It’s now up to Albany to pass restrictions on gun ownership that would be allowed under the Supreme Court decision invalidating New York’s law.
Good morning. It’s Friday. We’ll look at what the Legislature can do now that the Supreme Court has invalidated New York’s concealed-carry gun law. We’ll also look at how changing demographics are reflected in a House race in Manhattan. In procedural terms, the Supreme Court decision striking down New York’s concealed-carry gun law sent the case back to lower courts. In practical terms, the decision sent the issue of gun control and gun violence to lawmakers in Albany, where Gov. Kathy Hochul called the ruling “shocking, absolutely shocking.”
She was preparing to sign a school safety bill when the Supreme Court decision was announced and became visibly angry as she described the 6-to-3 ruling, which was built on a broad interpretation of the Second Amendment that is likely to make it harder for states to restrict guns. Hochul said she would call the Legislature back to Albany for a special session, probably next month, and that aides had already prepared draft legislation with new restrictions. She also said the state was considering changing the permitting process to create basic qualifications for gun owners, including training requirements. And she said New York was considering a system where businesses and private property owners could set their own restrictions on firearms. In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams said the decision was “just not rooted in reality” and “has made every single one of us less safe from gun violence.”
“There is no place in the nation that this decision affects as much as New York City,” he said. But the question of the day was what the Legislature in Albany could do.
“The hardest thing for the Legislature is to calmly write legislation that is not going to please everybody,” said Paul Finkelman, the chancellor and a distinguished professor at Gratz College in Philadelphia, who follows the New York Legislature. “It’s not going to please everyone who says we’ve got to get rid of firearms. That’s not where the world lives today.”
He suggested setting an age threshold for gun permits, much like the ones for drivers’ licenses, and taxing firearms, much like gasoline or cigarettes. Vincent Bonventre, a professor at the Albany Law School, said the Legislature could restrict the possession of firearms by categories, putting guns out of the reach of convicted felons or people convicted of misdemeanors involving violence, for example. “It’s going to take some thought” to develop restrictions that would pass muster, “but not that much,” he said. Jonathan Lowy, the chief counsel of the gun control group Brady, has argued that letting more people carry hidden handguns would mean more violent crime — “in other words, more Americans will die,” he wrote in the New York University Law Review last year. On Thursday, the group estimated that more than 28,000 people had died from gun violence since the case was argued before the court last Nov.
