The court will hear the challenge to a New York gun control law in the term that begins in October. It is considering a law that requires those who seek a permit to carry a concealed weapon show a special requirement for self-defense.
The rule in question is similar to laws in Maryland, Massachusetts and other states that the court has declined to review. The Supreme Court had turned down a review of this issue in June, before Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death.
The court’s new conservative majority has indicated it is more open to Second Amendment challenges.
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The association contends that “the text, history, and tradition of the Second Amendment and this Court’s binding precedents compel the conclusion that the Second Amendment does indeed secure that right.”
New York is among eight states that limit who has the right to carry a weapon in public. The others are: California, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island.
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In the rest of the country, gun owners have little trouble legally carrying their weapons when they go out.
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Paul Clement, representing the gun association, declared the court should use the case to settle the issue once and for all.
“Thus, the nation is split, with the Second Amendment alive and well in the vast middle of the nation, and those same rights disregarded near the coasts,” Clement wrote.
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The court’s consideration of the petition coincides with deadly mass shootings in recent weeks in Indiana, Georgia, Colorado and California. While President Donald Trump opposed gun control, President Joe Biden seeks to expand them.
Mr. Biden has urged the Senate to pass broader checks on gun buyers already approved by the House and has said he supports restrictions on certain weapons. His administration has said it would also pursue measures that did not require congressional action.
The issue of carrying a gun for self-defense has been seen for several years as the next major step for gun rights at the Supreme Court since the 2008 Heller decision.
In June, Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, complained that rather than take on the constitutional issue, “the Court simply looks the other way.”
And new Justice Amy Comey Barrett has a more expansive view of gun rights than Justice Ginsburg. She wrote a dissent in 2019, when she was a judge on the federal appeals court in Chicago, that argued that a conviction for a nonviolent felony — in this case, mail fraud — shouldn’t automatically disqualify someone from owning a gun.
She said her colleagues in the majority were treating the Second Amendment as a “second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.”
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