{"id":83217,"date":"2022-07-08T22:48:40","date_gmt":"2022-07-09T03:48:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=83217"},"modified":"2022-07-08T22:48:40","modified_gmt":"2022-07-09T03:48:40","slug":"83217","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=83217","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

New York Tells Supreme Court \u2018Thank You, Sir. May I Have Another?\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

New York has made a return appointment for Constitutional scrutiny of their gun-carry laws.<\/p>\n

Almost immediately after the Supreme Court struck down the state\u2019s previous law over the subjective nature of its \u201cproper cause\u201d clause, New York is back with a beefed-up and even more subjective \u201cgood moral character\u201d clause. In addition to requiring multiple references, the newly-passed standard for issuing gun-carry permits includes a social media review. Instead of relying on objective standards, such as an applicant\u2019s record of convictions or mental health commitments, the state is doubling down on the subjective judgment of its permitting officials.<\/p>\n

Instead of judging whether somebody has \u201cproper cause\u201d to carry a gun based on specific threats to their life, state officials will now judge whether or not they are of \u201cgood moral character\u201d based on their tweets and Facebook posts. It\u2019s difficult to see how the outcome will be any different.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s difficult to see how the legal fight will be any different either. Except, perhaps, how quickly New York loses.<\/p>\n

New York is defying the Supreme Court. And it\u2019s not trying to hide that fact.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith this action, New York has sent a message to the rest of the country that we will not stand idly by and let the Supreme Court reverse years of sensible gun regulations,\u201d Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado said in a statement.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

New York doesn\u2019t keep statistics on how many gun-carry permits it issues, and estimates vary significantly. The 2021 Crime Prevention Research Center (CRPC) estimate, which is the highest I\u2019ve seen, puts the number at about 195,000 active permits. The same estimate shows its neighbor Pennsylvania, which doesn\u2019t use a subjective \u201cgood reason\u201d standard for issuing permits, has over 1,400,000. Florida has over 2,500,000.<\/p>\n

CRPC found about ten percent of the population have permits in states that don\u2019t have the unconstitutional \u201cgood reason\u201d clause. If New York issued permits at that rate, it would have more than 1,900,000\u2013a tenfold increase.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court clearly intends for the state to come in line with the rest of the country on that front.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew York is not alone in requiring a permit to carry a handgun in public,\u201d the Court said of New York\u2019s outlier regulations. \u201cBut the vast majority of States\u201443 by our count\u2014are \u2018shall issue\u2019 jurisdictions, where authorities must issue concealed-carry licenses whenever applicants satisfy certain threshold requirements, without granting licensing officials discretion to deny licenses based on a perceived lack of need or suitability.\u201d<\/p>\n

But New York\u2019s politicians are poised to fight against that eventuality for as long as possible. In fact, they\u2019ve now broadened the battle by passing new restrictions on where those who do get licensed can actually carry. While setting up another showdown over the restrictive nature of their licensing requirements they\u2019ve set up a new one over the restrictive nature of their prohibitions on carrying in \u201csensitive places.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not only does the new law include common prohibitions on guns in areas such as stadiums and courthouses, it makes all businesses presumptively off-limits and requires owners to post signs if they want to allow people to carry inside. It also makes the entirety of Times Square a gun-free zone.<\/p>\n

When asked by reporters where permit holders would actually be able to legally carry, Governor Kathy Hochul (D.) responded \u201cprobably some streets.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is another regulation that seems almost designed to be struck down. The Court directly addressed the idea of \u201csensitive places\u201d exceptions for gun carry in its ruling. And it made it quite clear a government could not simply designate nearly everywhere a \u201csensitive place.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c[E]xpanding the category of \u2018sensitive places\u2019 simply to all places of public congregation that are not isolated from law enforcement defines the category of \u2018sensitive places\u2019 far too broadly,\u201d the Court wrote. \u201cRespondents\u2019 argument would in effect exempt cities from the Second Amendment and would eviscerate the general right to publicly carry arms for self-defense that we discuss in detail below. Put simply, there is no historical basis for New York to effectively declare the island of Manhattan a \u2018sensitive place\u2019 simply because it is crowded and protected generally by the New York City Police Department.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unlikely the Court would take a different view for effectively declaring the island of Manhattan *except for some public streets* a \u201csensitive place.\u201d But the entire legislative package in response to the Court\u2019s ruling appears intended to poke the institution in the eye. That includes the express reasoning from Governor Hochul\u2019s press release on why these laws were passed at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s legislative package furthers the State\u2019s compelling interest in preventing death and injury by firearms,\u201d the release said.<\/p>\n

Of course, this too flies directly in the face of how the Supreme Court said gun laws would be judged.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo justify its regulation, the government may not simply posit that the regulation promotes an important interest,\u201d the Court said. \u201cRather, the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation\u2019s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only if a firearm regulation is consistent with this Nation\u2019s historical tradition may a court conclude that the individual\u2019s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment\u2019s \u2018unqualified command.’\u201d<\/p>\n

None of this means that there aren\u2019t ways in which New York could impose stricter regulations on gun carry than what states including Pennsylvania and Florida have done. Second Amendment jurisprudence is still in its infancy and \u201csensitive places\u201d exceptions or the limits of objective training and background check standards are not fully fleshed out.<\/p>\n

The problem for New York is it appears to have immediately jumped to the least-defensible position in all those areas at the exact same time. The Court gave a significant amount of guidance on what it believes are constitutional restrictions of gun carry, and they don\u2019t align with what New York is pursuing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Second Amendment guaranteed to \u2018all Americans\u2019 the right to bear commonly used arms in public subject to certain reasonable, well-defined restrictions,\u201d the Court wrote. \u201cThose restrictions, for example, limited the intent for which one could carry arms, the manner by which one carried arms, or the exceptional circumstances under which one could not carry arms, such as before justices of the peace and other government officials. Apart from a few late-19thcentury outlier jurisdictions, American governments simply have not broadly prohibited the public carry of commonly used firearms for personal defense. Nor, subject to a few late-in-time outliers, have American governments required law-abiding, responsible citizens to \u2018demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community\u2019 in order to carry arms in public.\u201d<\/p>\n

The politics of losing again and again in court over attempts to restrict guns may not be catastrophic for the politicians pushing these laws as it hasn\u2019t for leaders of other deep-blue areas in the past. But it may well result in even more unfavorable precedents for gun-control advocates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York Tells Supreme Court \u2018Thank You, Sir. May I Have Another?\u2019 New York has made a return appointment for Constitutional scrutiny of their gun-carry laws. Almost immediately after the Supreme Court struck down the state\u2019s previous law over the subjective nature of its \u201cproper cause\u201d clause, New York is back with a beefed-up and … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,50,75,24,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enemies-foreign-domestic","category-goobermint","category-media","category-rights","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83217"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83218,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83217\/revisions\/83218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}