U.S. Supreme Court Schedules NRA-Supported Second Amendment Case for Argument

In January, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a Second Amendment challenge to a gun control law for the first time in nearly 10 years. The case arose from a New York City regulation that banned city residents with “premises” handgun licenses from taking their own legally-owned firearms outside Gotham for lawful purposes. The city defended the law all the way to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, insisting it was essential to public safety. But ever since the Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal of that decision, city and state officials in New York have been running scared, desperately maneuvering to convince the justices to dismiss it. Now, it seems, their reckoning may be nigh, as the high court has scheduled the case for argument on Dec. 2.

The lawsuit, New York State Rifle & Pistol Assoc., Inc. v. City of New York, offers a revealing look into the mindset of gun control extremists, and in particular, their refusal to acknowledge the Supreme Court’s precedents that recognize the right to keep and bear arms as a fundamental, individual liberty.

Indeed, over a decade after the Supreme Court made clear that handguns are a protected Second Amendment “arm” and cannot be banned, New York State still generally prohibits the mere possession of pistols and revolvers. State residents, however, may qualify for an “exception” to this ban by obtaining a license issued by the locality in which they reside. The difficulty of obtaining a license depends on where in the state a person lives.

New York City, to no one’s surprise, is the most onerous place to get a handgun license. For the “average” person (that is, for someone who is not well-connected to city officialdom or rich and famous) the only feasible choice is a “premises license.” That license allows a person to keep a handgun in his or her home or place of business. Even then, the process takes many months, multiple trips to police headquarters, and hundreds of dollars in mandatory fees. Licensing officials also have broad discretion to deny licenses, even when the applicant has no criminal convictions.