While Rye may be among the smallest cities in New York state, with a population of just roughly 15,000, its stance—or at least its mayor’s stance—in the national and increasingly-fervent debate over the regulation of guns crystalized during a recent City Council meeting.
During the meeting, Mayor Joe Sack, a Republican, signed onto a national statement of principles from the organization Everytown for Gun Safety, specifically a coalition called Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which advocates for stricter gun laws and policies to end gun violence.
“The principles seemed to resonate with me,” Sack said at the Feb. 10 council meeting. “Most of these principles, if not all of them, are extremely broad, but they do lay out what seems to be a fair approach.”
According to the coalition’s website, among the general principles outlined in the pledge is a commitment to progressing stricter background checks, punishing those who possess illegal guns to the full extent of the law, and expanding efforts to track and trace the dissemination of illegal guns.
Since its genesis in 2006, when only 15 mayors signed onto the pledge, more than 1,000 former and current mayors have now joined the movement, according to a statement from the group.
Sack said that it has been his general practice as mayor not to involve the city in issues outside of the city’s scope; and in many ways, the debate over illegal guns and regulation is just that.
According to data from the New York state division of Criminal Justice, there have been zero murders in the city of Rye over the last four years, and although violent crime hardly clocks in on the radar, just more than a dozen instances have been recorded by the Rye Police Department within the same timeframe.
However, Sack said, despite the issue being of national relevance, the impact may not be so meta.
“I’ve made this exception, mainly because maybe this isn’t such an exception. How can any of us not remember the horrible tragedy of Sandy Hook,” said Sack, regarding the mass school shooting, which killed 26 children, in Newtown Connectictut, in 2012.
The mayor, who told the Review that he sees the discussion of gun regulation as an issue of public safety, bolstered his support for the coalition with a few statistics derived from a recent column in the New York Times by Nicholas Kristof.
Among the excerpts from Kristof’s op-ed that the mayor chose to highlight were correlative statistics regarding how states with stricter gun safety laws have seen less gun deaths, including suicides.
“I don’t think it’s as simplistic as that,” Sack said. “But as a mayor, it’s a public health issue and if I can do something as small as signing onto a statement of principles, I’ll do it.”
While the mayor may have made the final decision on signing onto the coalition, it was Rye residents who put him in that position.
According to Kathleen Riegelhaupt, who, along with Cynthia Howard, introduced Sack, their interest in the issue and the coalition came from a sense of community.
“Cynthia and I have had many conversations with local friends and neighbors on the issue,” Riegelhaupt said. “I think we both realize it is one that is dealt with in large part on a local level.”
What the result of Rye’s involvement in the coalition still be remains to be seen, but Riegelhaupt said she’s just happy to see the positive response.
“At minimum, we’re glad that Rye can be a part of a nonpartisan coalition on what is often a divisive issue,” she said.
