New York Effectively Nullifies The Supreme Court’s Latest Pro-Second Amendment DecisionNew York Gov. Kathy Hochul ushered in the long Independence Day weekend by signing legislation crafted in response to Supreme Court’s recent decision.BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND
JULY 05, 2022
The U.S. Supreme Court has made clear that the Second Amendment guarantees law-abiding citizens the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense, both in their homes and in public. On Friday, New York responded that it didn’t care.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul ushered in the long Independence Day weekend on Friday by signing into law legislation crafted in response to the Supreme Court’s recent decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen. Just more than a week earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court in Bruen had declared that New York’s prior “may issue” gun licensing scheme, which prohibited individuals from carrying concealed handguns unless they “demonstrate[d] a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community,” violated the Second Amendment. In reaching that conclusion, the high court stressed that the right to “bear arms,” by necessity, applies outside the home.
The New York legislature responded by calling an extraordinary session and then passing the bill Hochul signed into law on Friday. That hastily passed statute established detailed regulations governing a citizen’s right to obtain a permit to carry a concealed weapon and added restrictive limits to where such concealed weapons could be carried. Both aspects of the New York legislation run headlong into the Supreme Court’s analysis in Bruen—and potentially First Amendment jurisprudence.
Overturn the Supreme Court
In Bruen, in declaring unconstitutional New York’s “may issue” gun licensing scheme, the Supreme Court stressed, “to be clear, nothing in our analysis should be interpreted to suggest the unconstitutionality of the 43 States’ ‘shall-issue’ licensing regimes, under which ‘a general desire for self-defense is sufficient to obtain a [permit].’” The Bruen majority reasoned that “because these licensing regimes do not require applicants to show an atypical need for armed self-defense, they do not necessarily prevent ‘law-abiding, responsible citizens’ from exercising their Second Amendment right to public carry.”
Rather, the Supreme Court continued, “it appears that these shall-issue regimes, which often require applicants to undergo a background check or pass a firearms safety course, are designed to ensure only that those bearing arms in the jurisdiction are, in fact, ‘law-abiding, responsible citizens.’” Those “shall-issue” regimes, the Bruen court explained, “likewise appear to contain only ‘narrow, objective, and definite standards’ guiding licensing officials, rather than requiring the ‘appraisal of facts, the exercise of judgment, and the formation of an opinion.’”
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Among other things, to obtain a conceal-carry permit in New York, an applicant must complete 16 hours of in-person live curriculum and two hours of a live-fire range training course. In addition to completing the forms and providing details of other individuals residing in the same abode, applicants must also provide the licensing officer with four character references and “a list of former and current social media accounts of the applicant from the past three years.”
The ability of ordinary New Yorkers to affordably access in-person training courses, in addition to any permitting fees, raises one question that will likely find itself litigated. However, a bigger constitutional issue looms with the law’s requirement that applicants provide a list of social media accounts.
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Source:
https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/05/new-york-effectively-nullifies-the-supreme-courts-latest-pro-second-amendment-decision/
