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 November 10, Judge David Counts of the Western District of Texas issued an opinion in United States v. Perez-Gallan holding unconstitutional 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), the federal ban on possessing a firearm while subject to a court order that “restrains [the possessor] from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner . . . or child . […]
While most of the action on Second Amendment challenges continues to occur in the federal district and appellate courts, there were a few developments recently with the Supreme Court petitions we are tracking. The Court denied certiorari in Carnes, a challenge implicating the federal ban on gun possession by an unlawful drug user, on October […]
In the same vein as our SCOTUS Gun Watch reports, this post summarizes the results of two major gun-related initiatives that were on the ballot in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Iowa Amendment No. 1 Iowa voters considered a ballot initiative that would add the following provision to the state constitution: The right of the people to […]
In a six-page order issued on October 27, Judge Carlton Reeves of the Southern District of Mississippi directed the parties in a case challenging the constitutionality of the federal felon-in-possession ban to submit briefs on the issue of whether the court “should appoint a historian to serve as a consulting expert.” Judge Reeves noted that […]
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 September 23, 2022, the Center co-hosted a symposium in New York, in coordination with the New York University Law Review, on the theme of Gun Rights and Regulation after Bruen. The symposium was a tremendous success and the Center would like to thank all those who participated, attended in person, and tuned into the live stream. […]
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 […]
Today we’re highlighting a few new pieces of firearms-related scholarship, ranging from an empirical analysis of restrictions on gun possession by those convicted of juvenile felony-equivalent offenses (by Center faculty affiliate Jeffrey Swanson and colleagues), to a critique of Bruen’s historical methodology, to an evaluation of police use of ShotSpotter gunshot-detection technology under the Fourth […]
We put the SCOTUS updates on pause briefly, in part because the Court did not take another Second Amendment or firearms-centric case this term. Over the past few weeks, responses were filed in several cases we are tracking including Torcivia, McCutchen, and Carnes. There’s also one new case on the tracker this week: Howling v. […]
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 […]
After New York moved quickly post-Bruen to amend its gun laws to institute new application requirements and designate additional locations as sensitive places where guns are banned, the expectation was that other former may-issue states would follow suit. That largely has not transpired yet, and New York’s law—including many of its locational restrictions—was temporarily restrained […]
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 […]
Summarized below are two recent pieces of scholarship that seek to shed light on the original meaning of the Second Amendment using different methods—foreign-language translations of the Bill of Rights from the Founding Era, and corpus linguistics analysis of grammatically-similar phrases—and reaching opposite conclusions. Brandon Kinney, A Well-Outfitted Militia: German–American Translations of the Second […]
In recent weeks, the Center has devoted a great deal of space to covering the legal implications of the Bruen decision, including how lower courts in New York, Virginia, Texas, and other jurisdictions have started to apply its history-focused framework. But what about Bruen’s practical implications? Has the decision impacted the number of people seeking […]
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. […]
The Supreme Court held its “Long Conference” last Wednesday and issued orders in a number of cases on Monday, as it kicked off the new term. The major takeaway is that, perhaps not surprisingly since few courts have yet to actually apply Bruen‘s new test, the Court did not take another Second Amendment case. The […]
In a September 19 decision in United States v. Quiroz, a judge in the Western District of Texas struck down the federal law barring those under indictment for a felony offense from receiving firearms, finding that the ban “departs from this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” One notable aspect of the decision is its […]
There are several extremely worrying trends from what I’ve seen in the still nascent post-Bruen Second Amendment case law. These concerns don’t arise from disagreement with constitutional originalism or with the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment. They are concerns about lower courts’ capacity (and perhaps willingness) to apply a historical method in a […]
The Supreme Court’s “Long Conference” will take place this Wednesday, September 28. At the long conference, the justices will consider the many petitions for certiorari filed over the summer as well as remaining earlier-filed petitions. The odds of a grant of certiorari at the long conference are especially low, if history is any guide. Many […]