More CCTV, less crime.

Yes, this is a dig at John R. Lott because if one can show that a premise can be shot down if there may be other reasons for a trend. In this case, CCTV providing clues and evidence which lead to prosecution in crimes.

"Two hundred images, or more, have been gathered of the suspected gunman," CBS News law enforcement contributor and former NYPD Deputy Commissioner Rich Esposito told CBS News New York, "It's not easy to escape surveillance, especially in Midtown Manhattan where you have hotels, retail stores, lots of places with private cameras throughout the area."

Facial recognition software is pretty sophisticated, which this AI loathing Luddite will concede. So far, the best way to avoid being picked up by facial recognition is to avoid cameras. But that task may soon become near impossible.According to Cynthia Rudin, Gilbert, Louis, and Edward Lehrman Distinguished Professor of Computer Science; Departments of Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Statistical Science, Mathematics, and Biostatistics & Bioinformatics; Duke University:

I think you could not realistically change your face to fool state-of-the-art facial recognition. I think during the pandemic they changed the systems to rely heavily on the shape of people’s eyes, because so many people were wearing masks over their noses and mouths. I don’t honestly know how people could realistically change the shape of their eyes to fool these systems. If you wore sunglasses and then did something to your face (maybe wear a mask or crazy dramatic makeup) then it would be harder to detect your face, but that’s cheating on the question—that’s not changing your face, that’s just hiding it!

But let’s say you did something dramatic to change your face—something really, really dramatic—so that a face recognition system wouldn’t recognize you. Perhaps it would be some kind of plastic surgery. Well, then what? As soon as your face ends up on the internet with your name (think of a friend tagging you on social media or you giving a lecture that appears online), then all the facial recognition systems that look for people on the internet will be able to identify you anyway.

And now your face won’t match your driver’s license or passport, so traveling will be really difficult for you. So, honestly, why bother? In any case, I’m glad you asked this question, because it shows how futile it is to avoid other people capturing our biometrics. Asking our governments to create laws to protect us is much easier than changing our faces dramatically all the time.

So, while Brian Thompson's killer thinks he may have been clever wearing something covering his face, he left his eyes uncovered. Toss in there are now a couple of pictures of his whole face showing. LE has a pretty good idea of his movements.

My point is that LE can use surveillance technology to track criminals' movement. Get pictures of the criminal's movements. Toss in DNA for good measure and it gets harder and harder to commit the "perfect crime".

Guns are superfluous.

See:
https://gizmodo.com/how-much-do-i-need-to-change-my-face-to-avoid-facial-recognition-2000533755