An Office Tower Shooting Shocks New York

New York Times

30-07-2025

Good morning. It's Wednesday. We'll get details about the shootings in a Midtown Manhattan office building by a 27-year-old man with an assault rifle. We'll also go for a ride along the route of an old freight line that is expected to get new life as a passenger rail line.
On Sunday, Mayor Eric Adams and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch stood in front of tables full of guns that the police had confiscated, a sampling of the thousands of illegal firearms they said had been taken off the streets. The fight against gun violence would continue, the mayor said, until 'we stop the sea of violence that we are experiencing in our city.'
Then, on Monday, a man carrying an assault rifle brazenly walked into an office building in Midtown Manhattan and opened fire — even though New York has some of the nation's toughest gun laws, even though the office building that the assailant targeted had more security than many others have and even though similar targeted violence in Manhattan is almost unheard of.
The safeguards were not enough to stop the gunman, Shane Devon Tamura, 27. He bought his AR-15-style rifle in Nevada, where it was legal, and drove to New York, where it was not. The police said four people were killed, among them an off-duty New York City police officer who was moonlighting, providing security. A fifth person was wounded.
'We have to ask ourselves: Is there a safe building anywhere if we are allowing AR-15s to be sold in so many states?' Nick Suplina, a senior vice president of the Manhattan-based advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, told me. 'Unfortunately we're only as safe as the state with the weakest gun laws' — which, he added, Nevada was not. On his way to New York, Tamura drove through several states, including Colorado and New Jersey, where assault weapons have been banned, and others where they are legal.
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