NYPD big: State risks becoming ‘Wild East’

Nobody can really tell a story that says any great good has come from these kinds of changes in other places. — NYPD Deputy Commissioner John Miller, on the Supreme Court’s concealed-carry ruling

The Supreme Court ruling striking down a century-old New York gun law will cause the amount of firearms in the hands of criminals to skyrocket — turning the Empire State into the “Wild East,” a top NYPD official warned.

NYPD Deputy Commissioner John Miller predicted in an interview Sunday that the number of people allowed to carry guns in New York City will “surge” as a result of the high court’s decision overturning a law that restricted the carrying of concealed firearms.

“The worry here is that they’re going to make this the Wild, Wild East,” he told “The Cats Roundtable” host John Catsimatidis on WABC 770.

The Sullivan Act, which dated back to 1911, required New Yorkers seeking a license to carry a handgun in public to first show “proper cause” that the firearm was needed for self-defense. The New York State Rifle and Pistol Association and two upstate men challenged the law, claiming it violated their Second Amendment rights.

In a ruling released Thursday, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the 6-3 majority that the law “violates the 14th Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms in public.”

More violent incidents

Miller, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, projected that overturning the law would lead to an increase in suicides, as well as accidental shootings by children.

The quantity of violent lawbreakers who wind up possessing firearms would soar, too, he said.

“Nobody can really tell a story that says any great good has come from these kinds of changes in other places,” he said.

“We do know that if you go into a situation where there’s a lot of restricted locations where you cannot carry your firearm — whether that’s hospitals or schools — that people tend to leave those in cars, the cars tend to get broken into, and the guns tend to get stolen, which means that legally obtained guns are now turning into illegal guns in the hands of criminals,” Miller explained.

“The mayor, the police commissioner [Keechant Sewell] and every police officer has a grave concern that putting more guns on the streets of New York is not going to come to a good end.”

Adams echoes critics

Mayor Adams joined other Democratic elected officials in

New York in ripping the ruling Thursday, saying it “made every single one of us less safe from gun violence.”

Richard Aborn, president of the anti-crime nonprofit Citizens Crime Commission of New York City, said he was “concerned” about the effects of the decision, forecasting more fatal shootings in the state and elsewhere.

“I’m concerned that the Supreme Court has now taken the single largest step it has ever taken in expanding gun rights by expanding the right to carry a concealed weapon to every American anywhere, anytime, anyplace,” Aborn said during an appearance on Catsimatidis’ radio show. “This is not going to be helpful for public safety.”

“It makes the job of the NYPD and police departments across the country much more dangerous,” he added.

“It takes a myriad of little interactions that we have in cities every day and turns them into the potential for becoming deadly encounters.”