NYC Mayor Adams hits Florida Gov. DeSantis for lax stance on gun laws

Mayor Adams kept his war of words with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis alive and kicking Tuesday when he slammed the possible GOP presidential candidate for not backing up his tough-on-crime talk with a more forceful stance on gun control.

Adams latest barbs against DeSantis, who visited Staten Island to speak at a law enforcement confab Monday, were based on what the mayor described as a “philosophical disagreement.”

“All of us believe that people should have the right to safety, and I support that and I’m happy to know that he believes that as well,” Adams said, referring to DeSantis. “But you have to back that up and not support the over-proliferation of guns in our country that is harming far too many New Yorkers.”

Adams, who has made getting illegal guns off the streets a priority, voiced concerns last year about a Supreme Court decision striking down a century-old New York State concealed-carry handgun law and predicted at the time that an uptick in people carrying guns would make fighting crime in the city more difficult.

DeSantis, who’s expected to run for the Republican presidential nomination against former President Donald Trump and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, supports a bill now being debated in the Florida statehouse that would allow people to carry concealed guns without a permit. Under current Florida law, people who want to tote concealed firearms legally must get a permit from a state agency.

Adams’ latest broadside against DeSantis comes a day after they and their teams traded attacks over social media and after DeSantis slammed New York State’s bail laws for not allowing judges to consider a defendant’s dangerousness when setting bail. Adams, who has been critical of reforms made to the state’s bail laws in 2019, has pushed for them to be revised.

DeSantis on Monday also made a play at luring New York cops to the Sunshine State.

“If you’re disenchanted, if you don’t think things are going to turn around wherever you are, not just in New York or wherever, just know that there’s a state that’s doing it right,” DeSantis said Monday to a crowd of law enforcement officers. “There’s a state that will value your service.”

Adams maintained Tuesday that morale within the NYPD is now good — despite previous comments that he “inherited” a police department with low morale from former Mayor Bill de Blasio and a rate of resignations unparalleled at any time within the past two decades.

He declined to immediately set a number on how many cops the city needs to add to its ranks and suggested that Florida’s entreaties to hire away city cops amounts to a form of flattery.

“Everybody’s going to try to get a New York City police officer to come to their municipality. This is the best-trained police department. A police officer in New York City can go run some of the counties’ police departments because of their level of training and experience,” he said. “People are always going to try to grab our guys.”

But Adams also noted that changes are afoot when it comes to recruiting candidates to join the NYPD and that the city’s efforts have fallen flat in the past, presumably thanks to de Blasio.

“We’re now creating a different way for the exam to take place. We were taking too long to do the exams, and we have to have a real recruitment plan,” he said. “The recruitment in our city historically has been waiting till people take an exam, and we were not competitive enough and ... we’re changing that.”

Those efforts, he added, will include organizing hiring halls and recruiting on college campuses.

But Adams did not directly address remarks from DeSantis campaign spokeswoman Christina Pushaw, who on Monday pointed to the outflow of New Yorkers from the city in recent years.

“Here’s reality: More Americans fled NYC than any other metro area last year,” Pushaw tweeted. “More Americans moved to Florida than any other state. You know this, Mayor Adams, and you’ve talked (accurately) about crime pushing people out of NYC. Florida’s crime rate meanwhile is at a 50 year low. Maybe it’s you who can learn from @RonDeSantisFL?”

Instead of answering a question about that out-migration during a City Hall press conference Tuesday, Adams focused more on what DeSantis decided not to talk about during his Monday sojourn to Staten Island.

The Republican governor did not mention the laws he’s backed to make it harder for women to access abortion, or the bills he’s signed banning books about African-American history in schools, or his efforts to outlaw teachers from discussing sexual orientation through the third grade.

“There’s a qualitative difference from what we believe here — our governor, what I believe — and what he believes. We don’t believe in treating people differently if they’re a part of the LGBTQ+ community. We just don’t believe in the things that he believes in,” Adams said.

“We don’t believe in using asylum seekers as props, sending them around the country. So there’s a philosophical disagreement, and as he came to the city, I wanted him to understand this is a city where we have a different philosophy.”