The last time New York gun control laws were before the Supreme Court, we got the Bruen decision, which shattered laws across the nation that demanded citizens justify their desire to carry a firearm and empowered the state to decide that their reasons just weren't good enough.
In the wake of that decision, New York and others created new measures, which were also challenged. Unfortunately, the news this time isn't so good.
Instead, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a bid to overturn New York state’s gun laws, which Albany imposed after the high court nixed century-old restrictions on carrying concealed firearms in 2022.
The justices did not specify why they declined to take up the petition from six residents who were challenging the Concealed Carry Improvement Act.
As a result, an October ruling from the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals that struck down parts of the law remains in effect.
The appeals court had allowed New York to ban concealed firearms in “sensitive locations,” including parks, entertainment areas, churches, and health care facilities. It also allowed the state to require that prospective gun owners exhibit “good moral character” in order to obtain a concealed carry license.
The 2nd Circuit did nix a provision restricting concealed firearms on private property that might be widely accessed by the public and the law’s demand that applicants share their social media account information.
Under the Concealed Carry Improvement Act, applicants were also required to provide character references and contact information of family members.
The lack of any explanation why they rejected the case means we're kind of in the dark about whether a future challenge might go through.
I will note, though, that with with 2nd Circuit ruling killing provisions like automatically mandating property open to the public was gun-free unless the owner specified otherwise was most definitely the right call, as was barring the state from demanding people's social media accounts.
But it's the remaining provisions that are going to be a major problem for a lot of people.
"Good moral character" requirements might sound good in theory, but in practice, they were used historically to deny gun permits to black people and other groups that would now be termed as "oppressed" by the very people who favor this requirement these days. In fact, New Jersey has a similar provision in its carry law passed in the aftermath of Bruen that has resulted in...let's just say an uneven pattern of denials.
But you can most definitely call New Jersey's denials racist if you want, and I'll agree with you.
The issue of sensitive places in general is that while the Court did tell New York that the entire island of Manhattan can't be a sensitive place, there's no firm guidance as to where the line can be drawn. I would have hoped we'd at least get that out of this case.
As it stands, there are other cases that the Court could hear with Second Amendment issues, but they've kept being kicked back to committee assignments over and over to the point that no one is really hopeful we'll hear anything on this one.
What good is a conservative Supreme Court if it won't even hear the cases or, when they do, they rule in favor of stuff like gun control?