Supreme Court to hear case on concealed guns
The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether California and other states can require gun owners to get permits from police before carrying concealed handguns in public, apparently taking on the longavoided issue of whether the constitutional right to possess firearms applies outside the home.
The court ruled in 2008 that the Second Amendment entitles adults to keep handguns at home for selfdefense but has refused until now to determine whether the same rights apply in public and, if so, whether and how states can restrict them.
California prohibits carrying handguns openly in public and requires private citizens to obtain a license from local law enforcement officials to carry concealed handguns. Sheriff ’s offices in rural areas are willing to issue the licenses to those who can show some need to carry a gun for selfdefense, but they have been virtually unavailable, except to police and security guards, in metropolitan areas like San Francisco and Los Angeles.
California is also one of eight states, along with the District of Columbia, whose laws or regulatory practices prohibit openly carrying handguns in public. Those laws are not directly challenged in the case but could be affected by a ruling on the right to possess firearms outside the home.
The Supreme Court refused to consider a challenge to the California concealedcarry law in 2017. But that was before former President Donald Trump’s appointments of Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, whose past writings have interpreted Second Amendment rights broadly. And on Monday, the justices agreed to review a New York law that, like laws in California and six other states, requires a license to carry concealed firearms in public.
The announcement was cheered by the Firearms Policy Coalition, which opposes gun restrictions.
“It is time to restore the Second Amendment’s firstclass right status and put an end to lower courts’ unfavorable treatment of this fundamental human right,” said Adam Kraut, a lawyer for the group.
On the other side, Hannah Shearer, attorney for the San Franciscobased Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said the court’s action was “a warning sign that our nation’s highest court is poised to brush aside the will of the people and instead side with gun lobby groups seeking to eliminate even the most modest firearm laws.”
“This case could radically transform experience of life on the streets for Californians,” said Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor who has written on firearms issues. If the court rules against the states, which seems likely, he said, the number of people carrying concealed handguns in Los Angeles County will increase from a few hundred to a few hundred thousand, with a similar explosion in San Francisco.
The case will be heard in the term that starts this fall, with a ruling due by June 2022.
In granting review, the court phrased the issue somewhat narrowly — whether New York’s “denial of petitioners’ applications for concealedcarry licenses for selfdefense violated the Second Amendment.” That could lead to a ruling that focused on the state’s standards for granting those licenses, which require a showing of “a special need for selfprotection,” if five of the nine justices were unable to agree on broader questions.
But disputes over the right to carry guns outside the home, and a state’s authority to impose restrictions, have proliferated in lower courts since the Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the Constitution protects the right to possess handguns at home but refused to elaborate on the scope of that right.
“The time has come for this court to resolve this critical constitutional impasse and reaffirm the citizens’ fundamental right to carry a handgun for selfdefense,” lawyers for the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, an affiliate of the National Rifle Association, and two individual gun owners told the court.
It is also a time in which firearms deaths are soaring nationwide, with the totals from 2020 likely the highest in more than two decades, said the guncontrol group Everytown for Gun Safety.
“Gun violence has only worsened during the pandemic, and a ruling that opened the door to weakening our gun laws could make it even harder for cities and states to grapple with this public health crisis,” the group’s legal director, Eric Tirschwell, said.
The case is New York State Rifle & Pistol Association vs. Corlett, 20843.