{"id":261728,"date":"2026-06-10T10:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T10:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/261728\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T10:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T10:32:09","slug":"raise-the-age-claims-another-victim-shot-dead-on-a-bronx-bus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/261728\/","title":{"rendered":"Raise the Age claims another victim, shot dead on a Bronx bus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>New York\u2019s perverse 2018 \u201cRaise the Age\u201d law empowered teens to carry guns and behave like thugs, safe in the knowledge that the courts would treat even vicious criminals as wayward children.<\/p>\n<p>That <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/09\/17\/us-news\/nyc-youth-crime-doubled-since-controversial-state-raise-the-age-law-kicked-in-new-report-shows-bad-results\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">culture of impunity<\/a> surely shaped the thinking of the 15-year-old suspect in <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/06\/08\/us-news\/nyc-man-shot-dead-on-bus-in-the-bronx-gunman-flees\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Monday\u2019s midafternoon murder<\/a> on a Bronx bus.<\/p>\n<p>Why not carry a loaded gun on the bus, after all, when the worst that can happen is a brief visit to Family Court, on the <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/01\/11\/opinion\/soaring-teen-crime-a-message-for-hochul-fix-raise-the-age-and-save-new-yorks-kids\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">vanishingly slim chance<\/a> that you get stopped-and-frisked by a cop?<\/p>\n<p>Normally, a dad of seven riding to pick up his little girl from school should be able to tell a noisy teen to pipe down without getting shot and killed.<\/p>\n<p>But Jonathan Pettigrew, 41, thought he lived in a sane society, where a kid yelling into his cell phone heeds an adult, or at the very worst flips him the bird and makes some choice insults.<\/p>\n<p>Not whip out a gun and kill him.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPost Editorial Board<\/p>\n<p>Raise the Age created a new category of offender for 16- and 17-year-olds to keep their cases in Family Court by default, except in extraordinary circumstances of serious violence.<\/p>\n<p>This also <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/10\/20\/opinion\/raise-the-age-is-ruining-the-lives-of-new-yorks-kids\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">lowered the leniency bar<\/a> for younger wrongdoers, so 15-year-old criminals \u2014 even murderers \u2014 can get sentenced as \u201cjuvenile offenders.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"inline-module__cta\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>So while a teen murderer can <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2024\/10\/26\/opinion\/raise-the-age-has-turned-juvies-into-violence-ridden-madhouses\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">technically face a life sentence<\/a>, in practice he\u2019ll serve five years at most.<\/p>\n<p>Roughly 60% of juvenile offenders serve less than 45 days in jail.<\/p>\n<p>Criminal gangs pay attention: They dramatically upped recruitment of kids as soon as Gov. Andrew Cuomo singed this idiocy into law; a whole generation\u2019s now being seduced into a life of crime.<\/p>\n<p>Raise the Age was enacted to protect older teens from the consequences of their crimes, on the assumption that their brains weren\u2019t sufficiently developed to understand right and wrong.<\/p>\n<p>But they can at least understand \u201callowed\u201d and \u201cnot allowed,\u201d and this law tells them they have no need at all to limit their worst impulses; Jonathan Pettigrew is only its\u00a0lat\u200best\u00a0victim\u200b, not its last.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York\u2019s perverse 2018 \u201cRaise the Age\u201d law empowered teens to carry guns and behave like thugs, safe&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,7589,304,3780,238,9,24,63,299,3980,129,131,130,3301,13776],"class_list":["post-261728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-criminal-justice-reforms","tag-editorial","tag-juvenile-detention","tag-murders","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-opinion","tag-shootings","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news","tag-violence","tag-youth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}