{"id":87452,"date":"2022-11-08T13:09:14","date_gmt":"2022-11-08T19:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=87452"},"modified":"2022-11-08T13:09:14","modified_gmt":"2022-11-08T19:09:14","slug":"87452","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=87452","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

What’s left standing after judge guts NY carry laws?<\/a><\/p>\n

As my colleague Tom Knighton reported\u00a0this morning, U.S. District Judge Glenn Suddaby has halted enforcement of many aspects of New York\u2019s Concealed Carry Improvement Act, from the \u201cgood moral character\u201d requirement to the state\u2019s designation of a host of publicly-accessible places as \u201csensitive\u201d locations off-limits to concealed carry holders.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 184 page\u00a0order<\/a>\u00a0is mostly great news for gun owners, but Suddaby is still allowing several components of the CCIA to remain in place, like the requirement that concealed carry applicants provide a list of four character references, take part in an in-person meeting with law enforcement, and provide proof of 18 hours of training (16 hours of classroom training and 2 hours of range time) before concealed carry licenses \u201cshall\u201d be granted.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In upholding those provisions of the CCIA, Suddaby pointed to several statutes in place near the time of the ratification of the Second Amendment in 1791 and the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. For the character references, Suddaby noted that at least five colonies \u201chad gun laws based on a reputation-based perception of an individual (Pennsylvania, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia and New York).\u201d Suddaby also found \u201cthree historical statutes (one from a state and two from cities) requiring an applicant to provide character references to be permitted to carry a gun,\u201d and determined that \u201ctogether, these eight laws (five of which came from states in 1777, including Virginia) were sufficiently established and representative to constitute a historical tradition of firearm regulation based on reputation (for example, by a reasonable number of character references).\u201d Though the judge did note in an aside that \u201cit seems overreactive (and a bit offensive) to literally analogize the need to regulate concealed-carry applicants to the need to regulate \u2018groups deemed dangerous\u2019, that\u2019s pretty much what he ended up doing.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In upholding the state\u2019s expansive training standards, Suddaby said the financial burden on applicants is \u201ctroubling,\u201d but ruled that the provisions can remain in place for now because of \u201cthe analogousness of a historical requirement that those persons without familiarity of firearms must become familiar with them if those persons are to exercise their right use firearms to defend themselves in public,\u201d adding that [i\u201d]n addition, as the Court stated in its Decision and Temporary Restraining Order of October 6, 2022, it has been persuaded by Defendants that historically Americans\u2019 familiarity with firearms was far more common than it is today.\u201d The problem with that line of reasoning is that most of the statutes that Suddaby points to in upholding the training mandate are directly related to militia service; something that is\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>required in order to exercise your right to keep and bear arms.<\/p>\n

Moreover, it\u2019s incredibly difficult for would-be carry holders in some parts of the state to find access to the state-mandated training. There are few ranges located in and around New York City, for example, and applicants are forced to travel for some distance, perhaps even staying in another location overnight and incurring additional costs, in order to meet the state\u2019s requirement.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, Suddaby suggested that he\u2019d be amenable to halting enforcement of the in-person meeting requirement for concealed carry applicants, and even laid out a better argument than the one used by plaintiffs.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Granted, again, it seems a stretch to analogize the modern need to regulate concealed carry applicants to the historical need regulate \u201cgroups deemed dangerous.\u201d And the need to personally see that the members of one\u2019s military are competent to handle firearms during a time of war seems greater than the need to look all concealed carry applicants in the eye (and maybe exchanged a few words with them) after they have provided four character references and completed 18 hours of firearms training. However, Plaintiff Sloane has not yet adduced evidence of the inconvenience he would incur as a result of such an in-person meeting. (See generally Dkt. No. 1, Attach. 4 [Sloane Decl.].)<\/p>\n

Conceivable examples of such evidence might include (1) the need to take time away from work or family to appear before a licensing officer, or (2) any delay experienced in having an appointment scheduled due to the CCIA\u2019s imposition of this requirement on every applicant. Instead, Plaintiff Sloane has relied only on a possible infringement of his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.<\/strong>\u00a0(Id. at \u00b6 \u00b6 5, 17-19.)<\/p>\n

The problem with this sole reliance is that, even setting aside the argument that an applicant is not \u201cin custody\u201d during such an in-person meeting, Plaintiff Sloane\u2019s Fifth Amendment injury stemming from an \u201cinterrogation\u201d appears too speculative at this point in the litigation. Simply stated, without more evidence, the Court must find that the burdensomeness of this modern regulation appears proportionate to the burdensomeness of its historical analogues.<\/p>\n

In this regard, based on better briefing by the State Defendants (and in the absence of testimony at the Preliminary Injunction Hearing), the Court reconsiders its prior ruling on this issue (in its Decision and Temporary Restraining Order of October 6, 2022), and denies Plaintiffs\u2019 motion for a preliminary injunction with regard to this regulation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Suddaby\u2019s decision also allows the prohibition on concealed carry in playgrounds (but not parks), daycare centers, libraries and nursery schools; finding that those places are close enough to historical prohibitions on carrying firearms on school grounds to withstand constitutional scrutiny.<\/p>\n

While the judge\u2019s decision isn\u2019t perfectly in line with what plaintiffs were asking for, it\u2019s still a big win for Second Amendment advocates. Now the question is what will the Second Circuit do with Suddaby\u2019s opinion? The state\u2019s appeal will likely come quickly, and then the appeals court will have to decide whether to let the injunction stand as it is or reverse some or all of the district court decision. In the meantime, life will be a little easier for those who already possess a permit to carry in New York, but those hoping to exercise their right to bear arms for the first time are still going to deal with some unreasonable (and I\u2019d argue unconstitutional) demands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What’s left standing after judge guts NY carry laws? As my colleague Tom Knighton reported\u00a0this morning, U.S. District Judge Glenn Suddaby has halted enforcement of many aspects of New York\u2019s Concealed Carry Improvement Act, from the \u201cgood moral character\u201d requirement to the state\u2019s designation of a host of publicly-accessible places as \u201csensitive\u201d locations off-limits to … 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":[23,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-courts","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87452","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=87452"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87453,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87452\/revisions\/87453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}