York politicians want to phase out

the use of fossil fuels — or not?

On Friday, Assemblyman William Col-

ton (D-B’klyn) blasted National Grid for turn-

ing away new Brooklyn natural-gas-service

customers. Without a gas pipeline recently

nixed by Team Cuomo, the company says, it

won’t have enough gas to fill new orders.

Colton and allied pols insist (dubiously)

that National Grid can find other sources of

gas. But why is he suddenly demanding

greater use of the fuel?

After all, Colton cosponsored the state’s

“Green New Deal,” which aims to do away

with fossil fuels, like natural gas, and shift to

a “carbon-free” economy. He should be

overjoyed that a utility is ending new gas

hook-ups.

The state, by the way, rejected the Wil-

liams/Northeast Supply Enhancement pipe-

line to Queens because Gov. Cuomo, too,

wants to end fossil-fuel use here.

That’s not the official explanation, but

Cuomo has turned down other pipelines as

well; each time, his folks cite “water quality”

issues, because federal law won’t let states

kill pipelines (which serve large regions of

the country) for any other reason.

Yet their motives are obvious: No pipe-

lines means no gas. That’s the point.

But that infuriates consumers. So pols like

Colton point fingers at National Grid for do-

ing what he and his pals... demand.

Politicians routinely try to shift blame for

the consequences of their actions. But their

constituents shouldn’t be fooled. And the

Colton-Cuomo crowd should own the prob-

lems they’ve caused.

F

or all the hysteria over facial-recognition

technology, the breathtakingly fast arrest

of Larry Griffin II for prompting a major

subway panic shows that the tech is a boon

to law enforcement.

Griffin, a 26-year-old drifter from West

Virginia, entered the Fulton Street subway

station early on Aug. 16 with a shopping cart

and, police allege, two rice cookers that

many onlookers thought were bombs — dis-

rupting service for hours.

As reports of suspicious objects started ar-

riving at 7:15 a.m., the NYPD dispatched the

bomb squad. Meanwhile, the department’s

Facial Identification Section scanned surveil-

lance footage and quickly spotted a clear sus-

pect. Entering color-corrected photos in a

program that rifled through hundreds of mug

shots, the unit quickly got a good match and

circulated a photo to the ranks via cellphone

— leading to a collar at 1 a.m. that night.

Facial-recognition chief Sgt. Edwin Coello

notes: “Five years ago, you probably have

endless detectives looking through [images]

... It could take several hours or several
days. This is the most important type of case
that we’d see out there: a possible terrorist.”
The tech’s not failproof, but neither was
the human-eyeballs-and-memory system.
Most important: Law enforcement must still
check all the same due-process boxes. As
Police Commissioner James O’Neill put it,
“We’re not locking up anyone based on a fa-
cial-recognition hit.”
Saving the NYPD hundreds of man-hours
so cops can get potentially dangerous peo-
ple off the streets much faster: That’s not
Big Brother, but a win for the little guys.

Macron’s Misfire

Natural-Gas Hypocrites

A Big Gain for Public Safety