High court accepts case on gun rights
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said Tuesday that it would review a New York City gun law that limits residents from transporting their guns outside their homes, its first Second Amendment case in nearly a decade and a test of the court’s approach to gun rights after the arrival of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh in October.
Kavanaugh, who replaced the more moderate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy and created a reliable five-member conservative majority, has an expansive view of gun rights. His presence most likely means that the Supreme Court will start exploring and perhaps expanding the scope of the Second Amendment.
“It could be a landmark case with major implications for gun policy,” said Adam Winkler, the author of “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America.” “The case could articulate broad principles about the Second Amendment, and especially the Second Amendment outside the home.”
Court scholars said Kavanaugh’s replacement of Kennedy could lead to an abrupt lurch from the court’s previous decisions.
“This is just the first case but not likely the last case where at least four justices open the way to a major ruling that could limit gun safety laws,” said Michael Waldman, the author of “The Second Amendment: A Biography,” referring to a Supreme Court rule requiring four votes to add cases to its docket.
The New York City ordinance challenged in the new case allows residents with so-called premises licenses to take their guns to one of seven shooting ranges within the city limits. But the ordinance forbids them to take their guns anywhere else, including second homes and shooting ranges outside the city, even when they are unloaded and locked in a container separate from ammunition.
The Supreme Court’s new majority seems ready to continue a project begun in 2008, when the court, by a 5-4 vote, established an individual right to keep guns in the home for self-defense. That decision, District of Columbia v. Heller, was both revolutionary and in its way quite limited. Exactly what the Second Amendment protects has been in dispute ever since.
Three city residents and the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association sued to challenge the law but lost in U.S. District Court in Manhattan and in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A unanimous three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit ruled that the ordinance passed constitutional muster under the Heller decision.
In urging the Supreme Court to hear their appeal in the case, New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. City of New York, No. 18-280, the challengers said the restrictions imposed by the New York City ordinance were unique in the nation and made no sense.
“Only New York City flatly prohibits its residents from removing their lawfully purchased and duly registered handguns from the city limits, even to transport them (unloaded, and locked up) to second homes at which they are constitutionally entitled to possess them, or to out-of-city shooting ranges or competitions at which they are constitutionally entitled to hone their safe and effective use,” the challengers’ brief said.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, responding to a reporter’s question about the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case, said at a news conference Tuesday that the city would vigorously defend its law.
“We, every single day, are working to make this the safest big city in America,” he said. “We need the laws that we have that protect against guns being on our streets and we will fight to protect ourselves, that’s the bottom line.”
Waldman said he was surprised the Supreme Court agreed to hear such a minor Second Amendment case when it has ducked some major ones.