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New York City has some of the toughest gun laws in the nation. But Monday’s mass shooting showed their limits, security experts said.
July 29, 2025Updated 6:51 p.m. ET
The gunman double-parked outside the tower at 345 Park Avenue, strode into the lobby with a cheap AR-15-style rifle, and killed three people, including an off-duty police officer. He took an elevator to the 33rd floor and fatally shot a final victim before turning the gun on himself. The episode was over in minutes.
Despite New York’s stringent gun laws and the office building’s tight security, law enforcement officials and legal experts said, the shooting — the deadliest in New York City in 25 years — may have been all but unstoppable.
New York has one of the world’s most sophisticated surveillance networks and the resources to deploy a massive police response, said Brittney Blair, an associate managing director of K2 Integrity, a risk-management and investigative firm.
But a piecemeal network of looser regulations nationwide enabled a lone gunman with no criminal history to drive undetected across several states on his way to the city.
“It feels impossible to stop something like this,” Ms. Blair said.
The attack underscores the limits that even a dense web of gun safety laws and private security precautions can have in a country flooded with inexpensive weapons. Beginning last week, the gunman, Shane Devon Tamura, 27, who lived in Nevada, drove through several states, including Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa and New Jersey, before arriving in Midtown Manhattan, his BMW filled with ammunition.
Mr. Tamura could have secured a semiautomatic rifle in a single day in Nevada, where he could bypass additional background checks, because he had a permit to carry a concealed weapon, said Nick Suplina, a senior vice president at Everytown for Gun Safety, a national gun violence prevention group. A federal ban on assault rifles ended in 2004; Mr. Tamura could have purchased the weapon for less than $500.
