High court trains its sights on guns

The U.S. Supreme Court, in two 5-to-4 rulings roughly a decade ago, determined that the Second Amendment enshrines an individual constitutional right to the possession of a firearm at home for self-defense, inviolable by federal, state or municipal law. However, the court left the precise scope of this right, and of permissible regulation, undefined — even as it noted that longstanding prohibitions such as gun possession by, or sales to, felons could stand.

In the interim, legislatures and courts at all levels have reached a variety of conclusions as to what gun measures are necessary, appropriate and constitutional — without further guidance from the justices.

For those of us who advocate sensible restrictions, the court’s abstention left open the hope that its Second Amendment jurisprudence would leave room for robust regulation — especially necessary in response to the plague of mass shootings — and the fear that it would not.

Now comes new reason for concern in the form of the court’s decision Tuesday to hear its first major Second Amendment case since 2010. At issue is a New York City law that prohibits most licensed gun owners from taking their weapons anywhere outside their homes, except to an authorized practice range within the five boroughs. Opponents portray this as an odious burden on their Second Amendment rights and their freedom to travel that irrationally prevents them from, say, taking a gun for protection to a second home upstate.

True, the rule does draw an arbitrary line between a firing range in Staten Island and another in Fort Lee, New Jersey. However, both a federal district judge and the New York-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit upheld it, reasoning, soundly, that the limitation on Second Amendment rights was justifiable given the city’s difficulty in enforcing a previous, more lenient rule and the relative ease with which a gun owner could purchase a second weapon for use out of town.

The New York-area federal courts’ rulings hardly cried out for Supreme Court correction, both because they were defensible and because the city’s rule is a one-of-a-kind provision that no other jurisdiction seemed about to copy. The justices’ decision to review the case, which takes a minimum of four votes, suggests that conservative members of the court see an opportunity to expand Second Amendment rights, either by decreeing that they cover possession outside the home, by imposing a higher standard of judicial scrutiny for regulations — or both.

Justice Clarence Thomas has been calling for the court to end its “inaction,” lest the Second Amendment become a “constitutional orphan,” as he put it in a 2018 opinion dissenting from a court decision not to hear a California gun case.

We are about to find out if he has an ally in the court’s newest justice, Brett Kavanaugh, who generally opposed gun restrictions that came before him as a lower-court judge.

In short, this case could be the source of mischief, in the form of court approval for more guns on the street and more difficulty for law enforcement in sorting out the legal and illegal ones. Or moderation can prevail, leaving elected state and local authorities room to craft controls that make sense for them.