The Trace by Jennifer Mascia 4/8/2019
A legal scholar breaks down the significance of a challenge to New York City’s strict gun permitting process.he Supreme Court in its next term is expected to hear a challenge to New York City’s ban on transporting a licensed handgun to a home or shooting range outside the city. It’s the first gun case the court will consider in nearly a decade.
The regulation, which doesn’t exist in any other American city, applies to holders of a “premises permit,†one of two handgun permits residents can obtain, which allows them to keep guns in their homes and transport them, locked and unloaded, to one of the city’s seven shooting ranges. To travel anywhere else with a firearm, premises permit holders must obtain a concealed carry permit. The New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, the local gun group that brought the challenge, contends that obtaining an extra layer of licensing to take a gun outside the five boroughs is not “consistent with the Second Amendment, the commerce clause, and the constitutional right to travel.â€
Gun rights advocates have long argued that New York City’s process to get a concealed carry permit is arduous and time-consuming. The permit is also generally off limits to civilians. Recipients have mostly been business owners, security guards, former members of law enforcement, and prominent figures like President Donald Trump’s sons, Donald Jr. and Eric. (The process is so demanding, in fact, that consulting firms have sprung up to help applicants streamline it.) Gun rights advocates say obtaining a premises permit is hard enough: It takes anywhere from three to 10 months and requires interviews with the New York Police Department’s gun licensing division, character reference letters and other forms of documentation.
Gun reform groups, on the other hand, fear that a Supreme Court that includes two Trump-appointed justices could expand the scope of the Second Amendment so that it guarantees a right to carry firearms in public, both openly and concealed. One such group, the George Takei-helmed One Pulse For America, has even asked the NYPD to scuttle the requirement that residents who wish to bring their guns outside the city obtain a concealed carry permit, in hopes that the Supreme Court would dismiss the case and not establish a precedent on the matter.
What kind of ramifications could a high court decision have on the right to carry guns in public? Here, Eric Ruben, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice who teaches a class on the Second Amendment at New York University, answers our questions.
More:
https://www.thetrace.org/2019/04/what-to-know-about-the-supreme-courts-first-gun-case-in-9-years/
