New York has one of the strictest gun laws in the nation; residents are not allowed to carry weapons outside their homes. However, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) challenges this law due to its arguable unconstitutionality. Their decision will most definitely change the course of gun rights in New York.
Legal expert, Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, predicts that New York would have to change their gun laws to align with the SCOTUS' opinions.
In 2008, in District of Colombia v. Heller, the court decided that the second amendment allowed an individual's right to store firearms at home for self-defense. But under this recent court interpretation of this legal precedent, New York residents would be able to carry guns in public for self-defense. The issue is, who mandates what self-defense constitutes? A teacher can bring a weapon into school, claiming that they are carrying it for self-defense.
To make this court opinion more perilous, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. proclaimed there needn't be "probable cause" to carry a gun in public based on the logic that one doesn't need "probable cause" to speak freely. Both amendments should manifest in the same manner. So can people bring guns into Yankee Stadium, art galleries, Times Square? Are we seriously going to live in a world where guns are as readily available on a person's body as a wallet or phone?!
Former mayor Bill de Blasio commented, "It's a little surreal that we have justices in Supreme Court suggesting that it would be great to have more and more people armed walking the streets of the city." Piggybacking on this statement, current New York mayor Eric Adams called the SCOTUS' recent opinion a "recipe for disaster." Given New York's highest gun deaths this decade in 2021, more guns in circulation would only beget more violence.
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