[WSJ] Editorial Board: Guns, Liberals and the Supreme Court

Haven't been following this case too closely, but haven't seen such a clear articulation about why the case isn't moot, which is probably more a commentary on how the NYT and WaPo have covered the case than anything else:

"The new state law may moot Commerce Clause claims since gun owners are no longer prohibited from taking their guns out of New York. Yet the law also forbids those outside the city from taking their guns into the city, and the Court has held that 'as long as the parties have a concrete interest, however small, in the outcome of the litigation, the case is not moot.' Clearly that’s true here."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/guns-liberals-and-the-supreme-court-11575230196?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

Guns, Liberals and the Supreme Court
The Justices have a chance to shore up their eroding Heller precedent.
By
The Editorial Board
Dec. 1, 2019 2:56 pm ET

The Supreme Court on Monday will hear its first Second Amendment case in nearly a decade, and it’s about time. Eleven years after the Court declared in its landmark Heller ruling that the Second Amendment enshrines an individual right to bear arms, liberals are still in denial and need a judicial reminder.

States and cities have exploited the Court’s reluctance to again enter this political battlefield by pressing restrictive policies that hollow out Heller, while lower courts have defined the right down. A textbook example is New York State Rifle & Pistol Association. v. City of New York.

At issue is a New York City ban on gun owners transporting their handguns to second residences and shooting ranges outside the city. The case is an opportunity for the Justices to police their Second Amendment precedents, clarify the standard of judicial review for government infringements, and affirm that gun rights aren’t confined to the home.

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Democrats have gone to great lengths to get the Justices to drop the case. After the High Court accepted it in January, the New York Police Department revised its ban to allow gun owners to take their handguns (locked up and unloaded with the ammunition stored separately) “directly to and from” second homes and shooting ranges outside the city.

But as amicus briefs note, the Court has criticized this kind of strategic “voluntary cessation” of challenged conduct by defendants to preserve favorable judicial outcomes or avoid adverse rulings. Courts are only supposed to review “live controversies,” but the Justices are loath to rule a case moot unless it is “absolutely clear” a defendant won’t resume the challenged conduct.

New York’s behavior offers no such confidence. Crafty city officials coaxed fellow Democrats in the New York State Legislature to pass a law pre-empting their abandoned transport ban. But not so fast.

The new state law may moot Commerce Clause claims since gun owners are no longer prohibited from taking their guns out of New York. Yet the law also forbids those outside the city from taking their guns into the city, and the Court has held that “as long as the parties have a concrete interest, however small, in the outcome of the litigation, the case is not moot.” Clearly that’s true here.

New York City argues that, even if the case isn’t moot, its transport ban was still necessary to protect public safety. By prohibiting law-abiding folks from taking their licensed firearms outside their homes, police would supposedly have an easier time enforcing gun laws against criminals. This logic is what the Court criticized in McCutcheon v. FEC (2014) as “prophylaxis upon prophylaxis.”

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals nonetheless agreed with the city. The judges claimed that gun owners could get around the transport ban by buying a second handgun for their second home or renting one at a shooting range. But one reason gun owners patronize shooting ranges is to practice shooting their own guns for self-defense.

Heller held that the Second Amendment protects the right to use firearms for the “core lawful purpose of self-defense,” “learning to handle and use [arms]” and “hunting.” It presumably therefore also protects the transportation of a firearm for such purposes.

The Second Circuit also echoed other courts in rejecting Heller’s historical standard for reviewing infringements on the Second Amendment. The judges weighed New York’s “compelling” interest in protecting public safety without requiring evidence that the transport ban advanced that interest. Any government restriction could be sustained under this lax standard, and it’s another example of lower courts downgrading the Second Amendment to second-class status in the Bill of Rights.

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Elected Democrats have even turned the attack on Heller into a political assault on the Court itself. Rhode Island’s Sheldon Whitehouse and four other Senators filed an extraordinary amicus brief in August warning the Justices to drop the New York case—or run the risk of Congressional retribution.

“The Supreme Court is not well. And the people know it,” said the brief. “Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be ‘restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.’ Particularly on the urgent issue of gun control, a nation desperately needs it to heal.” If Donald Trump wrote that, Democrats would call it extortion.

These Democratic threats to the Second Amendment, like those against the First, underscore that core constitutional rights are in danger. The Court has an opportunity in the New York gun case to reaffirm that the Bill of Rights isn’t merely an advisory opinion.

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discussion at Reason

https://reason.com/2019/12/02/new-y...ssary-for-public-safety-concedes-they-werent/

 

the Supreme Court has decided to hear a new New York state gun control case:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/26/us/supreme-court-gun.html?action=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage

excerpt

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said on Monday that it would review a New York law that imposes strict limits on carrying guns outside the home, setting the stage for its first major Second Amendment case in more than a decade.

The move came in the wake of a recent spate of mass shootings, which were followed by calls from President Biden and other Democrats for stricter restrictions on firearms.

The Supreme Court has turned down countless Second Amendment appeals since it established an individual right to keep guns in the home for self-defense in 2008 in District of Columbia v. Heller.

Since then, lower courts have generally sustained gun control laws. But they are divided on the fundamental and open question posed by the new case: whether states can stop law-abiding citizens from carrying guns outside their homes for self-defense unless they can satisfy the authorities that they have a good reason for doing so.

The Supreme Court now has a six-justice conservative majority, and its two newest members — Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — took a broad view of Second Amendment rights as appeals court judges.

The new case is a challenge to a New York law that requires people seeking a license to carry a gun outside their homes to show a “proper cause.” Two men denied licenses, along with the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, sued, saying “the state makes it virtually impossible for the ordinary law-abiding citizen to obtain a license.”

California, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island have similar laws, according to gun rights groups.

The precise question the Supreme Court agreed to answer was: “Whether the state’s denial of petitioners’ applications for concealed-carry licenses for self-defense violated the Second Amendment.”
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more at the link

the petition and briefs are at:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/20-843.html

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