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. 

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. 

It is a dilemma. On one hand, Representative Lee Zeldin would like to meet with his constituents. On the other hand, he does not want to be the focus of confrontations by First District residents who do not agree with his support for President Trump. So what is a congressman to do?

The answer comes from technology. Following Mr. Zeldin’s decision to cancel an April 18 public session in Southampton, he announced this week on Facebook that he would hold a town hall meeting tonight, by telephone. The catch is that participation requires those who want to take part to fill out a form on Mr. Zeldin’s official House of Representatives secure website, furnishing a name, address, phone number, and email. 

On the surface, asking participants to sign up in advance might be a reasonable way to assure an orderly discussion. Looking a little deeper, however, it could be interpreted as a way to limit the audience to those who are more likely to agree with the congressman’s views. 

At worst, the requirement excludes the voices of people who are not comfortable sharing personal details online, as well as those who fear, rightly or wrongly, some sort of unspecified retaliation. 

Nowhere in the First Amendment guaranteeing free speech does it say that Americans who have something to say must identify themselves in order to do so. Whether or not it was the founders’ intent, the United States has a long tradition of political involvement that allows opinions to be heard anonymously. Indeed, federal election rules now allow for so-called dark money contributions, suggesting a degree of comfort at the national level with not knowing who is doing, or paying for, the talking.

That said, it is hard to believe it would be so difficult for Mr. Zeldin to appear at an actual public forum right now, even if that meant being yelled at by angry voters for an hour or so. Maybe he could keep a nice cup of chamomile tea at the ready, taking a soothing sip to keep his cool when the going got tough. Maybe he could gaze at the audience while thinking to himself about the ocean. Then, after he took his lumps, he might let off steam privately. Remember, this is a rough-and-tumble Army veteran who boasts of being in Iraq with the 82nd Airborne Division. How bad could an audience of detractors be?

Meanwhile, Mr. Zeldin’s staff seems to be taking cues from the White House. Jennifer DiSeinna, his press aide, has been busy with news releases about how busy her boss’s schedule has been. This is at the same time as she characterized those who want to confront to him as “liberal obstructionists” and repeated disputed statements about supposed disruptions by protesters at a January appearance by Mr. Zeldin.

Media access to Mr. Zeldin has been limited as well. Though he appears eager to appear on television news channels, his office has said he has been unavailable for routine phone interviews, instead responding to reporters’ questions only by email.

Mr. Zeldin could show leadership by stepping beyond controlled forums like tonight’s telephone town hall and visits with sympathetic groups to listen directly to people in his district regardless of their political positions. Yes, some in the audience might get loud, some might even call him names, but that is what comes with the job. 

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. 

There is scarcely any aspect of the South Fork economy that does not rely on immigrant workers to some degree. People from the Americas, the Caribbean, former Soviet states, and parts of Europe, among others, keep this place humming. Foreign-born hands help build the houses, make the food, take care of our elderly, write novels, create art, teach children, pay taxes, turn down the beds in the hotel rooms. In short, they are us but for place of origin, and paperwork. 

East Hampton Town and Village officials and police have said they do not want a role in any anti-immigrant dragnet envisioned by President Trump. But because of routine police practices, they could be drawn in nevertheless. On a daily basis across New York State, officers pull over drivers who are then often arrested because they do not have licenses. Increasingly in the Trump era, this common event could be a first step toward deportation and devastating impacts on families as well as businesses.

Many police officers we have talked to over recent months favor driver licensing for residents regardless of their immigration status. For undocumented people who must drive to work, doing so now carries the increased risk of being sucked into an expanded federal system and eventually sent to their home countries. New York could fight back by extending licensing eligibility. 

Universal licensing would benefit our communities. It would mean driver’s education classes and eye tests, and that repeat offenders for speeding, drunken driving, or other offenses could be more easily be fined or jailed. And this would lead to safer roads. Granting licenses also would allow vehicle owners to obtain insurance, helping protect all of us in the event of a loss.

That millions of undocumented people drive even though their skills are not tested in the same way as legal resident drivers’ are is a dangerous situation. Already several states, including California, Colorado, and Illinois, offer licenses to anyone who can meet identification and residency requirements. New York should be among them.

In the absence of federal immigration reform that meets both the humanitarian needs of workers and the demands of business, New York should help by allowing immigrants to apply for driver’s licenses. This would also reduce the risk of turning traffic enforcement officers into frontline troops in Mr. Trump’s war on our friends and neighbors from other countries, people who are here simply to work and better their lives.

Assemblyman Francisco P. Moya, a Queens Democrat, earlier this month introduced a bill in the New York Legislature that would make this possible. His measure would allow applicants for “limited purpose” licenses regardless of their legal status in the United States. The bill also proposes allowing nonresident driver’s licenses to serve as official identification, giving undocumented workers access to banks and other essential services. Supporters of bills like this say it would reduce insurance premiums statewide and bring in millions in new fees, among other benefits. Bottom line: Reducing the number of unlicensed drivers on New York’s roads is in everyone’s interest.

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.

East Hampton Town officials, as well as residents of Windmill Lane and the surrounding area of Amagansett, are hoping to buy about 30 acres of farmland from the Bistrian family despite a more-than $10 million difference between what the town and the family believe the land is worth. 

Spread over 10 separate parcels, the site is a bucolic backdrop to the hamlet’s retail center. Best seen from the parking lot north of Main Street, the land has in recent years been planted with corn and other crops. There is some dispute between the town and the family about an access that so far exists only on paper; if opened and paved, it would have an undesirable impact on the residents of Windmill Lane. The Bistrians apparently own a narrow strip off Windmill Lane that could be used as a driveway to at least one of the lots as well.

Reportedly, the town has offered a lump $22 million for all the parcels. The family has rejected that as far too low, saying its own appraisal came in at $35 million. Who has the correct number is hard to say, but by way of comparison, in 2014 the owners of the 19-acre 555 Montauk Highway property also in Amaganset took $10 million from the town to walk away from their plan for a luxury senior citizens village.

The Bistrians, whose many businesses have over the years grown handsomely from East Hampton’s building booms, have profited well, from outside appearances. It is their right to look out for the family’s best benefit, but when real estate values here are inflated beyond reason by outside forces, such as Wall Street bonuses and foreign investment, it is disappointing to see such longtime members of the community refusing to act for the greater good by agreeing to what appears a fair offer.

There is a tradition here of people doing the right thing for the land and for their neighbors. The late Deborah Light, for example, simply gave hundreds of acres of Amagansett farmland to the Peconic Land Trust; she was one for whom preservation was a priority. And there are many others who have been happy to take what the town’s appraisers said was fair value for property bought using the community preservation fund. There is no rule that everyone has to be as charitable, but it is a noble cause, and those who do so join a proud tradition.

East Hampton Town should not cave in. The center of Amagansett would not be a disastrous location for additional development. The Bistrians’ claim about the number of houses that could be built on the site seems to be significantly overstated. East Hampton Town requires that 70 percent of high-quality farmland be set aside, which could be a hurdle should the family seek to reconfigure the properties in a way that would attract developers of luxury housing. Ultimately, the impact of houses there might be not all that significant.

The issue is that the town should not be suckered into overpaying, despite public pressure. To do so would be to tie up too much of the community preservation fund on a single purchase at a time when there are plenty of other priorities for the money. This may be one that the town has to let slip away.

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.

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. 

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.