A precedent-setting decision made by the Supreme Court that makes it easier to carry a handgun in public has upended gun control regulations in at least a half dozen states, putting tens of millions of people in the United States in the path of an assault of litigation and legislative modification.
The court’s decision on Thursday, which was its first major ruling on the right of Americans to carry a gun in public, was most narrowly focused on a law in New York State that permits authorities to set additional requirements before residents can get a concealed-carry gun permit. This was the court’s first major ruling on the right of Americans to carry a gun in public.
However, in five additional states — California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey — there are laws that are analogous to the one that the Supreme Court struck down, and the legislatures of those states will now need to rewrite those laws in order to comply with the decision of the Supreme Court. If they do not, those states run the risk of facing legal challenges alleging that their existing laws violate the Constitution. According to representatives of gun rights organisations, the laws of at least three other states, namely Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island, may need to be rewritten in order to establish some constraints on the manner in which licences for carrying weapons outside the house are given.
The judgement handed down by the Supreme Court does not instantly invalidate or alter these state laws; rather, it just makes it plain that these laws violate the Constitution, thereby compelling state authorities to change them.
Because authorities in several of the impacted states have declared intentions to try to develop new laws that aim to obey the Supreme Court judgement while still setting limitations on gun licences, there is a good chance that there will be more legal conflict as a result of these announcements.
Constitutional and Second Amendment attorneys discussed possible solutions on Thursday, including requiring applicants to complete a significant amount of training before being granted a permit or prohibiting the carrying of firearms in certain public places, such as schools, polling places, or parks. Both of these solutions were presented as potential options. The alterations would almost probably result in the filing of more legal challenges.
Mr. Newsom stated on Thursday that California lawmakers “anticipated this moment,” and that they would hear a bill the following week to shore up the state’s “public carry” law by rewriting it to regulate gun use in ways that blunt the impact of the ruling. The bill will be heard to strengthen the state’s “public carry” law. He said that he was getting ready to sign sixteen laws related to gun safety during this legislative session, one of which would enable anyone to sue gun manufacturers and dealers for the illegal distribution of guns.
The governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, has announced that she will convene a special legislative session as soon as the month of July, and she has presented suggestions that might allow the state to continue to have some of the strictest gun rules in the country.
Attorney General Maura Healey of Massachusetts said that she and 19 other attorneys general argued before the Supreme Court in the last year that the Second Amendment does not prohibit states and municipalities from limiting the carrying of weapons in public, “as they have done for hundreds of years.”
According to Darrell Miller, a law professor at Duke University and a co-director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law, the only thing that will decide just how much more difficult or how much simpler it will become to get a concealed-carry permit in these states is the legislative reaction.
Because it explicitly rejects a legal standard — also known as the “two-step test” — that federal courts have used to evaluate Second Amendment challenges ever since a major Supreme Court ruling on gun rights in 2008, this ruling will generate challenges to a much wider range of laws than just those pertaining to concealed-carry permit laws.
Instead, the court has decided that an evaluation criterion known as “history and tradition” should be used in order to assess these concerns. In order to comply with this test, the courts will need to determine whether or not a current gun legislation is comparable to the limitations that were in place around the time that the Second Amendment was ratified in the late 18th century.
According to George Young’s attorney, Alan Alexander Beck, George Young, a Vietnam veteran who has challenged the law in Hawaii that requires residents to identify specific reasons they should be allowed to carry a handgun outside of their home, was “ecstatic” to learn of the Supreme Court ruling. Young has been challenging the law because it requires residents to identify specific reasons why they should be allowed to carry a handgun outside of their home.
