A few blocks from New York City’s famed Times Square, a roadside sign flashed a warning to anyone visiting the so-called crossroads of the world.
“Times Square Gun Free Zone,” the LED-style sign announced in all-caps orange lettering.
“Licensed gun carriers and others may not enter unless otherwise specifically authorized by law,” the sign also blinked. “Violation of this prohibition is a felony.”
On other nearby blocks, plastic-covered signs affixed to traffic light poles carried the same message, with a graphic of a black pistol inside a red interdictory circle.
These signs, which were placed this week, are part of New York’s efforts to pre-empt a potential increase in guns across the city and state – and the violence associated with a more free-flowing presence of firearms.
While New York had some of the strictest firearms laws nationwide, a 23 June US supreme court decision gutted a ban on ordinary citizens carrying legally owned handguns outside their residences without “proper cause”.
After the ruling came down, state and city officials scrambled to mitigate the spread of guns in public spaces.
New York’s legislature and the Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, quickly enacted legislation on the rules around carrying a concealed pistol.
The legislation, which went into effect on Thursday, requires that concealed-carry permit applicants meet new eligibility mandates, and finish a state-regulated gun training course. But it also outlines certain “sensitive locations” where people with concealed-carry licenses cannot take their guns – such as Times Square.
A New York federal judge said on Wednesday that the state could implement its gun restrictions.
The signs notifying the public are temporary and although Times Square is a world-famous dazzle of pulsing lights and flashing billboards, there did not appear to be any signs directly at the heart of the square on Thursday.
An official map indicates that the signs are installed along the boundaries of this Midtown tourist hub – the exact borders of which have become a subject of curiosity.
City officials said: “Signage will be posted at other ‘sensitive locations’ in the near future,” such as schools and houses of worship.
Times Square has been teeming again since the coronavirus pandemic ebbed, once again filled with selfie-snapping tourists and luggage-toting travelers who often appear confused, if not lost. Visitors and locals who spoke to the Guardian in the warm late-summer sunshine on Thursday did not know about the supreme court decision that inspired the new signs.
Kerri Clegg, 48, a cake artist from London visiting with her daughter Claudia for her 18th birthday, said the signage “makes me feel a little bit better, it has to be said, because we know that there’ve been problems before.”
Clegg added: “Just generally, [they] make you feel safer, especially as English [people], because it’s not something we’re around a lot.”
Clegg noted that bustling hubs such as Times Square could be “big targets”, as it was “a very crowded, very touristy place”.
There have been incidents of violence in Times Square. In 2010, New York City police disarmed an “amateurish” though potentially powerful car bomb.
In 2017, Richard Rojas, a navy veteran, drove on to packed Times Square sidewalks, killing one person and injuring about 20 others.
That same year, Akayed Ullah detonated a pipe bomb in a subway station near Times Square; there have also been sporadic shootings in the surrounding blocks.
Still, police data indicates that the area – which has had up to 190,000 pedestrians daily since the pandemic and many more before – and New York City overall remains safe.
Quinn Abbey, 24, an accounting student from the southern state of Georgia, walking in Times Square with several friends, said they hadn’t seen the nearby signs but hearing of the advisories didn’t put Abbey at ease.
“I would assume, like anything in America, they say it’s a ‘gun-free zone’ but everyone still kind of has guns,” Abbey said, adding: “I feel the same no matter where I go. I feel like you kind of have to fear for your life regardless of where you are, so it’s kind of scary.”
Daniel Santoyo, another student among the Georgia group, voiced similar sentiments.
“I think it’s kind of backwards, to be honest with you,” said Santoyo, 21. “The fact that we have to put up a sign saying ‘there’s no guns here,’ really it should be common knowledge, there shouldn’t even be guns in the first place.”
Asked about the gun-free zone messaging, New Yorker Loren Parkins said: “Good luck enforcing it, but it’s great.”
Parkins, 55, didn’t think the campaign would do any good, “because I don’t think that anyone that will carry a gun will look at that sign and be concerned that it actually might be enforced or anything will come of it.
“It’s a symbolic gesture, which is nice, but I don’t think it’s going to have any real effect on crime,” said Parkins, who was walking near 50th Street and Eighth Avenue, where one of the signs was posted.
When apprised of the supreme court decision that spurred the signage effort, Parkins was critical of a situation that enabled some areas of the country to have lax gun regulations.
“Of course New York and California will be vigilant about trying to reduce access to guns and handguns, but I’m afraid other states in the middle of the country will have a field day with everyone being allowed to carry guns anywhere they go,” said Parkins, who works in the entertainment industry.
“It’s not the kind of culture I would like to live in, where people are carrying handguns and other weapons when they’re going to the drugstore and so forth.”
