Eric Adams blames guns for historic rise in NYC subway murders — despite firearms playing small role

Mayor Eric Adams on Monday pointed the finger at gun violence for driving the surge in city subway homicides — despite firearms only being used in a fraction of underground murders during their historic rise in the past two years.

“There are too many guns on our streets. Those guns that are on our streets, they’re also in our subway system, they’re also in our schools, they’re everywhere we are as innocent New Yorkers,” Adams said at an unrelated press conference when asked about the spike in the past few years.

“Our Police Department has done an amazing job, a 27-year high, the thousands of guns we’ve removed off our streets. But everyone must play their role: Judges must keep shooters in jail; lawmakers, make sure we don’t make laws that allow them to return to our streets, and we have to prosecute these cases,” he said.

There have been eight city subway murders so far this year, already tying the number for all of 2021 — which was the highest annual underground-slay figure in at least 25 years, or when the NYPD began keeping such records.

Three of the eight subway killings so far in 2022 were fatal shootings, including the slaying of a Goldman Sachs employee. Three others involved a knife-wielding suspect.

The other two came when the victim was either pushed or fell onto the tracks and was fatally struck by a train.

None of the subway murders in 2021 involved a firearm.

The mayor’s comments come just days after a 15-year-old was gunned down while riding the train in Queens, marking the eighth murder of the year.

He said Monday that the NYPD would hold the course with its subway safety plan while seeming to continue to downplay the violence, saying, “We’re dealing with the perception of fear.

“We can’t get away from the fact we have 3.5 million people using our subway system,” he said. “We have to be honest about that and those average of six crimes a day is not giving the perception our system is out of control.

“My goal is to continue that deployment [of NYPD officers] and enhance that police coverage,” Adams added.

As of last week, overall crime on the subway system was down 5% compared to 2019. But given the drop-off in ridership during and after COVID, the crime figures mean that the straphangers who are still using the system are 53% more likely to be the victim of a felony crime when compared to three years ago, a Post review found.