Ignoring the nation’s epidemic of mass shootings, in June 2022, by a 6-3 margin along ideological lines, the Supreme Court struck down a New York law that required anyone seeking a license to carry a concealed handgun outside the home to demonstrate a specific justification for the permit. Under the law an applicant could not merely use a vague, unsupported claim of “for self-defense,” but needed to document why concealed carry was necessary, such as being subjected to threats or being followed by a stalker.
Such a law was not unique to New York. Seven other states (including California and Massachusetts) and many cities, representing one-quarter of the nation’s population, also required a demonstrable need to carry concealed weapons outside the home. Without such limiting laws, since anyone could claim a desire for self-defense, there was no way to prevent even those of questionable mental health from stuffing a handgun into a pocket or purse for every trip to the post office or a 7-11.
For more than two centuries, the Second Amendment’s “right to bear arms” applied only to a “well ordered militia,” the need of which was widespread in the 1780s. But in 2008, Justice Antonin Scalia, speaking for a 5-4 majority in D.C. v. Heller, ruled that a gun kept in the home for self-defense by a private citizen was a protected right. In his majority opinion in the New York case (New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen), Justice Clarence Thomas extended that right to streets and shopping malls. In adopting the most expansive view of the Second Amendment in American history, Thomas, as had Scalia, ignored the precedent in U.S. v. Miller, a 1939 case in which a unanimous court ruled weapons with no military purpose — to wit, a sawed-off shotgun — did not come under the amendment’s purview.
