According to the Supreme Court, carrying a loaded firearm beyond the confines of your home is an Amendment right. State laws prohibiting citizens from carrying guns outside their homes are a violation of the 14th Amendment.
New York is the location where this case originated. To possess any firearm, you must have a permit. A “restricted license” permits possession of a firearm inside your home and gives you the right to take the weapon outside the home for purposes of hunting or target shooting. To obtain this permit, the applicant has to show a “licensing officer,” usually a judge or police officer, that they have “good moral character,” no history of crime or mental illness, and that “no good cause exists for the denial of the license.” Carrying a weapon outside the home for self-defense requires an “unrestricted license.” To obtain that license, you must convince a “licensing officer” that “proper cause exists” for it to be issued. There is no recourse to an adverse decision and you are subject to the will of bureaucrats.
By a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court declared that exercising your right to carry a weapon for self-defense does not depend upon your ability to convince some petty bureaucrat that you have “proper cause.”
New York State Rifle and Pistol Association vs. Bruen on Scribd
The truth about the “proper cause” doctrine that prevails in the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York is that they effectively prohibited concealed or open carry of weapons, and there were no means available to protest decisions that didn’t involve spending tens of thousands of dollars in legal costs. Some courts like the Ninth Circuit were hostile to gun rights and would overrule Supreme Court precedents. The Ninth Circuit, for instance, stated in March 2021 that they would not recognize the Supreme Court’s precedent. District of Columbia against Heller decision was bullsh** (see 9th Circuit Makes a Major Ruling That Puts Fundamental Gun Rights in Jeopardy). The Ninth Circuit’s refusal to acknowledge the Second Amendment was even parodied by one of its justices in an opinion, see Ninth Circuit Trump Appointed Judge Lampoons His Entire Circuit Over Its Treatment of the Second Amendment.
When the Bruen case was argued, it became obvious that adding three conservative justices had changed everything; see Supreme Court Conservatives Maul New York’s Restrictive Concealed Carry Law in First Major Second Amendment Case in a Decade. Justice Clarence Thomas released the decision today. This court clearly states that gun rights are not a new concept but an essential constitutional right. It also called out Circuit Courts who had been creating excuses to ignore the Second Amendment.
Heller McDonaldThe Second and Fourteenth Amendments both protect the individual right to carry and bear arms for self defense. We declared unconstitutional two laws prohibiting the use and possession of handguns at home. In the years since, the Courts of Appeals have coalesced around a “two-step” framework for analyzing Second Amendment challenges that combines history with means-end scrutiny.
Today we reject this two-part approach. In keeping with Heller, we hold that when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. The government cannot simply state that it is in the public’s interest to regulate firearms. Rather, the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only if a firearm regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s “unqualified command.”
Along the way, they also observe that you can hardly have a right to “keep and bear arms” unless you can carry them outside the home.
Nothing in the Second Amendment’s text draws a home/public distinction with respect to the right to keep and bear arms, and the definition of “bear” naturally encompasses public carry. Moreover, the Second Amendment guarantees an “individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation,” id., at 592, and confrontation can surely take place outside the home.
These were their thoughts:
The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not “a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.” McDonald, 561 U.S., 780 (plurality opinion). Individuals do not need to show government officials a special reason to exercise other constitutional rights. It is the same with Second Amendment rights to bear arms in public defense. New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms in public.
I’m not enough of a naif to imagine this is the last word. They will not stop fighting liberty.
Reacting to 2A’s ruling, Governor Kathy Hochul said that “we can have limitations on speech.” In a packed theater, you can’t shout fire.
This is a quote from an earlier SCOTUS decision that justifies the sending of anti-war activists to prison, but it was overturned more than 50 years ago. pic.twitter.com/ftlKklNbwT
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) June 23, 2022
However, the tide seems to be turning in favor of those who restrict self defense to wealthy and powerful people.
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