The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a Second Amendment dispute that could have a major impact on state rules for carrying firearms outside the home.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed skeptical Wednesday of New York’s restrictions on carrying concealed guns outside the home as they considered the most significant Second Amendment case in more than a decade. The case, New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, could have a major impact on state rules for carrying firearms outside the home. Gun-rights proponents hope the court will reverse a lower court’s ruling upholding a century-old New York law that limits who can receive licenses to carry concealed handguns in public. At least seven other states have similar concealed-carry restrictions. Chief Justice John Roberts grilled New York Solicitor General Barbara Underwood, who was arguing in defense of the law, about who was more likely to be granted a concealed-carry license in the state. After Underwood said that such licenses are much more readily available in lower-density parts of the state versus the sardine-packed metropolitan areas, Roberts asked how that aligns with court precedent that the Second Amendment’s core purpose is for self defense. «How many muggings take place in the forest?» he asked. «I take your point that there is a different risk in the city, but there is also a different public safety consideration,» Underwood responded. Some of the court’s conservatives appeared more clearly sympathetic to a broad application of the Second Amendment in the case. «All these people with illegal guns [in the city], they’re on the subway, they’re walking around the streets,» said Justice Samuel Alito, «but the ordinary, hard-working, law-abiding people I mentioned — no, they can’t be armed.
