For New York City gun owners, this year’s mayoral election was already a no-win proposition. Republican Curtis Sliwa was running unopposed for the GOP nomination, but given that he received just 28% of the vote as the Republican candidate in 2021 he faces long odds of winning the general election in November. The real mayoral race was considered to be the Democratic primary, where gun owners could choose a former governor who signed the anti-2A SAFE Act into law (and who was backed by the sugar daddy of the gun control lobby), the anti-gun New York City comptroller who’s backed the mandated use of gun store-specific Merchant Category Codes, or a socialist who believes… well, this.
We need to ban all guns.
— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@ZohranKMamdani) May 23, 2022
I’ve heard some liberal gun owners say that if your politics moves to the left far enough, eventually you circle around to believing everyone should have machine guns. That’s clearly not the case for New York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdami, the 33-year-old socialist who handily leads ex-governor Andrew Cuomo after the first round of the city’s ranked-choice voting has been (mostly) tabulated. Cuomo has already conceded to Mamdami, who’s now poised to become the Big Apple’s first (outright, anyway) socialist mayor in the city’s history.
Cuomo was propped up by millions of dollars in contributions from Everytown founder Michael Bloomberg. While I’m sure the billionaire is unhappy that someone with Mamdami’s economic views is on pace to win the Democratic primary, I’m guessing that the candidate’s outright hostility towards the right to keep and bear arms is a silver lining for the anti-gun billionaire.
The socialist can’t ban all guns from New York City outright, but he can make it even more difficult for New Yorkers to exercise their right to keep and bear arms.
As the New York Post recently reported, Mamdami has tried to distance himself from his calls to defund the police, but he’s also refused to commit to hiring more officers. One of the excuses offered for the excruciatingly long delays in issuing gun permits is a lack of staffing at the NYPD Licensing Bureau, and the wait times of a year or more are likely to get even worse if Mamdami allows the bureau to shrink through attrition.
Mamdami is also likely to put up a vigorous defense of New York City’s gun laws if he’s elected. Though much of the post-Bruen litigation filed in New York has focused on state law, NYC’s licensing policies and its “gun-free zones” have come under legal scrutiny as well.
I doubt Andrew Cuomo would have been any better for New Yorkers trying to exercise their Second Amendment rights, but Mamdami was the only candidate on the ballot who’s declared outright that gun ownership needs to be banned.
Curtis Sliwa will almost certainly do better this time around than he did against the supposedly centrist Eric Adams four years ago, but Mamdami is still going to be the odds-on favorite to win November’s general election. Will New York City’s small Second Amendment community rally behind the GOP nominee, even though he’s previously said he believes citizens should have to undergo regular psychiatric evaluations in order to exercise their right to carry? That’s a big ask of gun owners, who are stuck choosing between someone in favor of more gun control and someone in favor of banning all firearms.
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