After Supreme Court Ruling, New York Restricts Where Concealed Carry Weapons May Be Carried
The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a New York state law requiring applicants for a license to carry a gun outside of their homes to have a “proper cause” to do so, saying it violated the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution • Full Story
The New York State Senate passed legislation in response to the United States Supreme Court’s NYSRPA v. Bruen decision that invalidated New York’s 100-year-old gun control law restricting the concealed carrying of a firearms.
Although the Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled that the law infringes on an individual’s Second Amendment right to carry a weapon in public for the purpose of self-defense, the decision allows states to issue licensing requirements for carrying a firearm.
New York’s law violated the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment — which says citizens have a right to equal protection under the law — because it “prevents law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms” as authorized by the Second Amendment.
The ruling comes weeks after mass shootings at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store, and another in a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school, reignited a national debate about U.S. gun laws.
President Joe Biden said he was “deeply disappointed” in the ruling, which he argued, “contradicts both common sense and the Constitution, and should deeply trouble us all.”
Citing the “horrific attacks in Buffalo and Uvalde,” Biden urged states to pass “commonsense” gun regulation “to make their citizens and communities safer from gun violence.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said, “This decision isn’t just reckless, it’s reprehensible.”
Hochul said that because “the federal government will not have sweeping laws to protect us … our states and our governors have a moral responsibility to do what we can and have laws that protect our citizens because of what is going on — the insanity of the gun culture that has possessed everyone all the way up to the Supreme Court.”
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said, “This decision has made every single one of us less safe from gun violence.”
The case was brought by the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association and two of its members, Robert Nash and Brandon Koch, whose applications for concealed-carry handgun licenses for self-defense purposes were rejected.
New York is among a half-dozen states that had key provisions of its gun laws invalidated by the high court because of a requirement for applicants to prove they had “proper cause” for a permit.
The quickly adopted law, however, has led to confusion and court challenges from gun owners who say it improperly limits their constitutional rights.
“They seem to be designed less towards addressing gun violence and more towards simply preventing people from getting guns — even if those people are law-abiding, upstanding citizens, who according to the Supreme Court have the rights to have them,” said Jonathan Corbett, a Brooklyn attorney and permit applicant who is one of several people challenging the law in court.
Under the law, applicants for a concealed carry permit will have to complete 16 hours of classroom training and two hours of live-fire exercises. Ordinary citizens would be prohibited from bringing guns to schools, churches, subways, theaters and amusement parks — among other places deemed “sensitive” by authorities.
Applicants also will have to provide a list of social media accounts for the past three years as part of a “character and conduct” review. The requirement was added because shooters have sometimes dropped hints of violence online before they opened fire on people.
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