President Trump, who owns a handgun and has a New York State permit to carry it hidden, has killed a rule that President Obama put in place before leaving office that would have limited access to guns by some of the more than 70,000 mentally ill who receive full disability benefits from the Social Security Administration. The Obama measure was opposed by both the National Rifle Association and the American Civil Liberties Union, an apparent anomaly that points to the possibility, however far-fetched, that strict gun control could become a nonpartisan effort, as it should. 

Both sides of the congressional divide believe in the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to bear arms. The dispute is among those who think guns provide safety, for themselves and the community at large, and those who argue that statistics prove otherwise. Hunters constitute only a small minority of the estimated 70 to 80 million citizens in the United States who are reported to own between 270 million and 310 million guns, almost one for every one of us. Those who argue for strict regulation also point to other advanced and affluent countries, which have many fewer guns and also many fewer crimes and criminals. 

Now a proposal with significant national effect on who carries handguns, and where, is apt to cross Mr. Trump’s desk and be signed into law. Bills have been introduced in both the House and the Senate requiring every state to honor every other state’s “concealed carry” law. This means those states with strict laws would have to allow someone who obtained a gun where the law was weak — for example, without a thorough background check — to carry a concealed gun. The N.R.A. calls such a law reciprocal and says it is common sense to make carrying concealed weapons across state lines legal.

Setting aside the question of whether the proposed national law would trample on states’ rights, it is alarming that the bill in the House, which was co-sponsored by at least 163 representatives, including Lee Zeldin, would override state laws on guns in bars, day care centers, school zones, and public parks. 

As for the president, he campaigned on a pledge to abolish gun-free zones in schools as well as military bases. He has been quoted comparing a gun to a driver’s license, saying a driver’s license is merely a privilege while owning a gun is a constitutional right. The comparison begs the question since guns are, with only minor exceptions, intended for killing while deaths in auto accidents are inadvertent results of human or mechanical error. 

Mr. Obama’s directive on the mentally ill was supposed to help the country avoid another Newtown, or San Bernardino, or Orlando. Unfortunately, powerful lobbying by firearms companies and an irrational fear of personal harm have caused a boom in gun ownership and a pending retreat from safety. 

Government does some things well and there are some things best left to private contractors. The East Hampton Town Trustees are thinking about buying and operating a dredge to keep East Hampton’s harbor entrances navigable. This is one job better left to the professionals.

We sympathize with the notion that crops up from time to time for the town to go it alone. Dredging is necessary and access to some waterways has been limited over the years as officials and boaters have waited for a contractor hired by the county to get around to jobs on the South Fork. In the meantime, shoals build up. The trustees and town have occasionally hired an excavating company to work from shore, but this is not the kind of large-scale approach needed, especially at the mouths of our larger harbors. 

In our experience, government entities that have taken a function performed by contract with qualified outsiders and assigning it to in-house employees have often come to regret it. Added salaries, staff discipline, even finding sites for a new government division have proven difficult. There are plenty of good reasons why everything from roads to NASA spacecraft are built by industry, not government hands. Dredging, though less complex than sending a probe to the edge of the solar system, nevertheless requires specific skills not in wide supply. Also, maintaining a town dredge during inevitable periods when there is no call for sand removal would be a problem and a financial drain. A promising alternative has emerged.

At a recent trustee meeting, consideration was given to creating a consortium of sorts among East End towns and incorporated waterfront villages, which would be able collectively to amass enough work to attract bids from contractors. This would likely avoid the cost of having a dredge stationed locally. Work could make the rounds on a prearranged schedule, keeping mobilization expenses from adding big money to the bill if a dredging barge had to be brought from far away each time it was needed.

The trustees are right in having a sense of urgency: The harbors need attention now. Using the power of an inter-municipal market to get the job done could be the most expedient approach of all.

Separately, the town trustees deserve credit for agreeing to expand the areas where noncommercial oyster-growers will be invited to place their gear. The prodigious filter power of oysters can help keep marine waters clean. Engaging residents more closely with the environment and food production counts as a good thing, too. More areas for oyster cultivation should be opened soon.

What ever happened to wait-and-see? State, Suffolk, and local governments announced closings in advance of a winter storm that was supposed to cover the region on Tuesday. When the expected snowfall did not, in fact, pile up, they and the schools that had followed in announcing they would not open appeared a little hasty. Officials might have been forgiven, since the television news was dominated as the week began with apocalyptic weather warnings. Pre-emptive panic, however, was contagious, and, on eastern Long Island at least, the surprise day off made little sense by hindsight.

If one took the time to look away from the TV screen, though, more level heads were saying on Monday afternoon that the storm would not be all that bad. Forecasters at the National Weather Service in Upton said they expected the East End would experience mostly rain and wind. As it turned out, they were correct. Schools most certainly could have held classes. Libraries could have opened. Banks could have operated. Government functions could have gone on. If President Trump really wanted to make America great again, he could have started by insisting that the East Hampton Post Office remain open, for crying out loud.

Certainly there is a degree of risk when winds are high. Just before lunch on Tuesday the wind took down a tree, blocking Main Street near the East Hampton Presbyterian Church. Roads were impassable elsewhere for a time, thanks to fallen limbs. Gerard Drive in Springs was flooded in the usual places. Electricity was interrupted in some locations. Downtown Montauk’s already thin ocean beach took yet another pounding. End of the world it was not. But there is something to be said for staying home on a nasty day with a cup of tea by one’s side and a cat on the lap. 

A fourth-grade initiative at the Montauk School to stop the use of plastic straws there and in the community is worth paying attention to — and bears a lesson for how we should think about our relationship to the environment. 

This winter, the students began sending letters to Montauk food businesses, hoping to persuade their owners or managers to switch from plastic to paper straws. The argument is based on the fact that plastic straws are not generally recycled and it reflects the growing awareness that plastic is among the top-10 kinds of debris entering marine ecosystems around the world. As with bans of single-use plastic bags, curtailing the use of plastic straws is a way to reduce the carbon emission impact of nonessential items. Alternatives include straws made from recyclable paper and compostable versions made from plant-based compounds.

A number of Montauk restaurants, ice cream shops, and takeout places have responded favorably to the students’ pitch. The people at Muse at the End, Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, the Surf Lodge, Gosman’s Dock, and others deserve a tip of the hat for being willing to consider switching to paper or, at a minimum, making a plastic straw available on request rather than automatically plonking one into every drink. 

According to activists, there is at least one straw per person per day used in the United States, as many as 500 million by more expansive estimates. Though long-lived in landfills, plastic waste slowly begins to degrade when it hits the oceans, breaking into tiny pieces that can be fatal to marine life, notably endangered sea turtles such as the Kemp’s Ridley, which has been the focus of rescue efforts here and in its southern breeding grounds.

A recent video shows a single cloth microfiber causing the death of a plankton that ingested it; multiply that a billion-fold and the impacts up and down the food chain are beyond belief. Some plastics in water can absorb and concentrate toxic chemicals, including DDT, a banned pesticide that was among the causes of the last century’s precipitous drop in the populations of bald eagles and osprey, among other wildlife. An estimated 150 million tons of plastic waste disappears each year, much of it into the oceans, and it eventually makes its way into everything and everyone who eats seafood. 

As many as 51 trillion particles of micro-plastic are thought to be in the world’s waters today, about 500 times the number of stars in our galaxy. That is a lot of garbage. Montauk’s fourth graders are heroes in our book for doing something about it.

For eastern Long Island, a White House budget item that would cut funding for the Coast Guard should be cause for alarm. Fortunately, opposition from members of Congress is bipartisan and loud. 

In President Trump’s Office of Management and Budget plan, more than $500 million would be eliminated from Coast Guard funding to help pay for expanding the border wall with Mexico. The cuts would include scrapping a planned state-of-the-art national security cutter and port patrol teams. Faced with the loss, the Coast Guard would have to shift its resources, with a chance that routine operations and search-and-rescue efforts, which are important to recreational boaters and commercial fishing alike, could be hampered.

From an immigration standpoint, the proposed cuts make no sense since, among the Coast Guard’s many jobs is watching for illegal migrants. If an expanded border wall with Mexico is eventually built on land, more people trying to reach the United States will take to the seas — often at great personal risk. This could lead to a humanitarian crisis not unlike that of the Syrian and other refugees making the dangerous passage by water to Europe in which so many people have died. 

In addition, those on the East End who have ever called on the Coast Guard for help or just enjoyed the reassurance that its expertly trained personnel were always at the ready should insist that it not fall victim to the president’s wrongheaded budget priorities.

East Hampton Village should have just said no to a smoke-and-mirrors request from representatives of Ronald Perelman, the owner of the Creeks estate on Georgica Pond, at the outset. Mr. Perelman seeks a new zoning classification created for him alone specifically to legalize illegally built structures there. Instead, though skeptical, board members are taking time to consider the proposal. They should not have been so polite. 

Mr. Perelman’s problems at the Creeks are of his own making. The legal tangle there was triggered only by an accidental discovery following a 2012 fire, when a village inspector noticed that considerable illegal construction had taken place. Since then efforts to bring the property into compliance with the law have been stymied. 

Now, Mr. Perelman, who has not been a good neighbor to the pond over the years, according to his representatives’ admissions, is dangling a carrot before the board. In a March 2 presentation, his representatives said there were 17 septic waste systems on the property, and that apparently not all of them had Suffolk Health Department approval. If Mr. Perelman were granted the new zoning, he would then upgrade to the latest waste technology, they offered.

That he and his representatives would try to leverage doing the right thing only now in exchange for a sweetheart zoning deal is offensive. He could have afforded to make upgrades years ago; he was listed by Forbes in 2016 as the 33rd richest American.

Village Trustee Barbara Borsack put it right at the March 2 meeting: “If we are dealing with someone who doesn’t care about the rules, even if we put all these new rules in place, why would we assume that they would be followed?”

If officials give Mr. Perelman what he wants, it would in effect be rewarding him for flouting the law. If he gets what he wants, other wealthy village landowners are sure to take note and to clamor to be next in line for special treatment. 

As hard and expensive a fight as it may be to get Mr. Perelman to remove the illegal construction at the Creeks, that is the only right approach, and the village should be ready to slug it out over the long haul. 

On the eve of Donald J. Trump’s inauguration, opposition to his presidency is at a historic high. As few as 40 percent of Americans polled this week said they had a favorable opinion of the incoming president. 

Disapproval of Mr. Trump is much more a matter of personality than politics. Though in the past, Republicans and Democrats might have thought ill of a new president, never has support been so meager at the outset. The opposition is well deserved.

 Try as one might, it is difficult to look past Mr. Trump’s racist remarks, defiance of the Constitution, ethical conflicts, misogyny, and threats to abandon international alliances. With all this it is impossible to conclude that he is the right person to lead this diverse nation in the face of ever-increasing social and political challenges. This is what is reflected in public opinion. 

It should not be overlooked that some among our neighbors on the South Fork are eager Trump supporters. The East Hampton Republican Committee is to hold a black-tie party tomorrow night at the American Legion Hall in Amagansett to celebrate his ascension to the White House. A question is how, if they say they believe in American values, they could approve of someone who is a such shockingly poor role model and a threat to global stability, the environment, the rule of law and precedent, and even public education.

Are we to take their partisan glee as a full embrace of what Mr. Trump has said and stands for? If so, they should not present themselves as leaders of one of this town’s two major political parties. His views — and his dangerous cabinet picks — should not be so casually endorsed. That some in our community will do so tomorrow is, as Mr. Trump likes to say on Twitter, sad.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has said he would like to close a loophole that allows the use of handheld cellphones by drivers when vehicles are stationary but on the roadway. This is a terrific idea.

Horror stories abound about the dangers of motorists distracted by their phones. Numerous studies have definitively connected cellphone use to increased numbers of accidents. In as many as one in five car crashes in the United States, a driver was talking on a cellphone at the time of impact. Federal statistics show that drivers were distracted, often by the phone, in about 10 percent of fatal accidents involving teenagers. A 20-year-old Amagansett driver who recently admitted he had been texting when he lost control of his vehicle and crashed into the woods was indeed lucky that he wasn’t hurt.

Credit is due The Albany Times Union for noticing the proposal in Mr. Cuomo’s State of the State report this month. In it, the governor would prohibit any use of cellphones by drivers under 18, although hands-free use by adults would still be permitted, as would calls and other functions when a vehicle is stopped on the side of the road. The idea that motorists at traffic lights always stop texting or looking at email messages until they have started moving again is wishful thinking. 

Banning the use of phones in vehicles that are on the roads but not moving would make law enforcement more effective, as officers could more easily spot offenders. One can imagine how many tickets might be issued if a spotter was stationed at the intersection of Main Street and Newtown Lane in East Hampton Village, for example. In fact, someone could look out from The Star’s front office windows and tally up any number of violations any day of the week.

One study, by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found that drivers who flout cellphone bans tend to engage in other risky behavior, such as speeding, unsafe lane changes, tailgating, and sudden stops. Giving police an additional way to impress on them the importance of following the rules, in the form of a ticket and points on a driver’s license, before they cause a serious accident could help increase road safety for all of us. This is similar to the tough rules on drunken driving, which have been cited in helping to reduce fatalities.

A pending bill that could get at Mr. Cuomo’s goal of safer roads has come from State Senator Carl Marcellino of Oyster Bay. The proposal would redefine the existing cellphone law’s meaning of “in motion” to include vehicles stopped in heavy highway congestion. (We have all been behind someone on the Long Island Expressway who did not notice that traffic was moving again as he or she played Candy Crush or texted mom.) Mr. Marcellino’s bill would also prohibit the use of cellphones when a vehicle was stopped at a traffic signal, railway crossing, stop sign, or any other traffic control device.

The drivers of commercial vehicles are already subject to similar restrictions. It makes sense to extend them to the rest of New York State’s motorists.

There is irony in Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s recently coming out in favor of free in-state tuition to New York’s public colleges and universities. In an era when his signature 2-percent tax cap is causing school districts to struggle to meet expenses, his support for a higher-education program estimated to cost $160 million in the first year of full implementation is, well, astonishing.

Given Mr. Cuomo’s presumed presidential ambitions, this apparently is not a contradiction for him. He spoke up with a raft of progressive measures almost as swiftly as Hillary Clinton’s defeat became known and the race for the 2020 Democratic nomination opened up. To prevail in the primaries, and possibly in the general election, Mr. Cuomo would have to continue to take steps that speak to a broad set of voters. As the governor of a high-tax Eastern state, he could point to the 2-percent cap as evidence of fiscal discipline. Free college tuition could pay off for him with young voters as well. Indeed, Senator Bernie Sanders, who called for free tuition at public universities nationwide in his primary bid, accompanied Mr. Cuomo as he made the announcement.

State programs already exist for New York’s poorest students. Mr. Cuomo’s idea is to help middle-class families and scholars whose household incomes are between $55,000 and $125,000. As envisioned, the state would step in to fill the gap between other grants or scholarships and the full cost of tuition. He called for the State Legislature to act fast, with the program to be fully implemented by 2019 — conveniently smack in the middle of his expected Demo­cratic primary bid.

The 2-percent tax cap is a bit of a misnomer. What it does is limit the amount by which school districts and other local governments can increase the amount of money raised by taxes for operating costs from one year to the next. This presents little problem for five-member town boards, which vote on their own spending plans. But even with the figure somewhat less than 2 percent in practice, the stakes are much higher for school districts, where voters are asked to approve budgets each year, and a two-thirds majority is required to exceed the cap. Strict austerity is mandated otherwise.

When Mr. Cuomo first proposed the tax cap, his argument was that the hard line on spending would gradually reduce the number of local governments and ultimately save money as property taxes fell. It has not really worked that way; school districts in particular jealously guard their autonomy even in the face of crippling financial pressures, and over the years few school districts have dared ask voters to pierce the cap.

 Mr. Cuomo’s tax cap has turned out to be all stick, no carrot. He has put his hands around the throats of the districts without offering meaningful leadership on state aid, school consolidation, or other cost-saving solutions. It is disappointing to see him support state spending for college students so eagerly while continuing to ignore the fiscal demands of elementary and secondary education. Tuition help is a worthy goal, but Mr. Cuomo must not continue to look past the rest of New York’s educational system.

In his “state of the town” speech last week, East Hampton Supervisor Larry Cantwell made note of the effort to build a medical center on Pantigo Place. Southampton Hospital envisions an emergency room here, with doctors’ offices and related medical services, as it prepares to abandon its existing location and move to the Stony Brook Southampton campus on County Road 39. Patients and health care responders, especially Montaukers, have for years bemoaned the time it takes to get to Southampton Hospital in emergencies, particularly in summer. While that is a serious concern, we question the location and size chosen for a new facility.

Among the most important considerations is traffic and commercial density. The Pantigo Place property is in a portion of town just outside East Hampton Village that is already showing signs of unwanted sprawl. Adding a massive medical building to the mix would have numerous negative effects. Concerns also have begun to be voiced about the considerable amount of wastewater that would be produced, and how it might affect drinking water.

Important to consider as well is that the site is now used for Little League baseball and would require a change from parkland and conservation status to commercial use — setting a risky precedent. The former Child Development Center of the Hamptons charter school property off Stephen Hand’s Path might be a better location. In justifying the need for an emergency room, the hospital says it serves 17,000 patients from East Hampton a year, a figure that is hardly credible. We suspect that money is a hidden factor. East Hampton’s deep-pocketed donor community, unlike Southampton’s, has not traditionally been a strong supporter of the hospital. It is plausible, therefore, that fund-raising is likely to have played a part in recommending a shiny new facility in more or less the very center of town.

East Hamptoners are sure to welcome an emergency medical center, but at a minimum our elected officials should think again about whether the hospital’s grand plan is really right for the place it has been proposed.