New York's concealed carry restrictions are before the Supreme Court, setting up a ruling on Second Amendment rights amid a pair of mass shooting tragedies that sparked new debates about gun laws.
The Supreme Court might rule against New York's restrictions as a violation of constitutional rights, according to The Hill, potentially empowering the gun-rights movement amid the debate and an election year.
"It does seem relatively clear that the court is going to strike down New York's law and make it harder for cities and states to restrict concealed carry of firearms," UCLA law professor Adam Winkler told The Hill. "It remains to be seen exactly how broad the Supreme Court goes, but one thing is clear: As mass shootings become more of a political issue, the court is going to take options away from lawmakers on the basis of the Second Amendment."
The decision on New York's concealed carry might come as soon as next week and as late as early July, according to the report.
Democrats have renewed calls for gun control after two mass shootings: in a Buffalo supermarket in a Black community and in a Texas border town's elementary school.
Numerous Republicans have talked about addressing mental illness before restricting gun rights of law-abiding Americans, arguing that criminals break laws by nature, so making new ones is unlikely to deter evil.
Instead of taking away guns, Republicans want to arm teachers and school police officers, while hardening school security, including restricting access to a single entry point and potentially having an armed officer protecting the entry — if not directly training and arming teachers.
The New York concealed carry case before the Supreme Court might ultimately "tell us what forms of gun regulation are constitutional and why," Duke law professor Joseph Blocher told The Hill.
The New York law requires a concealed carry application to demonstrate a special need for the protection, perhaps a sticking point in the law the Supreme Court might have to address.
Blocher told The Hill he expects the Supreme Court to decide against New York and the Biden administration's Justice Department backing the famously blue state's gun restriction.
"At least until now, the scope of gun regulation has been primarily a question for politics and we decide collectively the degree and the ways in which we want to regulate," Blocher continued. "The Second Amendment puts some outside limits on that, but the Supreme Court has repeatedly reiterated that the Second Amendment permits various forms of gun regulation, and in the [New York] case, the court seems likely to restrict the available policy space, so we will probably have fewer options."
It might come down to whether localities like New York can overrule the federally protected constitutional right to bear arms in public, according to Blocker.
"We already know more guns equals more crime and we have an awful raft of mass shootings — gun homicides have spiked in the last couple of years," Winkler told The Hill. "We have a major gun violence problem and expanding Second Amendment protections, greater than they already are, is likely to make it much harder for lawmakers to enact effective laws to reduce gun violence."
Republicans argue that Democrat-run cities with the strictest gun laws often have the highest rates of gun violence, pointing to Chicago's violent and hot summers.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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