NYC Subway Shooting Is What Happens When Lawlessness Collides With ‘Tolerance And Diversity’

The men involved in the New York subway shooting this week were nonwhite. That creates a problem for the pro-crime left. 

Eddie Scarry reporting for The Federalist

Because both men involved in the harrowing New York City subway shooting that took place this week are nonwhite, the pro-crime left is going to have to think very hard about how to frame this story without acknowledging the skin color of either the perpetrator or the victim.

Actually, never mind. It’s apparently already decided they’re going with the tried and true “it’s the damn guns!” line.

During a press conference immediately following the incident, subway system CEO and Chairman Janno Lieber rushed to get ahead of any obvious questions about how and why this happened. “When you bring a gun on the train and you start a fight, it’s just — it’s not right and it’s absolutely outrageous,” he said. “That’s what happened here. Someone brought a gun on the train and started a fight. That’s why we need to keep fighting against guns.”

Suffice it to say, that is not what happened here.

At the start of rush hour on Thursday, according to New York police, a 36-year-old black man, identified by reports as Dajuan Robinson, approached a 32-year-old male passenger in a “provocative” and “aggressive” manner. Bystander video, which circulated on social media, shows Robinson yelling at the man, whom he apparently believed to be of Latin descent, “I’ll beat you up,” “F-ck your kind,” and “F-ck your race.”

Police said that at some point, Robinson had displayed either a knife or blade. The 32-year-old, who had been seated, then stood to square up against his aggressor. The two circled each other for a moment before a brawl broke out. Shortly into the fight, a woman approached Robinson from behind and stabbed his lower back at least once. In the video, Robinson’s shirt visibly turned red with blood, and after the two men were separated by yet another male passenger, Robinson struggled to maintain balance. “You stabbed me,” he said, adding, “I’m bleeding,” and, “I got you.”

Robinson then started fumbling through a jacket he took off at the start of the altercation, pulled out a gun, and cocked it. Passengers scrambled to the other end of the train car, and eventually, four fired shots can be heard on the video. According to police, the 32-year-old man was able to take the gun from Robinson and shoot him in the head, landing him in the hospital in critical condition as of Friday.

In his remarks at the press conference, Lieber lamented the disruption the incident brought to what he described as “the world’s greatest experiment in tolerance and diversity” (aka New York’s sewage-level mass transit system).

As of mid-February, crime was up more than 20 percent on the subway compared to the same time in 2023. It’s gotten so violent, exacerbated in large part by the unabated influx of migrants, that last week, New York’s Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered some 1,000 additional state policemen and National Guard members to patrol the system. This is on top of the extra 1,000 law enforcement officers New York City Mayor Eric Adams dispatched to the subways in February.

The collapse of law and order isn’t an unfortunate coincidence to that “great experiment in tolerance and diversity.” It’s a direct consequence of it. The city and state’s Democrat leaders believe the public should tolerate the crime, violence, and blight. That’s why they’ve legalized so much of it and prosecuted so little of it. They believe hordes of penniless, criminal migrants only add to the city’s diversity. That’s why they house, feed, and clothe so many of them and turn away none of them.

If they didn’t believe it, Lieber would have said something about it. Instead, he prattled about guns. “[T]he real victims are the people I saw in those videos who are having a harrowing time because they are on the train with somebody with a gun,” he said. “Even if he’s fighting somebody else, they’re afraid for their lives. They’re just trying to go about their lives. So get rid of the guns. People want to have disagreements, that’s going to happen in life. But when a gun’s involved, we can’t live with it.”

In other words, if not for the gun, it was all just a happy display of “tolerance and diversity.” Just something that’s “going to happen in life.” Only a racist bigot would say otherwise.

Enjoy that great experiment, New York.