US Supreme Court is preparing to hear Gun Permit Law case

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US Supreme Court is preparing to hear a gun rights case, which could lead to more guns on the streets of New York and Los Angeles. It would threaten restrictions on guns in subways, airports, bars, churches, schools, and other public gathering places. The hearing comes as gun violence has surged, and it could dramatically increase the number of people eligible to carry firearms. The case centers on New York’s restrictive gun permit law and whether challengers to the law have a right to carry a firearm in public for self-defense. Gun control groups said the result will be more violence if a high court ruling requires states to drop restrictions. However, the gun rights groups said the risk of a confrontation is precisely why they have a right to be armed for self-defense.

Gun rights groups said the court with a 6-3 conservative majority is poised to side with them. They need the court to say the New York law is too restrictive, as are similar laws in other states. Point to be noted that the court last issued major gun-rights decisions in 2008 and 2010. Those decisions established a nationwide right to keep a gun at home for self-defense. The question for the court now is whether there’s a similar Second Amendment right to carry a firearm in public. At least half a dozen states, including populous California and several Eastern states, restrict the carrying of guns to those who can demonstrate a particular need for doing so. One gun case the justices did agree to hear ended anticlimactically in 2020 when the justices threw out the case.

But, the conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett agreed to wade into the gun debate again last year. The New York State Rifle & Pistol Association and 2 private citizens challenging the law have told the Supreme Court that it makes it effectively impossible for an ordinary, law-abiding citizen to obtain a license to carry a handgun for self-defense. Lawyers for the group said the text of the Second Amendment supports their argument that there’s a right to carry a gun outside the home. The group also said that New York’s law has discriminatory origins and was originally designed to give officials wide latitude to keep guns out of the hands of newly arriving immigrants from Europe, particularly Italians. New York denies and says that the Second Amendment allows states to restrict the carrying of guns in public.