On December 15, Senior District Judge Robert Miller of the Northern District of Indiana issued an opinion in United States v. Reyna rejecting a Second Amendment challenge to 18 U.S.C. § 922(k)—the federal prohibition on possessing a firearm with a removed, obliterated, or altered serial number. The decision is notable, especially when compared to an […]
On January 9, District Judge Renee Bumb issued a decision in Koons v. Reynolds granting a temporary restraining order of certain sensitive-places prohibitions in New Jersey’s newly-enacted gun law. That law was enacted in late December in response to Bruen, and among other things it designated a lengthy list of sensitive places where guns are […]
On November 16, Judge Aleta Trauger of the Middle District of Tennessee issued a decision rejecting a Second Amendment challenge to 18 U.S.C. § 922(n), which prohibits receipt of a firearm while under felony indictment. Judge Trauger first summarized Bruen and its doctrinal framework. She observed that: The modern world is different from the world […]
In a December 14 decision in Ocean State Tactical v. Rhode Island, District Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. denied a motion to preliminarily enjoin Rhode Island’s recent statutory prohibition of “Large Capacity Feeding Devices,” or LCMs. The Rhode Island law, which was passed and became effective in June, bans the possession of magazines that are […]
On December 8, District Judge Jesse Furman of the Southern District of New York denied New York state’s motion for remand in New York v. Arm or Ally, LLC et al., a case brought by the state against manufacturers of “‘unfinished’ firearm frames and receivers that can be quickly and easily converted into functional firearms.” […]
On December 6, a federal judge in the District of Oregon denied a motion for a TRO and preliminary injunction of Oregon’s Ballot Measure 114, a ballot initiative that narrowly passed in the November election. Measure 114 enacts a permit-to-purchase requirement, mandates safety training, fingerprinting, and a criminal background check to obtain a gun permit, […]
On December 1, Judge Roger Benitez[1] of the Southern District of California ruled in Miller v. Bonta that a challenge by gun dealers and gun-rights advocacy groups to the fee-shifting provision in California’s new firearms law is not moot, and permitted the lawsuit to proceed. California passed S.B. 1327 on July 22. The law is […]
On November 2, an Ohio state trial court judge granted a preliminary injunction of the state’s firearms preemption statute, in a lawsuit brought by the city of Columbus. Ohio’s “firearms uniformity law” was amended in 2018, over the governor’s veto, to both preempt additional municipal actions that might “interfere with the fundamental individual right” protected […]
In the decade and a half since Heller, there has been a considerable amount of scholarship and litigation about the spaces where the Second Amendment extends. Bruen settled some of those questions by granting a right to publicly carry with no showing of need. And it suggested there could be permissible restrictions in certain sensitive […]
On June 29, only six days after the Supreme Court struck down a New York law requiring gun owners to show a special need to carry concealed handguns in public, New York officials filed two civil lawsuits against manufacturers of so-called “ghost guns.” The first lawsuit was filed by the state attorney general, Letitia James, […]
Last Monday, many of us awoke to the terrible news about a shooting at the University of Virginia on Sunday night that left three students dead and two others injured. Another public college not far away, Virginia Tech, was the site of a horrific mass shooting in 2007 that killed 32 people and injured 17 […]
On November 7, Judge Glenn Suddaby of the Northern District of New York issued a 184-page opinion granting in part and denying in part the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction of New York’s post-Bruen gun regulations in Antonyuk v. Hochul.[1] Judge Suddaby previously analyzed the same plaintiffs’ likelihood of success on these claims in […]
On October 28, Delaware Governor John Carney vetoed a bill intended to allow individuals with a valid medical marijuana prescription to possess a gun under state law. The bill, H.B. 276, would have “ma[de] clear that an individual is not disqualified under Delaware law from possessing a firearm because the individual is a registered qualifying […]
One of the most wide-ranging challenges to New York’s comprehensive post-Bruen gun regulatory framework was brought in Antonyuk v. Bruen. There, the court struck down many provisions of the new law. I wrote about the court’s ruling for Slate and, as you can tell from the piece, I think the Antonyuk court bungles much of […]
On October 20, a federal judge in the Western District of New York issued a decision in Hardaway v. Nigrelli granting a motion for a temporary restraining order and enjoining New York’s ban on carrying firearms in “any place of worship or religious observation.” Notably, the decision by District Judge John Sinatra reached an opposite […]
After a hearing on October 24, a federal judge in the Central District of California issued an order denying a motion for preliminary injunction of two California statutes that regulate self-manufactured firearms, or ghost guns. The judge’s order adopted the legal analysis in an 11-page tentative ruling issued on October 21. The case, Defense Distributed […]
In an 8-page decision issued on October 13, the Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled in Columbia Housing v. Braden that the landlord of a public housing complex cannot prohibit tenants from keeping firearms in their residences because this “prohibition . . . is an unconstitutional lease condition.” The decision, which is consistent with at least […]
In an October 12 opinion, a federal judge in the Southern District of West Virginia struck down as unconstitutional 18 U.S.C. § 922(k), the federal ban possessing or receiving “any firearm which has had the importer’s or manufacturer’s serial number removed, obliterated, or altered.” In the same opinion, the judge rejected a challenge to the […]
On October 6, Judge Glenn T. Suddaby of the Northern District of New York issued a decision partially granting a request for a temporary restraining order of New York’s revised gun law (the Concealed Carry Improvement Act, or CCIA). The CCIA was passed on July 1, about a week after Bruen, and took effect on […]
On September 27, a Virginia state trial court granted a motion for preliminary injunction of certain provisions of the city code of Winchester, Virginia that made it unlawful to possess guns in city buildings, public parks, recreation or community centers, and public roads, sidewalks, or other locations used for or adjacent to permitted public events. […]
In Antonyuk v. Bruen, a district court judge recently suggested in dicta that New York’s list of sensitive places where guns are prohibited is unconstitutional under the standard set forth in Bruen. I summarized that opinion here, including why its analysis of sensitive places appears inconsistent with Bruen’s directive to reason by analogy to determine […]
Jake recently covered the Northern District of Texas decision in Firearms Policy Coalition v. McGraw, which struck down Texas’ ban on the public carry of handguns by those under 21 years old. In McGraw, the court reasons that the Second Amendment’s reference to a “well regulated militia” means that the amendment must necessarily protect the […]
10 days after New York passed a set of revised licensing and gun laws post-Bruen (known colloquially as the Concealed Carry Improvement Act, or CCIA), those laws were challenged in federal court. The case is Antonyuk et al. v. Bruen, Docket No. 1:22-cv-00734 in the Northern District of New York. Chief Judge Glenn T. Suddaby […]
Immediately following the Supreme Court’s decision in Bruen striking down New York’s proper-cause permitting standard, New York Governor Kathy Hochul took to Twitter to call the decision “reckless[]” and “outrageous,” and pledged further action “to keep New Yorkers safe.” Just over one week after the decision was issued, on Friday, July 1, New York state […]
The Idaho Supreme Court recently held that the state could be held liable in a wrongful death action for negligently failing to add a name to the database used in gun purchase background checks. In Von Lossberg v. State, the parents of a young man who committed suicide with a gun sued the state, the […]
