Supreme Court to Hear Arguments in Gun Rights Case

WASHINGTON D.C. – The Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments on a gun rights case on Monday; gun rights are on the docket once again after nearly a decade. The original lawsuit was brought by New York City gun owners who contested a law that prohibited them from carrying a licensed, locked and unloaded handgun outside the city limits, either to a shooting range or a second home.

Lower courts upheld the regulation, but when it became apparent that the justices were interested in the issue and could hear arguments, city and state officials made changes. The city changed its regulations to allow licensed gun owners to transport their weapons to locations outside the five boroughs of New York City and New York enacted a law barring cities from imposing the challenged restrictions.

For years justices appeared to “shy away” from gun rights cases, even as mass shootings continue to happen all across the country and gun rights became a topic of many heated debates and movements. A renewed court interest in gun rights has been attributed to the two new justices appointed by President Trump, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. After hearing arguments, the court will decide if they will rule on the substance of the law or there are any issues on which they must make a ruling.

According to the Associated Press, gun rights groups are hoping the high court is on the verge of extending its landmark rulings from 2008 and 2010 that enshrined the right to have a gun for self-defense at home.

Paul Clement, who represents three New York residents and New York's National Rifle Association affiliate challenging the transportation ban, wrote in an email to the AP stating that "the City still views firearm ownership as a privilege and not a fundamental right and is still in the business of limiting transport and denying licenses for a host of discretionary reasons."

Advocates for gun control argue that the court doesn't need to rule on the issues since it was resolved by the city and the state. They are worried that the court could adopt Justice Kavanaugh’s legal rationale and regulations about who can carry guns in public, limits on large-capacity ammunition magazines and perhaps even restrictions on gun ownership by convicted criminals, including people convicted of domestic violence, could be reversed.

"There is no case or controversy because New York City has repealed the ordinance and the New York State Legislature has acted to make sure it remains repealed," said Jonathan Lowy, chief counsel and vice president of the gun control group Brady's legal action project.

"This approach to the Second Amendment would treat gun rights as an absolute right, frozen in history, and not subject to any restrictions as public safety demands," said Hannah Shearer, litigation director at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

In a previous case, Kavanaugh had voted in dissent when his federal appeals court upheld the District of Columbia's ban on semi-automatic rifles. "Gun bans and gun regulations that are not longstanding or sufficiently rooted in text, history, and tradition are not consistent with the Second Amendment individual right," Kavanaugh wrote in 2011.

Support for the issue appears to be divided along party lines, especially in Congress. A dozen Democratic-led states along with 139 House members back the city. Five Democratic senators filed a brief that asked the justices to dismiss the case and “resist being drawn into what he called a political project.”

In the Senate, all 53 senators penned a letter urging the court not to be “cowed by the Democrats' threats.”