The Supreme Court has ruled that the U.S. Constitution’s protection of the right to bear arms includes the right to carry a gun outside the home, striking down a New York state law that demanded applicants for concealed carry permits show “proper cause” to justify the issuance of the permit.
The 6-3 opinion, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, was issued on Thursday morning and written by Justice Clarence Thomas. The other five Republican-appointed justices joined Thomas, with Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan dissenting. Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Chief Justice John Roberts issued a concurring opinion acknowledging that this did not decide anything about who may lawfully possess a firearm, acknowledging that there were still areas where the government could restrict and regulate gun possession and ownership, including background checks.
The complaint was brought by two New York men whose applications for concealed carry permits were denied. The state law in question required them to “demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community.”
“New York courts interpreted that phrase to require applicants to show more than a general desire to protect themselves or their property,” wrote SCOTUSblog’s Amy Howe. “Instead, applicants must demonstrate a special need for self-defense – for example, a pattern of physical threats. Several other states, including California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, impose similar restrictions, as do many cities.”
The court’s ruling found that this New York law operated in a way that “prevent[ed] law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms in public for self-defense,” citing the prior Supreme Court cases of District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago, which found that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense.
CNN’s legal analysts reacted like many other commentators, calling the case a monumental shift in Second Amendment jurisprudence, the most major gun law case in more than a decade.
Heller had found an individual right to possess a hand gun in the home, noted Jeffrey Toobin, and now this case was taking a more extensive view of the Second Amendment.
Jessica Schneider commented that the opinion struck down a New York law that had stood for over a century, which had required concealed carry permit applications to show they were “fac[ing] a special or unique danger to their life,” and that was what the Court ruled was going too far so as to violate the Fourteenth Amendment.
There were about five other states that had laws similar to New York’s, adding Schneider, so those would likely no longer be in effect.
Toobin added that the conservative justices were approaching the Second Amendment in a way similar to the First Amendment.
“We know that in the United States you have the right under the First Amendment to say pretty much anything anywhere because we have freedom of speech in the United States,” he said,. “What the conservatives on the Supreme Court are saying is we want the Second Amendment to be a first class right like the First Amendment. And we want to be able to carry guns anywhere, anytime, without any sort of regulation by the government, without background checks, without restrictions on where you can take a weapon, without restrictions on how you can carry a weapon. Now, they haven’t gone that far yet. But they are clearly moving in that direction.”
Watch the video above, via CNN.
The post JUST IN: Supreme Court Strikes Down NY Law Requiring Showing a ‘Special Need for Self-Protection’ to Get Concealed Carry Permit first appeared on Mediaite.