New York says its history of racist laws that allowed for disarming Catholics and Indigenous people supports a “good moral character” requirement for obtaining a concealed carry license, a point that Second Amendment groups see as a bad-faith argument for gun control.
The requirement is part of the Concealed Carry Improvement Act that Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) signed in July and marks the first major attempt to defend the state’s notorious gun restrictions after the Supreme Court struck down the state’s similarly subjective “good reason” clause in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen earlier this summer.
New York’s reasoning for the “good moral character” clause, which permits state officials to deny gun carry applications subjectively, is because the Supreme Court requires a historical basis for any law that contradicts the text of the Second Amendment.
In response to the CCIA, Gun Owners of America sued New York State Police Superintendent Kevin P. Bruen earlier this month, prompting the state’s unusual defense of the statute’s “good moral character” standard by his counsel. State attorneys representing Bruen said the statute is deeply rooted in “centuries of Anglo-American law and tradition” as their basis for why it should be upheld in court.
HOCHUL SIGNS NEW YORK BILL REQUIRING SOCIAL MEDIA HISTORY TO OBTAIN GUN CARRY PERMIT
“From the early days of English settlement in America, the colonies sought to prevent Native American tribes from acquiring firearms, passing laws forbidding the sale and trading of arms to Indigenous people,” the state argued in court documents filed on Aug. 15.
GOA’s Senior Vice President Erich Pratt told the Washington Examiner that the judge presiding over the case asked “very pointed questions for the state of New York” during the most recent hearing on Tuesday.
Pratt said U.S. District Judge Glenn Suddaby “told the state attorney that New York has now made it very hard to carry firearms concealed.”
“And our attorney pointed out that in defending their restrictions on concealed carry, the state has utilized the racist laws from our past to justify its new bans,” Pratt said.
In the 6-3 high court decision in Bruen, the justices established a novel standard for reviewing Second Amendment cases that involves proving regulations are rooted in tradition from the time of the nation’s founding. It also said that guns could be restricted to “sensitive locations,” though the term was largely undefined by the justices for good reason.
“Put simply, there is no historical basis for New York to effectively declare the island of Manhattan a ‘sensitive place’ simply because it is crowded and protected generally by the New York City Police Department,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the opinion.
If the CCIA is enacted without a court intervention next month, it will criminalize the concealed carry of guns in “sensitive locations,” including churches, airports, Times Square, and numerous other places across the Empire State.
Attorneys for GOA argued on Tuesday that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bruen meant for the “sensitive location” exception to apply only to a “narrow group of places.”
“You know, government building, schools. But it’s not all of these places. Like, Times Square — it can’t be a sensitive place,” attorney Stephen Stamboulieh said. “It could be that Times Square is sensitive at certain times. But not all the time.”
Attorney James Thomas of New York State Attorney General Letitia James’s office defended the statute, arguing the CCIA is “deeply rooted in American history and doctrine, meaning that there is no likelihood of success in a facial challenge against the entirety of the statute.”
But public opinion on the statute in recent days has leaned towards skepticism over the measure, including a local news columnist who accused it of targeting “law-abiding pistol permit holders.”
Those law-abiding gun holders would “become felons simply by ignoring a law that will accomplish nothing except to put their lives at risk and put them in handcuffs,” wrote Rod Watson, an urban affairs editor and columnist for the Buffalo News.
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Plaintiffs in the case Antonyuk v. Bruen have requested a preliminary injunction against the state’s law, and a ruling is expected ahead of Sept. 1, when the statute is scheduled to go into effect.
The Washington Examiner contacted the office of the New York attorney general.
