The Supreme Court awarded a major legal victory to constitutionalists and law-abiding gun owners everywhere on Friday.
It was a good day.
In a decision along party lines, the court ruled the Second Amendment right “to keep and bear arms” includes the broad right to carry a firearm outside the home for self-defense. The majority opinion, which recognizes the state’s right to deem certain locations as off-limits to firearms, also condemned “proper cause” laws such as the ones enforced in New York as a direct violation of the Second and Fourth Amendments.
The decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen is a blow to not just the Empire State, which makes the issuance of licenses to carry a firearm outside the home dependent upon whether applicants can prove a need for self-defense, but also California, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Hawaii, which enforce similar restrictions.
Naturally, the usual cast of characters is outraged by the court’s decision.
“It is outrageous that at a moment of national reckoning on gun violence,” said Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, “the Supreme Court has recklessly struck down a New York law that limits those who can carry concealed weapons.”
Vice President Kamala Harris said the decision “defies common sense and the Constitution.”
The Department of Justice, the most powerful law enforcement agency in the country, criticized the legal decision handed down by the branch of the federal government tasked specifically with interpreting and upholding constitutional law.
“We respectfully disagree with the Court’s conclusion that the Second Amendment forbids New York’s reasonable requirement that individuals seeking to carry a concealed handgun must show that they need to do so for self-defense,” the agency said in a statement. “The Department of Justice remains committed to saving innocent lives by enforcing and defending federal firearm laws, partnering with state, local, and tribal authorities, and using all legally available tools to tackle the epidemic of gun violence plaguing our communities.”
Absent from these appeals to emotion is any semblance of a compelling legal counterargument. What, exactly, did the court get wrong? How, exactly, did the court misinterpret the language of the Constitution? To the layman, mandates that say a law-abiding citizen must first beg the state for permission to carry a firearm beyond his doormat certainly seem a direct violation of “the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” which “shall not be infringed.” The opponents of the court’s decision don’t say why the decision is bad, legally speaking. This is most likely because there’s not much to say insofar as legal counterarguments are concerned.
This is because the court got it right.
The majority opinion, by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, sums it up nicely.
“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,’” he writes. “The exercise of other constitutional rights does not require individuals to demonstrate to government officers some special need. The Second Amendment right to carry arms in public for self-defense is no different.”
As a brief aside, and because it’s apparently necessary to explain, the ruling does not establish a right to concealed carry, as many fanatic, wild-eyed media commentators have claimed since the decision was announced. Rather, the court merely recognized such a right has always existed and that the states that infringed upon this right by requiring a showing of just cause got it wrong.
Thomas adds, “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.”
Exactly so.
Would we ever tolerate, say, a law that made voting available only to those who’ve undergone a psychiatric evaluation? Never. Would we ever consider a law that made the right to vote available only to select agents of the state? Probably not. Would we ever consider making a man’s right to vote dependent upon whether he has been reported for erratic behavior? Unlikely. Take voting out of the mix for a moment and focus specifically on free speech. Would we ever tolerate, or even consider, a law that said citizens must first petition the state for “permission” to speak freely? Hardly. We cannot, then, ask or tolerate the same insofar as the rights outlined in the Second Amendment are concerned, especially when it says quite clearly, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms … shall not be infringed.”
It’s worth putting aside for a moment the question of constitutionality to focus on the real-life effects of the “proper cause” gun laws the Supreme Court ruled against.
“New York’s gun restriction was applied in a racially discriminatory way to terrorize black neighborhoods,” noted attorney Andrew Fleischman. “Black New Yorkers were more likely to be stopped, frisked, charged, and held on monetary bail than other New Yorkers. Yet when stopped, they were less likely to actually have a weapon.”
“All this to say that, whatever benefits gun control policies might have, the costs of those policies fall largely on disfavored groups,” he added.
In one of the amicus curiae briefs filed in 2021 in support of overturning New York’s “proper cause” law, a coalition of black attorneys argued, “It is not safe to be approached by police on suspicion that you possess a gun without a license.”
One would be hard-pressed to find someone who disagrees with this statement.
“Each year,” the groups said, “we represent hundreds of indigent people whom New York criminally charges for exercising their right to keep and bear arms. For our clients, New York’s licensing requirement renders the Second Amendment a legal fiction.”
They continued, arguing, “Worse, virtually all our clients whom New York prosecutes for exercising their Second Amendment rights are Black and Hispanic,” adding this is “no accident.”
“New York enacted its firearm licensing requirements to criminalize gun ownership by racial and ethnic minorities,” the coalition argued. “That remains the effect of its enforcement by police and prosecutors today.”
It’s good the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the right to self-defense and the clear and obvious intent of the Second Amendment. The decision is not just a vindication of the Constitution, but it is also a practical win for law-abiding citizens who wish to exercise their rights without fear of punishment.
Becket Adams is the program director of the National Journalism Center.
