The Supreme Court has taken it’s first 2nd Amendment case in 10 years. They will hear the NRA’s case against New York’s unconstitutional gun laws.
You can only get a pistol with a license and you can only keep it in your house and can’t take it out of the house except to go to a shooting range and straight home again. The New York State Rifle & Pistol Association and several of its members sued in federal court on the grounds that the law is unconstitutional.
The court in two previous rulings had decided that people could keep a gun in their home for protection but did not rule one way or another on carrying a gun for protection when away from their home.
The Supreme Court held in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment secures an individual right, but that 2008 case involved only a law-abiding citizen seeking to have a handgun in his privately owned home for self-defense.
The Court further held in McDonald v. Chicago that the Second Amendment right to bear arms is a fundamental right, and thus extends to state and local governments through the Fourteenth Amendment, but again that 2010 involved a law-abiding citizen seeking to keep a handgun in the home.
That is essentially all the Supreme Court has done with the Second Amendment thus far. The Court has repeatedly turned down petitions for review (called a petition for a writ of certiorari) in several major cases over the subsequent nine years. Some experts speculated that Justice Anthony Kennedy – who was the fifth and thus decisive vote in Heller and McDonald – was reluctant to take any additional steps on gun rights. Without his vote, neither side of the gun debate could move the needle in either direction.
Some legal strategists wondered if Justice Brett Kavanaugh – who has a judicial recording supporting gun rights – now sitting in Kennedy’s seat would break the paralysis over Second Amendment jurisprudence. It appears the answer might be “yes.”