May 18th, 2019

SCOTUS Will Hear Challenge to Crazy New York City Gun Law

SCOTUS U.S. Supreme Court New York City handgun law challenge appeal

Story based on Report by NRA-ILA
The U.S. Supreme Court has taken up a challenge by an NRA state affiliate to a New York City gun control scheme that effectively prohibits lawfully-licensed handgun owners from leaving the city with their own firearms. In the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. City of New York, NY case, the plaintiffs raise objections to the N.Y. City law, particularly that it violates the Second Amendment.

Few laws in the history of our nation, or even in contemporary times, have come close to such a sweeping prohibition on the transportation of arms. — U.S. DOJ Brief challenging N.Y. City law

Given the uniquely oppressive and bizarre nature of the challenged restrictions, many observers believe the real question in the case isn’t whether New York City will lose but on what grounds and how badly. The City itself, in fact, recently made a desperate attempt to avoid a ruling on its laws by claiming to the court that it was in the process of revising the regulations to address the issues raised in the case. The court rejected that gambit, and proceedings in the case have continued.

SCOTUS U.S. Supreme Court New York City handgun law challenge appeal

The Trump administration, through the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), has filed a brief in support of the plaintiffs. The DOJ argues that the New York City regulation is unconstitutional, because the “transport ban infringes the right to keep and bear arms guaranteed by the Second and Fourteenth Amendments.” The DOJ’s brief states the Second Amendment does not end at the property line of one’s own home.

“The Second Amendment guarantees both the right to ‘keep’ and the right to ‘bear’ firearms”, the brief states. “Read naturally, the right to ‘bear’ firearms includes the right to transport firearms outside the home; otherwise, the right to ‘bear’ would add nothing to the right to ‘keep’.”

The administration also seeks to establish a method for resolving future cases that is faithful to the Supreme Court’s opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, which has been largely ignored by lower courts. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision being challenged in the New York City case, like many other lower court Second Amendment decisions before it, used a judicial balancing test that Heller specifically rejected to uphold the disputed gun control measures.

The government’s brief, on the other hand, urges the court to “look first to the text of the Second Amendment, the history of the right to keep and bear arms before ratification, and the tradition of gun regulation after ratification” to judge the validity of a gun control law.

Applying this test to New York City’s travel ban, it states:

Few laws in the history of our Nation, or even in contemporary times, have come close to such a sweeping prohibition on the transportation of arms. And on some of the rare occasions in the 19th and 20th centuries when state and local governments have adopted such prohibitions, state courts have struck them down. That is enough to establish that the transport ban is unconstitutional.

Also filing in support of the plaintiffs was a coalition of pro-gun states led by Louisiana and including Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia. Like the DOJ’s brief, the states’ brief urges the Supreme Court to use text, history, and tradition to find that New York City’s travel ban violates the Second and Fourteenth Amendment.

Alternatively, the states’ brief argues, if the court should adopt the Second Circuit’s approach to applying a tiered level of scrutiny, it should subject the law to a rigorously applied heighted scrutiny. “New York City could not possibly meet such scrutiny here,” the brief concludes.

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