On second look, Second Circuit upholds bulk of New York concealed-carry law

MANHATTAN (CN) — The Second Circuit on Thursday again upheld many of the provisions of New York’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act, following a recent gun-related U.S. Supreme Court decision.

The state law was passed just a week after the Supreme Court’s landmark Second Amendment ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen , in 2022. The updated statute created new requirements for people seeking a license to carry concealed weapons.

The statute requires gun owners seeking a concealed-carry license to show good moral character and complete 18 hours of training on safe storage requirements, state and federal gun laws, and situational awareness, among others. The law also prohibits firearms in “sensitive locations” including public transit, sports venues, houses of worship and Times Square.

But Wednesday’s updated decision was prompted by another ruling from the nation’s highest court in United States v. Rahimi , which upheld a federal law prohibiting people under domestic violence restraining orders from owning guns.

“Rahimi involved a regulation of firearms that is quite different from any of those at issue in the present case, and thus has little direct bearing on our conclusions,” the panel wrote in its reissued opinion. “Specifically, the complaint before us does not challenge a criminal prohibition of firearms possession by a particular class of individuals based on a prior judicial adjudication.”

As such, the Second Circuit panel ultimately reached the same conclusions as its 2023 decision. In fact, the panel said their opinion is bolstered by Rahimi , which upheld well-established regulations in place when the Bill of Rights was adopted that gave judges the power to establish conditions for individuals “suspected of future misbehavior” when seeking to possess firearms.

“Those 18th-century regimes signaled the validity of the modern statute because they shared a critical substantive characteristic: they all used their differing procedural mechanisms to disarm those who were determined to be dangerous,” the panel wrote.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul said in a statement following the ruling that “gun safety laws save lives and keep our streets safer. Today’s ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upholds the core tenets of the Concealed Carry Improvement Act, the common-sense measure I signed into law two years ago that is saving lives across New York.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James praised the reissued opinion Thursday.

“This decision is another victory in our effort to protect all New Yorkers from the scourge of gun violence,” James said in a statement. “After repeated attempts to weaken our gun safety regulations, once again we have prevailed.”

The panel included U.S. Circuit Judges Dennis Jacobs, a George H.W. Bush appointee, Gerard E. Lynch, a Barack Obama appointee, and Eunice C. Lee, a Joe Biden appointee.

Since its passage, New York’s law has received consistent backlash. Last December, the federal appeals court also remanded a challenge to the law’s 18-hour training requirement after finding the lower court failed to determine whether a civil rights lawyer who brought the lawsuit had standing.

Follow @NikaSchoonover