WASHINGTON (AP) – In a major expansion of gun rights, the Supreme Court said Thursday that Americans have the right to carry firearms in public to defend themselves.
The decision comes after recent mass shootings and is expected to ultimately allow more people to legally carry guns on the streets of the country’s largest cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Boston, and elsewhere. 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 decision, the first major arms decision by the high court in more than a decade, was 6-3 with the court conservatives in the majority and the Liberals in dissent.
The ruling comes as Congress works to pass gun legislation following the mass shootings in Texas, New York and California. On Thursday, senators were expected to pave the way for this measure, modest in scope but still the most far-reaching in decades.
President Joe Biden said in a statement that he was “deeply disappointed” by the Supreme Court ruling, which said it “contradicts both common sense and the Constitution, and should deeply concern us all.”
He urged states to pass new laws and said, “I ask Americans across the country to make their voices heard about gun safety. Lives are at stake.”
In the same opinion, Judge Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority that the Constitution protects “the right of a person to carry a gun to defend himself away from home.”
The decision overturned a New York law that required people to demonstrate a particular need to carry a gun in order to obtain a license to carry one in public. The judges said the requirement violates the Second Amendment’s right to “contain and carry weapons.”
California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island have similar laws. The Biden administration had urged judges to uphold New York law.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said the sentence comes at a particularly painful time, when New York is still mourning the deaths of 10 people in a mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket. “This decision is not just reckless. It is reprehensible. It is not what New Yorkers want,” he said.
But 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’ll start prosecuting the criminals and the perpetrator of these heinous acts.”
In a judicial dissent joined by his Liberal colleagues, Judge Stephen Breyer focused on the toll of armed violence. “Since the beginning of this year alone (2022), 277 mass shootings have already been reported, an average of more than one per day,” Breyer wrote.
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, which was already on the rise during the coronavirus pandemic, has increased again.
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, which has been 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 issues unrestricted licenses where a person can carry their weapon anywhere and restricted licenses that allow a person to carry the weapon, but only for specific purposes, such as hunting and shooting at or near the target. from your place of business.
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 about taking one out of the house.
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 court’s decision is somewhat out of step with public opinion. About half of voters in the 2020 presidential election said gun laws in the U.S. should be stricter, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive electorate poll. 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.
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Associated Press reporters Hannah Fingerhut and Zeke Miller in Washington and Michael Hill in East Greenbush, New York, contributed to this report.