Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it will hear its first gun rights case in nine years. The case will challenge New York City’s ban on carrying licensed, locked, and unloaded handguns outside the city limits. That’s right: The current ordinance requires residents to keep their legal guns within NYC. The court’s decision to hear the appeal could signal renewed interest in gun rights by a more conservative court—just as tensions in the United States are running high on the issue.
Three New York residents and New York’s National Rifle Association branch filed an appeal against the unusual law. Seventeen states have joined the appeal in support of gun rights. All want the court to break its years-long silence and define gun rights under the Constitution’s guarantee of “the right to bear arms.”
The city residents who filed suit want to take part in out-of-city competitions, practice at target ranges outside the city, or take their guns to second homes elsewhere in New York state.
Lower courts have already rejected the challenge. Previous logic has been that gun owners had plenty of access to gun ranges in the city, (seven, with at least one in each of the five boroughs) and that they could always rent or buy a second gun for use elsewhere.
The city’s top lawyer, Zachary Carter, is urging the court to reject the case. He argues that the ban allows NYC police to reduce the number of guns carried in public.
Previously, the high court did reject appeals on the issue. However, some folks believe this court may be more willing to revisit gun rights—now that Justice Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s second confirmed nominee, is on the bench.
But city gun owners shouldn’t get too trigger happy: Justices won’t hear the case until October.
(An attendee at a gun-rights rally open carries his gun in a holster that reads “We the People” from the Preamble to the United States Constitution. AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
