Supreme Court Strikes Down New York Law Limiting
Guns in Public
Adam Liptak
June 23,
2022, 10:39 a.m. ETJune 23, 2022
June 23,
2022
Adam Liptak
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/23/us/supreme-court-ny-open-carry-gun-law.html
Fifteen Senate Republicans joined all 50 Democrats to
pass the legislation, which aims to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous
people.
WASHINGTON
— The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that Americans have a broad right to arm
themselves in public, striking down a New York law that placed strict limits on
carrying guns outside the home and setting off a scramble in other states that
have similar restrictions.
The decision
is expected to spur a wave of lawsuits seeking to loosen existing state and
federal restrictions and will force five states — California, Hawaii, Maryland,
Massachusetts and New Jersey, home to a quarter of all Americans — to rewrite
their laws.
The ruling
follows the mass shootings last month in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, and was
handed down on a day when the Senate passed gun control legislation that would
enhance background checks for prospective gun buyers ages 18 to 21, provide
incentives for states to enact so-called red-flag laws and tighten a federal
ban on domestic abusers buying firearms. It was Congress’s most significant
action on gun legislation in nearly three decades.
The 6-to-3
decision again illustrated the power of the six conservative justices, all of
whom voted to strike down the New York law, in setting the national agenda on
social issues. The court’s three liberal members dissented.
The Second
Amendment, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority, protects “an
individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.”
States can continue to prohibit guns in some locations like schools and
government buildings, Justice Thomas wrote, but the ruling left open where
exactly such bans might be allowed.
Moments
after the ruling was issued, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York vowed to reconvene
the Legislature as early as next month to enact new measures that could let the
state maintain existing regulations. Democratic lawmakers in Maryland also
suggested they would rewrite legislation to survive expected legal challenges.
“We’re
already dealing with a major gun violence crisis,” Ms. Hochul said. “We don’t
need to add more fuel to this fire.”
The case
concerned so-called may issue laws, which give government officials substantial
discretion over issuing gun licenses.
In a
concurring opinion, one that appeared to limit the sweep of the majority
opinion, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts
Jr., wrote that “shall issue” laws used objective criteria and remained
presumptively constitutional. States were generally free to require, he wrote,
“fingerprinting, a background check, a mental health records check, and
training in firearms handling and in laws regarding the use of force.”
Justice
Kavanaugh also extensively quoted the court’s 2008 decision in District of
Columbia v. Heller, which appeared to endorse other restrictions.
President
Biden denounced the ruling, describing himself as “deeply disappointed.” It
“contradicts both common sense and the Constitution and should deeply trouble
us all,” he added.
Gun rights
advocates welcomed the decision on Thursday. “The court has made clear that the
Second Amendment right to bear arms is not limited to the home,” said Larry
Keane, a top official with the gun industry’s top trade group, the National
Shooting Sports Foundation. “That the burden is on the government to justify
restrictions, not on the individual to justify to the government a need to
exercise their rights.”
The share
prices of firearms manufacturers rose on Wall Street, with Smith & Wesson
climbing more than 9 percent.
Jonathan
Lowy, a lawyer with Brady, a gun control group, said the decision was a grave
misstep. “In a stroke of the pen,” he said in a statement, “the Supreme Court
today has invented a supposed right to carry, virtually anywhere, loaded guns —
to potentially shoot and kill other people.”
The case
centered on a lawsuit from two men who were denied the licenses they sought in
New York, saying that “the state makes it virtually impossible for the ordinary
law-abiding citizen to obtain a license.”
The men,
Robert Nash and Brandon Koch, were authorized to carry guns for target practice
and hunting away from populated areas, state officials told the Supreme Court,
and Mr. Koch was allowed to carry a gun to and from work.
Justice
Thomas wrote that citizens may not be required to explain to the government why
they sought to exercise a constitutional right.
“We know of
no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after
demonstrating to government officers some special need,” he wrote.
“That is
not how the First Amendment works when it comes to unpopular speech or the free
exercise of religion,” he added. “It is not how the Sixth Amendment works when
it comes to a defendant’s right to confront the witnesses against him. And it
is not how the Second Amendment works when it comes to public carry for
self-defense.”
The
majority opinion announced a general standard by which courts must now judge
restrictions on gun rights, one that relies on historical assessments: “The
government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this
nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
In focusing
heavily on history, Justice Thomas rejected the standard used by most lower
courts, which considered whether the law advanced an important government
interest.
He
acknowledged that the historical inquiry the court now requires will not always
be straightforward.
Justice
Thomas wrote that states remained free to ban guns in sensitive places, giving
a few examples: schools, government buildings, legislative assemblies, polling
places and courthouses. But he cautioned that “expanding the category of
‘sensitive places’ simply to all places of public congregation that are not
isolated from law enforcement defines the category of ‘sensitive places’ far
too broadly.”
In dissent,
Justice Stephen G. Breyer said the majority’s guidance was inadequate, leaving
unclear the scope of the court’s ruling.
“What about
subways, nightclubs, movie theaters and sports stadiums?” Justice Breyer wrote.
“The court does not say.”
Meet The
Times’s Supreme Court Reporter
Adam
Liptak, who has been covering the Supreme Court since 2008, started at The
Times as a copy boy in 1984. He left to attend Yale Law School, became a
practicing lawyer and worked in The Times’s corporate legal department before
returning to the newsroom. Learn about how he approaches covering the court.
“In 2020,”
he wrote, “45,222 Americans were killed by firearms. Since the start of this
year, there have been 277 reported mass shootings — an average of more than one
per day. Gun violence has now surpassed motor vehicle crashes as the leading
cause of death among children and adolescents.”
In a
concurring opinion, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. responded to the dissent.
“It is hard
to see what legitimate purpose can possibly be served by most of the dissent’s
lengthy introductory section,” he wrote. “Why, for example, does the dissent
think it is relevant to recount the mass shootings that have occurred in recent
years? Does the dissent think that laws like New York’s prevent or deter such
atrocities?
“Will a
person bent on carrying out a mass shooting be stopped if he knows that it is
illegal to carry a handgun outside the home?” Justice Alito asked. “And how
does the dissent account for the fact that one of the mass shootings near the
top of its list took place in Buffalo? The New York law at issue in this case
obviously did not stop that perpetrator.”
Justice
Breyer questioned the majority’s methodology for judging the constitutionality
of gun control laws in the case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association
v. Bruen, No. 20-843.
“The
court’s near-exclusive reliance on history is not only unnecessary, it is
deeply impractical,” he wrote. “It imposes a task on the lower courts that
judges cannot easily accomplish.”
Judges, he
wrote, are not historians. “Legal experts typically have little experience answering
contested historical questions or applying those answers to resolve
contemporary problems,” he wrote, adding: “Laws addressing repeating crossbows,
launcegays, dirks, dagges, skeines, stilladers and other ancient weapons will
be of little help to courts confronting modern problems.”
In the
Heller decision, the Supreme Court recognized an individual right to keep guns
in the home for self-defense. Since then, it has been almost silent on the
scope of Second Amendment rights.
Indeed, the
court for many years turned down countless appeals in Second Amendment cases.
In the meantime, lower courts generally sustained gun control laws.
The court’s
reluctance to hear Second Amendment cases changed as its membership shifted to
the right in recent years. President Donald J. Trump’s three appointees —
Justices Kavanaugh, Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett — have all expressed
support for gun rights.
And the
Supreme Court’s most conservative members have long deplored the court’s
reluctance to explore the meaning and scope of the Second Amendment.
In 2017,
Justice Thomas wrote that he had detected “a distressing trend: the treatment
of the Second Amendment as a disfavored right.”
“For those
of us who work in marbled halls, guarded constantly by a vigilant and dedicated
police force, the guarantees of the Second Amendment might seem antiquated and
superfluous,” Justice Thomas wrote. “But the framers made a clear choice: They
reserved to all Americans the right to bear arms for self-defense.”
Glenn
Thrush contributed reporting.
Adam Liptak
covers the Supreme Court and writes Sidebar, a column on legal developments. A
graduate of Yale Law School, he practiced law for 14 years before joining The
Times in 2002. @adamliptak • Facebook
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