The Supreme Court has taken its first gun-rights case in a long, long time. And it's not about assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, or waiting periods. It's about an obscure New York City law. What gives?
What’s going on?
The Supreme Court has taken its first gun-rights case in almost a decade, and it’s a strange case indeed. At issue is what appears to be a draconian, one-of-a-kind New York City law that prohibits any person who possesses a license to own a gun in their home from transporting that gun (even in a locked container, separate from its ammunition) anywhere except for one of the seven shooting ranges within the city.
Under this law, if you want to transport your gun to a shooting competition outside the city, you can’t. If you’re fortunate enough to own a second home, you can’t even take your own weapon to your own home. You can’t take it to any other shooting range. If you leave your house for an extended period, your gun has to stay in your vacant home. If you’re going to another location — where you have the right to possess or even carry the gun — the weapon can’t travel with you.
It’s an astonishing law, but it’s also (given its single-city applicability and the fact that very few New Yorkers are able to get gun permits to begin with) one of the most limited gun-rights cases in the country. In the years since the Supreme Court recognized that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms and then ruled that the Second Amendment was applicable to state and local governments, it has time and again declined to rule on consequential cases.
For example, it has declined to hear appeals of cases upholding the New York and Connecticut “assault weapons” bans, declined to hear an appeal of the Maryland assault-weapons ban, and declined to hear an appeal of California’s ten-day waiting period for gun purchases. The latter decision caused Clarence Thomas to write a dissent from denial of certiorari that condemned the court’s inaction and expressed concern that this inaction was evidence that “the Second Amendment is a disfavored right in this Court.”
https://twitter.com/DavidAFrench/status/1088175452584402944
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/the-supreme-court-has-taken-a-strange-gun-rights-case/