The Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City wrote that “we need to ban all guns” in a 2022 X post
He’s triggered.
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani (D.) has called for a ban on “all guns” as a remedy to the “scourge of gun violence” during his career as a politician. It’s a stark contrast from his brief time as a rapper under the name Young Cardamom, when he filmed a music video brandishing a firearm and glorifying violence.
The video for his song “Wabula Naawe,” set in the Luwero Triangle in 1981 during the days leading up to the Ugandan Bush War, opens with a spray of gunfire. It depicts armed militants shooting firearms from the back of a truck—to the words “let’s get together and settle this thing once and forever”—and portrays a man being shot in the head at point-blank range.
“I’ll finish you like food on a plate,” Mamdani says while waving a gun and wearing military fatigues. “You are about to run like a chicken.”
“Imma hit you with the fist, Imma hit you with the foot, gonna hit you so hard you’ll pray for death,” he continues.
Mamdani has taken a much more critical stance on firearms since entering politics.
“We need to ban all guns,” Mamdani wrote in a May 2022 post on X.
He has expressed similar sentiments during his mayoral campaign. After a gunman opened fire in Midtown Manhattan in July in a shooting that left four dead, including an off-duty police officer, Mamdani said he would like to see “a nationwide ban on assault rifles.” He argued that other states in addition to New York must outlaw those firearms.
“As mayor, I will lead calls to ensure that we pass the legislation necessary beyond New York, such that every New Yorker can rest assured that we need not prepare for the next iteration of this horrific mass shooting,” he vowed.
Mamdani has used his position in the New York State Assembly to support a litany of gun control measures. He voted for a bill placing restrictions on firearm marketing in 2024 and another that requires New Yorkers applying for gun licenses to undergo social media screening.
The Democratic nominee for mayor’s rap career has already earned him scrutiny. In 2017, he released a song called “Salaam” in which he praised the “Holy Land Five.” The song references the five leaders of the defunct Holy Land Foundation convicted in 2008 of providing millions of dollars in material support to Hamas. The “Holy Land Five” were also found liable in 2004 for the death of a 17-year-old U.S. citizen murdered by Hamas on a trip to Israel.
Mamdani’s filmmaker mother, Mira Nair, was involved in her son’s rap career. She directed the video for his song “#1 Spice” and used the track as the theme song for her 2016 film Queen of Katwe. The mayoral candidate worked on the set of that film as a “third assistant director,” a job he acknowledged came as a result of “nepotism.”
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