In the Bruen decision the Supreme Court rejected New York's "may issue" concealed carry gun licensing standard. The decision's text is here. New York had required concealed carry applicants to demonstrate "good character" and a "proper cause". There were no appeals. So if the local police liked you they might let you have a concealed carry permit.
But if the local police didn't like you, for any reason, good or bad, legal or not, you couldn't get a concealed carry permit.
To put this into historical context consider that in 1956 Alabama Martin Luther King Jr. applied for a concealed carry permit after his house was firebombed by white segregationists. Alabama in 1956, just like New York until recently, had a "proper cause" standard.
Because local authorities in 1956 Alabama were inevitably either supportive of or the same white segregationists who were firebombing and shooting Black people, they unsurprisingly denied MLK's application. Similarly New York's gun licensing standards disproportionately denied Black would be concealed carry applicants.
The Bruen decision explicitly forbid arbitrary standards under which applicants from whiter upstate New York were often approved while applicants from more diverse NYC were often denied. Unfortunately New York legislators and New York Governor Kathy Hochul had a collective temper tantrum and passed a new law which places more burdens on would be concealed carry applicants while still maintaining the rejected "shall issue" standard in almost exactly the same language.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York lawmakers approved a sweeping overhaul Friday of the state’s handgun licensing rules, seeking to preserve some limits on firearms after the Supreme Court ruled that most people have a right to carry a handgun for personal protection.
The measure, signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul after passing both chambers by wide margins, is almost sure to draw more legal challenges from gun rights advocates who say the state is still putting too many restrictions on who can get guns and where they can carry them.
Among other things, the state’s new rules will require people applying for a handgun license to turn over a list of their social media accounts so officials could verify their “character and conduct.”
Applicants will have to show they have “the essential character, temperament and judgment necessary to be entrusted with a weapon and to use it only in a manner that does not endanger oneself and others.”
As part of that assessment, applicants have to turn over a list of social media accounts they’ve maintained in the past three years.
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Adam Scott Wandt, a public policy professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said that he supports gun control, but that he worries the New York law could set a precedent for mandatory disclosure of social media activity for people seeking other types of licenses from the state.
New York's law is rushed and vague, said Wandt, who teaches law enforcement personnel how to conduct searches on people through social media.
“I think that what we might have done as a state here in New York is, we may have confirmed their worst fears — that a slippery slope will be created that will slowly reduce their rights to carry guns and allow a bureaucracy to decide, based on unclear criteria, who can have a gun and who cannot,” Wandt said. “Which is exactly what the Supreme Court was trying to avoid.”
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I don't think in order to exercise one constitutional right you should allow the government to violate another constitutional right. It's really none of the government's business what I read or what I say or do not say on social media.
I don't think in order to exercise one constitutional right you should allow the government to violate another constitutional right. It's really none of the government's business what I read or what I say or do not say on social media.
Imagine if in order to vote the government forced you to supply a list of websites you had visited, books or newspapers you had read, political parties you supported, or social/political events you attended? And then even after your abasement, the government could still say, nah we don't think you should be voting. So go kick rocks.
It's outrageous!!!
The obvious issue is that Hohcul and a great many people who think like her simply don't accept that owning a gun is a right, not a privilege. The new law is designed to discourage people from owning a gun. Governor Hochul, when pressed to show any data to back up the incorrect implication that the legal concealed carry population is dangerous, breezily said she didn't need numbers.
This will return to the Supreme Court. And New York will lose. Some anti-gun people cheer this virtual nullification. I hope they will remember that there are other states that, if New York were to somehow get away with this, would start ignoring Supreme Court decisions on things like same-sex marriage and various anti-discrimination laws.
If the people and leaders of New York don't like being bound by the Second Amendment and the Supreme Court there is an amendment process to change both.
