{"id":688,"date":"2022-08-03T10:08:05","date_gmt":"2022-08-03T14:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/its-your-business\/?p=688"},"modified":"2023-04-24T17:22:24","modified_gmt":"2023-04-24T21:22:24","slug":"the-supreme-court-pulls-the-trigger-on-the-right-to-carry-a-firearm-outside-the-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/its-your-business\/2022\/08\/03\/the-supreme-court-pulls-the-trigger-on-the-right-to-carry-a-firearm-outside-the-home\/","title":{"rendered":"The Supreme Court Pulls the Trigger on the Right to Carry a Firearm Outside the Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

On June 23, 2022, the United States Supreme Court came out with guns blazing in its first Second Amendment decision in nearly fifteen years.\u00a0 In New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass\u2019n v. Bruen<\/em>, the Court struck down a New York state law that required individuals to demonstrate a \u201cspecial cause\u201d to obtain a permit to conceal carry a firearm.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 Critically, the Court reasoned that New York\u2019s law could not withstand judicial scrutiny because the Second Amendment encompasses the right to carry a firearm in public for self-defense. \u00a0Despite the broad holding, Justice Brett Kavanaugh issued a concurring opinion to \u201cunderscore\u201d that the ruling only affects the six states that possessed permitting regimes similar to that of New York.[2]<\/a>\u00a0 Accordingly, the question remains: is Justice Kavanaugh correct, or will the Court\u2019s decision implicate other state laws related to the use and ownership of firearms?<\/p>\n

Standing as the seminal Second Amendment case, the Supreme Court\u2019s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller <\/em>proved essential to the holding in New York State Rifle<\/em>.\u00a0 In addressing the Second Amendment for the first time in approximately seventy years, the Supreme Court in 2008 held that the Second Amendment encompasses the right to own a handgun for self-defense within the home.[3]<\/a>\u00a0 Justice Scalia, in authoring the majority opinion, reached this conclusion by examining the Amendment\u2019s text, as well as the history of gun laws in the United States and England.\u00a0 Consequently, Justice Scalia reasoned that the law at issue, which prohibited the ownership of handguns in the District of Columbia, could not survive any level of judicial scrutiny because it infringed on the core right to self-defense within the home.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Justice Scalia failed to address whether lower courts should apply Heller<\/em>\u2019s historical analysis in Second Amendment cases. \u00a0In the absence of guidance, circuit courts uniformly adopted a two-step framework that proved highly deferential to the judgment of state legislatures.[4]<\/a> \u00a0Specifically, the first step evaluated whether a restriction burdened a core right of the Second Amendment by applying Heller<\/em>\u2019s historical approach. \u00a0And if the restriction implicated a core right, then courts would proceed to the second step to apply intermediate scrutiny.\u00a0 This generally resulted in courts assuming that a law burdened a core right, but then upholding the law under intermediate scrutiny.[5]<\/a>\u00a0 Accordingly, the framework effectively rendered Heller<\/em> as a \u201cone-off\u201d decision that addressed the right to keep a firearm in the home for self-defense.<\/p>\n

Despite the consensus among circuit courts, the Supreme Court in New York State Rifle<\/em> adopted Heller<\/em>\u2019s framework and expressly rejected the two-step approach as \u201chaving one step too many.\u201d[6]<\/a>\u00a0 Specifically, the Court criticized the approach as too deferential to state legislatures because the \u201cSecond Amendment \u2018is the very product of an interest balancing by the people,\u2019 and it surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms\u2019 for self-defense.\u201d[7]<\/a>\u00a0 More importantly, the decision instructed courts to abide by the framework set forth in Heller<\/em>, which requires two inquiries when evaluating the constitutionality of a firearm regulation: 1) \u201cwhether modern and historical regulations impose a comparable burden on the right of armed self-defense;\u201d and 2) \u201cwhether the regulatory burden is comparably justified.\u201d[8]<\/a><\/p>\n

Therefore, the decision effectively enshrines Heller<\/em> as the guidepost for Second Amendment jurisprudence.\u00a0 Despite Justice Kavanaugh\u2019s assurance that the ruling merely applies to the permitting regimes of six states, it establishes a framework for Second Amendment challenges that is far less deferential than the previous two-step inquiry.\u00a0 Consequently, pro-firearm plaintiffs across the country will likely seize the opportunity to challenge firearm restrictions under the Heller<\/em> framework.<\/p>\n

The implications of NY State Rifle<\/em> will loom especially large in Rhode Island, which recently implemented its most significant firearm restrictions in decades.\u00a0 In June 2022, the State increased the age for purchasing a firearm to twenty-one-years old, as well as enacted a ten-round limit on firearm magazines.[9]<\/a>\u00a0 While these restrictions would have almost certainly survived the two-step inquiry, it remains unclear whether they will suffer the same fate as New York\u2019s licensing statute.\u00a0 Nonetheless, one thing is for certain \u2013 the holding in New York State Rifle<\/em> will have a profound impact on gun restrictions for years to come.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> 142 S. Ct. 2111, 2122 (2022).<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 2161 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring).<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> 554 U.S. 570, 636 (2008).<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> See, e.g., <\/em>United States v. Chovan, 735 F.3d 1127, 1136\u201337 (9th Cir. 2013).<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> See, e.g.,<\/em> Pena v. Lindley, 898 F.3d 969, 989\u201390 (9th Cir. 2018).<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> 142 U.S. at 2117<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 2118 (quoting Heller<\/em>, 554 U.S. at 635).<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Id.<\/em><\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Katherine Gregg, McKee signs 3 gun-control bills into law, including high-capacity magazine ban<\/em>, Providence Journal (June 21, 2022), https:\/\/www.providencejournal.com\/story\/news\/politics\/2022\/06\/21\/ri-gun-control-bills-high-capacity-magazine-ban-signed-into-law\/7687126001\/.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On June 23, 2022, the United States Supreme Court came out with guns blazing in its first Second Amendment decision in nearly fifteen years.\u00a0 In New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass\u2019n v. Bruen, the Court struck down a New York state…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,236],"tags":[237],"class_list":["post-688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-law","category-firearm-laws","tag-gun-laws"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/its-your-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/its-your-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/its-your-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/its-your-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/its-your-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/its-your-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/its-your-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/its-your-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/its-your-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/its-your-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}