Abstract
Following the recognition of bearing arms as a fundamental right in the 2008 Heller ruling, the question of the allowable limits of reasonable regulation has become an inevitable contest. Is the New York City regulation that limits legal gun owners from transporting firearms to any location within or outside of the city aside from a small number of designated firing ranges a permissible regulation under the Second Amendment? The New York case involves not only some of the most restrictive gun laws, but also the question of whether the Court should address a controversy that has become moot after the city removed the questionable regulations.
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Notes
- 1.
See Dan M. Peterson and Stephen P. Halbrook, “A Revolution in Second Amendment Law,” Widener Law School Delaware University Law Review 29 (2011/2012): 12, 13.
- 2.
District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008) at 587.
- 3.
McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010).
- 4.
Gun Violence Archive, found at https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting.
- 5.
Emma Long, “Why So Silent? The Supreme Court and the Second Amendment Debate After DC v. Heller,” European Journal of American Studies 12 (2017).
- 6.
Eric Ruben and Joseph Blocher, “From Theory to Doctrine: An Empirical Analysis of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms After Heller,” Duke Law Journal 67 (2019): 1433.
- 7.
See New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York, 86 F. Supp. 3d 249 (S.D.N.Y. 2015) and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York, 883 F.3d 45 (2d Cir. 2018).
- 8.
Richard Wolf, “New York City Limits on Transporting Guns Eased in Effort to Get Supreme Court Challenge Dismissed,” USA Today (21 June 2019).
- 9.
Alexander Bickel, “Foreword: The Passive Virtues,” Harvard Law Review 75 (1960–61): 40.
- 10.
See Mills v. Green 159 U.S. 651, 653 (1895).
- 11.
Note, “Mootness on Appeal in the Supreme Court,” Harvard Law Review 83 (1970): 1672.
- 12.
See Brief of Senators Sheldon Whitehouse, Maize Hirono, Richard Blumenthal, Richard Durbin, and Kirsten Gillibrand as Amici Curiae in support of respondents (12 August 2019); see also Sheldon Whitehouse, “The Supreme Court Has Become Just Another Arm of the GOP,” The Washington Post (6 September 2019).
- 13.
New York State Rifle & Pistol decision page 1.
- 14.
Ibid. at 2.
- 15.
See Josh Gerstein, “Conservatives Blast Roberts as Turncoat,” Politico (27 June 2019).
- 16.
Richard Wolf, “Conservatives’ Takeover of Supreme Court Stalled by John Roberts-Brett Kavanaugh Bromance,” USA Today (7 April 2019).
- 17.
Mark Overstreet, “Is Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court, or the First Circuit Right About the Second Amendment?” The Federalist (18 November 2019).
- 18.
See Heller v. District of Columbia, US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. No. 10-7036 (2011), page 6.
- 19.
Ibid. at 27.
- 20.
Kavanaugh concurrence, page 1.
- 21.
Ibid.
- 22.
Alito dissent page 12.
- 23.
Ibid. at 4.
- 24.
Ibid. at 23.
- 25.
Ibid. at 13.
- 26.
Ibid. at 23.
- 27.
Ibid. at 3.
- 28.
Ibid. at 25.
- 29.
Thanks to Morgan Marietta for pointing this out and noting that Justice Alito used a concurrence in a previous case to argue that without the right to possess a gun for self- defense “the safety of all Americans is left to the mercy of state authorities who may be more concerned about disarming the people than about keeping them safe” Caetano v. Massachusetts, 577 U.S. ___ (2016).
- 30.
Alito dissent page 10.
- 31.
Ibid. at 31.
- 32.
See J. Harvie Wilkinson, “Of Guns, Abortions, and the Unraveling Rule of Law,” Virginia Law Review 95 (2009): 253.
- 33.
Elizabeth H. Slattery, “How to Spot Judicial Activism: Three Recent Examples,” Legal Memorandum (Washington, DC: The Heritage Foundation, 13 June 2013).
- 34.
See for example, Cass R. Sunstein, Radicals in Robes (New York: Basic Books 2005), pages 42–43.
- 35.
See Matt Cohen, “The Supreme Court’s Punt on a Second Amendment Case Is a Short-Term Victory for Gun Control Groups,” Mother Jones (27 April 2020).
- 36.
See Maryland Shall Issue Lawsuit Tracker, http://www.marylandshallissue.org/jmain/counselor-s-corner/natl-litigation-trk.
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Sarat, A. (2021). New York State Rifle & Pistol v. City of New York on Gun Regulation. In: Marietta, M. (eds) SCOTUS 2020. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53851-4_11
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