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New York’s Gun Laws Sow Confusion

as Nation Rethinks Regulation
A Supreme Court decision overturning century-old New York
gun regulations has produced scores of new lawsuits as jurists
and citizens sort out what’s legal.

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People camped out overnight to submit pistol permit applications before new gun
restrictions took effect. Lauren Petracca for The New York Times

By Jonah E. Bromwich

Feb. 27, 2023 Updated 9:09 a.m. ET

Matthew Seifer, a Long Island firearms safety instructor, is

licensed by New York State to teach his students where they can
legally carry their guns. It’s harder than it sounds.

The U.S. Supreme Court last year overturned century-old New

York regulations, ruling that citizens had a broad right to carry
concealed weapons. The State Legislature, anticipating more gun-
oting, then made certain areas off-limits to firearms, but that new
law has already been challenged in court at least 10 times. On
March 20, an appeals panel will consider several of the cases at
once, extending a dizzying sequence in which judges have tossed
out rules, only for higher courts to reinstate them again and again.

Mr. Seifer has been compelled to change his curriculum each time
— and some of those whom he has taught have brought guns to
locations where they are barred, accidentally violating a law that
refuses to stay in one place.

“It’s an eye-opening experience for them,” Mr. Seifer said. “People

are having a hard time understanding what they need to do.”

New Yorkers are not the only ones who are confused. When the
Supreme Court struck down the state’s old law , declaring that
Americans did not need to justify their right to carry firearms, it
created a new national standard for whether gun laws are
constitutional. The ruling threatens to permanently upend
regulation even as the United States grapples with gun violence,
including more than 80 mass shootings in 2023 alone, as well as a
drumbeat of other killings and an epidemic of suicide.

In his June opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that law-

biding citizens have the right “to carry handguns publicly for
their self-defense.” He allowed for the possibility of restrictions on
that right, but said that any rules would have to be justified with
analogies to regulations that were in place in early American
history.

Since then, more than 100 federal court decisions have been issued
as judges around the country attempt to determine whether new
and old laws alike meet the new standard, according to a paper by
Jacob Charles , a professor at Pepperdine University’s law school Editors’ Picks
who tracks American gun regulation.
A Successful Editor
Turns Debut
Author, Surprising
Understand the U.S. Supreme Court’s Term Nearly Everyone

The Marlins Go All-

A race to the right. After a series of judicial bombshells in June that included n on Baseball’s
eliminating the right to abortion , a Supreme Court dominated by New Rules
conservatives returned to the bench in October — and there are few signs
that the court’s rightward shift is slowing. Here’s a closer look at the term:
It’sthe Cool Season
in Death Valley

Laws have come under scrutiny in more than 25 states, including

Texas, where a federal judge wrote that the Supreme Court had
made a felon’s possession of a firearm “presumptively
constitutional.” A judge in West Virginia found that a state law
against carrying guns with “altered, obliterated or removed” serial
numbers was unconstitutional. And this month, an appeals court
that hears cases from Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi struck
down a federal law that bars defendants who are under domestic
violence restraining orders from carrying firearms.

In the meantime, Americans have continued to test the limits of

where they can carry their guns. On Tuesday, the Transportation
Security Administration said that it had found a record 6,542
firearms at 262 different airports’ checkpoints last year, up from
5,972 in 2021 and 4,432 in 2019. (Unloaded firearms are permitted to
be flown as checked baggage if they are in locked containers, but
guns cannot be brought through security.)

Several judges have expressed concern about the effects of the

Supreme Court’s decision. In Indiana, Judge Robert L. Miller wrote
in one opinion issued in a gun case that he had “an earnest hope”
that he had misunderstood the Supreme Court ruling.

“If not, most of the body of law Congress has developed to protect
both public safety and the right to bear arms might well be
unconstitutional,” wrote Judge Miller, who was appointed in 1985
by President Ronald Reagan. He added it was an insult to the
drafters of the Constitution “to assume they were so shortsighted
as to forbid the people, through their elected representatives, from
regulating guns in new ways.”

Any major Supreme Court ruling can cause upheaval as judges

reassess what is constitutional. Justice Thomas’s opinion was
unusual because he wrote that the test that lower courts had been
using to assess gun laws had been misguided. He offered the new
methodology based on historical comparisons and effectively
removed the precedent that had helped guide judges.

“That is an extremely rare thing and obviously extremely

disruptive,” said David Pucino, the deputy chief counsel of the
Giffords Law Center, a gun-safety advocacy organization. Mr.
Charles found that the new test had confused judges, who, he
wrote, “have reached wildly inconsistent conclusions about what
the test requires and how it works in practice.”

When judges are confused about constitutionality, the public

doesn’t stand much of a chance. New York’s old law, which required
those seeking permits to carry guns in public to show that they had
a heightened need to defend themselves, stood for more than 100
years. But Justice Thomas wrote that carrying guns was a
constitutional right and thus people did not need to justify it by
“demonstrating to government officers some special need.”

New York’s new law, no longer able to impose that standard, aims
to at least keep people from carrying guns in “sensitive locations”
that include Times Square, public transit, sports venues, houses of
worship and many others — the types of places Mr. Seifer said his
students inadvertently carried their weapons. The law also
mandated training courses and a “good moral character test” for
those applying for permits to carry in public.

More on the U.S. Supreme Court

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau : The Supreme Court agreed to

hear a case that could cast doubt on every rule and enforcement action
the agency has taken .

New York Gun Law : The court’s decision last year to overturn the state’s
century-old gun regulations has produced scores of new lawsuits, sowing
confusion as to what is legal now .

Ethics Code: As calls for the Supreme Court to adopt an ethics code
mount, the justices continue to wrestle with whether to adopt a
policy similar to one that applies to all other federal judges.
Road to a Clerkship: A study found that the chances of obtaining a
coveted Supreme Court clerkship are considerably higher for people with
undergraduate degrees from Harvard, Yale or Princeton .

The first challenge came little more than a week after the law was
passed, and, after some legal hiccups, led a judge to block
significant parts of the law. The judge, Glenn T. Suddaby, found in
October that the Supreme Court had made it impermissible for
New York to bar guns at health care centers, summer camps or
zoos, among other places. But the state appealed and the law was
reinstated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Later that month, another judge , John L. Sinatra Jr., blocked the
portion of the law that barred firearms in houses of worship
because he could not find an “American tradition” that supported it.

The state appealed Judge Sinatra’s ruling, too. The relevant

portions of the law went back into effect.

The following month, the measure was blocked again: Challenge.

Ruling. Appeal. Repeat.

“It makes it very hard to predict what to do next,” said State

Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who has pushed for tougher gun
restrictions. “I feel like it’s almost a game of Whac-A-Mole.”

As of Monday, almost all of New York’s law remains in effect; the

Second Circuit allowed an exception for public-safety officials, who
can carry guns as they keep order at places of worship, in airports
and on private buses. (And of course, the law has not prevented all
shootings in locations deemed sensitive, as a fatal shooting near
Times Square earlier this month made clear.)

Gun rights organizations say that their members are confused and
frustrated.

“The only reason we’re in any sort of gray area is because New
York is trying to ban guns,” said Aidan Johnston, the director of
federal affairs for Gun Owners of America, a lobbying group. “Our
members are angry, they are upset, they are literally oppressed by
the state infringing on their rights.”

Next month, the appeals court will hear oral arguments about the
law in four different challenges that were combined to expedite the
cases. But there is no deadline for the appellate court to make a
final decision, which means that when the law celebrates its first
birthday in July, New Yorkers still may not know what rules are in
place.

And then there is the Supreme Court. Last month, the justices
twice declined to interfere with the judicial process in New York
after being asked to step in by firearms dealers and a group of New
Yorkers backed by Gun Owners of America.

But Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justice Thomas, wrote a

statement attached to the decision, encouraging those challenging
the law.

He suggested that the Second Circuit move quickly to consider the

challenges.

Jonah E. Bromwich covers criminal justice in New York, with a focus on the Manhattan
district attorney's office, state criminal courts in Manhattan and New York City's jails.
@ jonesieman
A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 27, 2023 , Section A , Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline:
Where Can You Carry Guns? It’s a Legal Jumble. . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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