N Y City Mayor Ratings

SCOPE rates political candidates on 2nd Amendment issues, only.  Since the NY City mayoral race involves three candidates, only one of which is well known to gun owners, we will add our ratings on where they stand on 2A issues.

Gun control is not a hot button issue in New York City.  A majority of NY City residents support gun control laws simply because New York City is a liberal city and liberals demonstrate knee jerk support for gun control laws, not because they know anything of the details. 

Andrew Cuomo  (F-)

Cuomo needs little explanation.  As the former governor and ‘father of the SAFE Act,’ Cuomo is well known to New York gun owners. Under a “Message of Necessity,” he had the SAFE Act signed into law, without the normal safeguards against such emotional actions.

Unbiased observers see the SAFE Act not as a meaningful deterrent to crime but as “political theater” intended to energize the governor’s liberal base at home and attract a national audience for his (then) national political ambitions.

On August 29,2018 Cuomo proudly said, “We passed the toughest gun control law in the United States of America, the SAFE Act."

Curtis Sliwa (D)

Sliwa funded “Guardian Angels” in 1979 due to NYC's rising crime.  He hasn’t said much, directly, about gun control but some of his comments are educational.

In October 2021, Sliwa said, “I choose not to carry a gun and I'm a victim of violent crime. Shot five times on the orders of the Gottis to the Gambinos; hollow point bullets. I was offered a carry permit by the NYPD; I said no. You want to go into the inner city, where most of these gang shootings occur by young males, and you're strapped, and then you're here to tell them they shouldn't be?”

At least he has a non-political reason, but then he said on October 6th of this year, “I’ve never had security. But both I and my wife were subject of direct threats, and so over the weekend I had armed security with me for the first time…I never had (previously) armed security.”

Sliwa sounds like almost every gun control advocate; they believe in “armed security for me but not for thee.”  Have you ever heard a politician ask for unarmed security?

Zohran Mamdani (F-)

On May 24, 2022 Mamdani said, “We need to ban all guns.”

On July 30, 2025 he said, “I echo the call from Governor Hochul for a nationwide ban on assault rifles." 

Mamdani’s track record in the New York State Assembly reveals a legislative history deeply antagonistic to the Second Amendment. According to VoteSmart.org, he has voted in favor of several measures that infringe on lawful gun ownership:

• Mandating gun stores post warnings about selling firearms

• Restricting marketing practices of firearm manufacturers

• Requiring handgun license applicants to turn over their social media history

• Expanding New York’s “red flag” law to allow more people to petition for confiscation of firearms

• Supporting a ban on private ownership of bulletproof vests.

In summary:

Cuomo has shown he is an enemy of the 2nd Amendment but he has stopped short of an outright ban on all guns. 

Unlike his two opponents, Sliwa does not have a history of antagonism to the 2nd Amendment so he might not energetically try to take away the 2nd Amendment rights of New Yorkers.

Mamdani is embracing an outright ban and, if his rhetoric is to be believed, he may attempt to enforce it citywide.  Mamdani is a Democratic Socialists (the polite word for communist) and communist leaders have a history of the outright banning of guns.