WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear an appeal to expand gun rights in the United States in a New York case over the right to carry a firearm in public for self-defense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The case marks the court\u2019s first foray into gun rights since\u00a0Justice Amy Coney Barrett\u00a0came on board in October, making a 6-3 conservative majority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The justices said Monday that they will review a lower-court ruling that upheld New York\u2019s restrictive gun permit law. The court\u2019s decision to take on the case follows mass shootings in recent weeks in\u00a0Indiana,\u00a0Georgia,\u00a0Colorado\u00a0and\u00a0California\u00a0and comes amid congressional efforts to tighten gun laws. President Joe Biden also has announced several\u00a0executive actions\u00a0to combat what he called an \u201cepidemic and an international embarrassment\u201d of gun violence in America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The case is especially significant during\u00a0the coronavirus pandemic, said Eric Tirschwell, the legal director of Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control group backed by former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg. \u201cGun violence has only worsened during the pandemic, and a ruling that opened the door to weakening our gun laws could make it even harder for cities and states to grapple with this public health crisis,\u201d Tirschwell said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The court had turned down review of the issue in June, before\u00a0Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg\u2019s death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the rest of the country, gun owners have little trouble legally carrying their weapons when they go out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul Clement, representing challengers to New York\u2019s permit law, said the court should use the case to settle the issue once and for all. \u201cThus, 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,\u201d Clement wrote on behalf of the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association and two New York residents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Calling on the court to reject the appeal, the state said its law promotes public safety and crime reduction and neither bans people from carrying guns nor allows everyone to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that gun laws have made New York the \u201csafest big state in the country\u201d and that the \u201cNRA-backed case is a massive threat to that security. Imagine someone carrying a gun through Times Square, onto the subway, or to a tailgate outside of a Bills game.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Federal courts have largely upheld the permit limits. Last month, an 11-judge panel of the federal appeals court in San Francisco rejected a challenge to Hawaii\u2019s permit regulations in an opinion written by a conservative judge, Jay Bybee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOur review of more than 700 years of English and American legal history reveals a strong theme: government has the power to regulate arms in the public square,\u201d Bybee wrote in a 7-4 decision for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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, following decisions in 2008 and 2010 that established a nationwide right to keep a gun at home for self-defense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In June, Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, complained that rather than take on the constitutional issue, \u201cthe Court simply looks the other way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Barrett has a more expansive view of gun rights than Ginsburg. She wrote\u00a0a dissent in 2019, when she was a judge on the federal appeals court in Chicago, that argued that a conviction for a nonviolent felony \u2014 in this case, mail fraud \u2014 shouldn\u2019t automatically disqualify someone from owning a gun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She said that her colleagues in the majority were treating the Second Amendment as a \u201csecond-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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