Individuals in Brooklyn and The Bronx may already be of the mindset that the crazed knifeman shouldn’t even be breathing. I won’t quarrel with you there. They may even be in the majority.
But put in a voting booth and allowed to select their representatives and civil servants who will make laws and enforce statutes, they’ll won’t walk their talk. They believe the concept of safety in numbers — there’s so many fellow Brooklynites that something like a crazed knifeman attacking people is something that’ll happen to any one of millions of others and not them specifically. It’s just a story they’ll read in the NY Post as they travel to work on a city bus up Coney Island Ave.
That’s why Staten Island tried to secede but the Bronx needs our money.