The Supreme Court of the United States is set to issue its first major ruling on the Second Amendment in over ten years, which could draw even more attention in the wake of two high-profile mass shootings.
The Hill reports that the ruling on New York state’s strict laws concerning concealed carry will be coming in the next few days or weeks, no later than the end of June or early July. The court’s conservative majority is widely expected to strike down much of the law, which would have a broad impact on similar anti-concealed carry laws across the country.
“It does seem relatively clear that the court is going to strike down New York’s law and make it harder for cities and states to restrict concealed carry of firearms,” said Adam Winkler, a professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). “It remains to be seen exactly how broad the Supreme Court goes, but one thing is clear: as mass shootings become more of a political issue, the court is going to take options away from lawmakers on the basis of the Second Amendment.”
Gun control has returned to the forefront of political debate following two recent shootings that took place just 10 days apart: One at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, where 10 were killed and three were injured, and one at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, where 21 were killed; 19 of the victims in Uvalde were children.
After the first shooting, Democrats began immediately calling for more gun control measures at the federal level, with those calls only intensifying after the second shooting. However, gun control remains widely unpopular and any such measure is not expected to pass the evenly-split U.S. Senate.
The upcoming Supreme Court ruling is expected to be just as significant as its last Second Amendment ruling in 2008, in the case District of Columbia v. Heller. In that case, the court ruled 5-4 that an individual’s right to keep a gun in their own home as a means of self-defense was legally protected by the Second Amendment. But the ruling ultimately did not determine which kinds of gun restrictions are allowed under the Constitution, a question that very well may be answered by this new ruling.
“I do think that this case will, more than Heller did, tell us what forms of gun regulation are constitutional and why,” said Joseph Blocher, a law professor at Duke University.
The New York law, among other restrictions, demands that all residents applying for a concealed carry permit demonstrate a special need for doing so besides just basic self-defense concerns. New York is one of eight states that has implemented such strict measures that largely put the authority for determining the recipients of such permits in the hands of licensing officials; Washington D.C. has similar measures in place.