The Supreme Court had gun rights advocates cheering months ago when it decided to take up a case involving New York City’s law prohibiting licensed handgun owners from transporting their firearms outside city limits.
But the city is now saying the case could be rendered moot.
Efforts by the New York City Police Department and city officials to change to the restrictions at issue in the case have gun owners and gun rights advocates crying foul, as they argue it’s a transparent move by the city to preempt a ruling from the Supreme Court, which would be its first in a Second Amendment case in a decade.
“This was just a blatant attempt to stop the court case, and the changes they proposed were miniscule,” Tom King, executive director of the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, which is challenging the measure, said. “This is their last-gasp measure to stop the case.”
The law at the center of the case bans New York City residents with so-called premises licenses from transporting handguns outside the city, which the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, an affiliate of the National Rifle Association, and three handgun owners say violates the Second Amendment.
Firearms owners are, however, allowed to take their handguns to and from the seven small arms ranges or shooting clubs located in New York City.
But two of the gun owners challenging the ban want to take their handguns to target ranges and shooting competitions outside of New York City, while the third seeks to bring his firearm to his second home in upstate New York.
The justices agreed in January to review a ruling from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the regulations. The case will be heard in the court’s next term, which begins in October, and marks the first time the justices will wade into the debate over gun rights since 2010.
But last month, lawyers for New York City and the New York City Police Department informed the court of a proposed rule that would allow licensed handgun owners to transport their firearms to three additional locations: second homes, shooting ranges, or competitions outside of city limits.
If the rule were approved, lawyers for the city of New York told the Supreme Court in a letter last month, it would render the case moot. Because of this possibility, the city asked the justices to put the briefing schedule on hold pending final action on the proposed rule.
The Supreme Court this week denied the request, which had gun rights organizations scoffing.
“Our attitude is: too little, too late,” Erich Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, said. “Our hope is that the court will just continue on and deal with this issue head-on.”
Attorneys for the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association and the handgun owners, meanwhile, argued the case has been winding its way through the courts for more than six years, during which the city has “vigorously defended” the transport ban. The possible change in the law, they said, is a “nakedly transparent effort to evade” review by the Supreme Court.
Stephen Halbrook, an attorney who specializes in Second Amendment cases, said the proposed measure is “just a guise” to prevent the high court from hearing the case.
“They want to have their cake and eat it, too. They want to preserve the lower court opinion by trying to moot out the Supreme Court deciding it,” Halbrook, who also is a senior fellow at the Independent Institute, said. “The court would not have taken this case unless they were going to overturn its rule, and that’s why you have all these people screaming. They’re afraid the court will overrule.”
New York City is the only place with limits on licensed handgun owners taking their firearms outside their homes, and King, of the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, estimated that up to 5,000 members of his organization are affected by the city’s rule.
“It’s the only place in the United States where a firearms owner is prohibited from traveling outside the area that he lives in,” he said. “That sounds more like something that would happen in Russia rather than the United States.”
The court’s last major rulings in Second Amendment cases came in 2008 and 2010, which recognized the right to keep guns for self-defense in the home.
Since then, the Supreme Court has steered clear of gun rights cases. That reluctance on the part of the high court earned the ire of Justice Clarence Thomas, who last year called the Second Amendment the Supreme Court’s “constitutional orphan.”
“If a lower court treated another right so cavalierly, I have no doubt this Court would intervene,” Thomas wrote in a dissent after the justices declined to hear a case involving California’s 10-day waiting period for gun sales. “But as evidenced by our continued inaction in this area, the Second Amendment is a disfavored right in this court.”
But Halbrook said the challenge to New York City’s rules allow the court to take a “smaller step forward” in clarifying firearms can be taken out of the home and transported if they are unloaded and stored separate from ammunition.
“It’s a constitutional right,” he said. “The Bill of Rights makes clear the government has to trust the people, and this is like saying we don’t trust them to keep and bear arms.”
