Jessica Gresko, The Associated Press Published on Thursday, June 23, 2022 at 5:32 PM EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) – In a major expansion of gun rights following a series of mass shootings, the Supreme Court said Thursday that Americans have the right to carry firearms in public for self-defense, a decision that will likely lead to more legally armed people. The decision came when Congress and states are debating gun control legislation.
About a quarter of the U.S. population lives in states that are expected to be affected by the ruling, which overturned a New York gun law. The first major decision on high court weapons in more than a decade divided the court 6-3, with court conservatives in the majority and liberals in dissent.
Across the street from the court, Capitol lawmakers advanced toward passing gun legislation sparked by the recent massacres in Texas, New York and California. Senators paved the way for the measure, modest in scope but still the most far-reaching in decades.
Also Thursday, highlighting the nation’s deep divisions on the issue, the sister of a 9-year-old girl killed in the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, called on state lawmakers to pass gun legislation. The Republican-controlled legislature has abolished arms restrictions over the past decade.
President Joe Biden said in a statement that he was “deeply disappointed” by the Supreme Court ruling. “It contradicts both common sense and the Constitution, and we should be deeply concerned about all of them,” he said.
He urged states to pass new laws. “He calls on Americans across the country to make their voices heard about gun safety. Lives are at stake,” he said.
The decision overturned a New York law that required people to demonstrate a particular need to carry a gun to obtain a license to carry a weapon covertly in public. The judges said this requirement violates the Second Amendment’s right to “keep and bear arms.”
Judge Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority that the Constitution protects “a person’s right to carry a gun for self-defense outside the home.” This right is not a “second class right,” Thomas wrote. “We know of no other constitutional right that an individual can exercise only after demonstrating to government officials some special need.”
California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island have laws similar to those in New York. These laws are expected to be challenged quickly.
Gov. Kathy Hochul, DN.Y., said the sentence came at a particularly painful time, with New York mourning the deaths of 10 people in a shooting at a Buffalo supermarket. “This decision is not just reckless. It is reprehensible. It is not what New Yorkers want,” he said.
Weapons control groups called the decision a major setback. Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice and expert on the Second Amendment, wrote on Twitter that the decision could be the “largest expansion of gun rights” by the Supreme Court in U.S. history.
Republican lawmakers were among those who applauded the decision. Tom King, president of the New York State Pistols and Rifles Association, said he was relieved.
“The legal and legal gun owner of New York State will no longer be prosecuted by laws that have nothing to do with people’s safety and will do nothing to make people safer,” he said. “And maybe now we will start prosecuting criminals and the perpetrators of these heinous acts.”
The court’s decision is a bit out of step with public opinion. About half of voters in the 2020 presidential election said gun laws in the U.S. should be tightened, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive poll of the electorate. An additional third said laws should be kept as they are, while only 1 in 10 said gun laws should be less stringent.
About 8 out of 10 Democratic voters said gun laws should be tightened, VoteCast showed. Among Republican voters, about half said the laws should be kept as they are, while the remaining half was narrowly divided between more and less strict ones.
In a dissent joined by his Liberal colleagues, Judge Stephen Breyer focused on the toll of armed violence.
Since the beginning of this year, “277 mass shootings have already been reported, an average of more than one per day,” Breyer wrote. He accused most of his colleagues of acting “without considering the potentially deadly consequences” of his decision. He said the ruling would “severely” burden states’ efforts to pass laws “that limit, in various ways, who can buy, carry or use firearms of different types.”
Several other Conservative judges who joined Thomas ’majority opinion also wrote separately to add their views.
Judge Samuel Alito criticized Breyer’s dissent, questioning the relevance of his discussion of mass shootings and other gun deaths statistics. Alito wrote that the court had not decided “anything about who can legally own a firearm or the requirements that must be met to buy a weapon” and nothing “about the types of weapons people may have.”
“Today, unfortunately, many Americans have good reason to fear that they will be victimized if they cannot protect themselves.” The second amendment, he said, “guarantees his right to do so.”
Judge Brett Kavanaugh, along with Chief Justice John Roberts, pointed out the limits of the decision. States can still require people to obtain a license to carry a gun, Kavanaugh wrote, and condition that license on “fingerprinting, a background check, a mental health record check, and training in the handling of firearms and in the laws on the use of force, among other possible requirements ”.
Proponents of New York law had argued that removing it would lead to more guns in the streets and higher rates of violent crime. Armed violence, on the rise during the coronavirus pandemic, has increased again. Arms purchases have also increased.
In most of the country, gun owners have little difficulty in legally carrying their weapons in public. But this had been more difficult to do in New York and in the handful of states with similar laws. New York law, in effect since 1913, says that to carry a concealed pistol in public, a person applying for a license must show a “proper cause,” a specific need to carry the weapon.
The state had issued unrestricted licenses where a person could carry a gun anywhere and restricted licenses that allowed a person to carry a weapon but only for specific purposes, such as hunting and shooting at or from of your business site.
The challenge to the New York law was presented by the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, which is described as the oldest gun defense organization in the country, and two men seeking unlimited capability to carry weapons away from home.
The Supreme Court last issued a major decision on weapons in 2010. In that decision and in a 2008 ruling, judges established a national right to keep a weapon at home for self-defense. The question for the court this time was just about carrying a gun out of the house. Thomas, who turned 74 on Thursday, wrote in his opinion that: “Nothing in the text of the Second Amendment marks a distinction between the home and the public with respect to the right to bear and bear arms.”
Associated Press reporters Mark Sherman, Hannah Fingerhut and Zeke Miller in Washington and Michael Hill in East Greenbush, New York, contributed to this report.