By Ian Millhiser
Senior Correspondent
VOX
A highly anticipated Second Amendment case that threatened to upend a decade of precedents appears likely to go up in smoke if today’s oral arguments at the Supreme Court are anything to go by. All four members of the Court’s liberal minority appeared to believe that the court lacks jurisdiction to hear the case, and Chief Justice John Roberts asked a few questions suggesting that he is sympathetic to this view.
That won’t prevent the Supreme Court from eventually revisiting the Second Amendment, but it might have to wait for a different case to do so.
The case the Court heard, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York, involves a very narrow challenge to a New York City gun licensure rule that was later repealed. The city offers two kinds of licenses to gun owners. A “carry” license permits them to carry a handgun for “target practice, hunting, or self-defense,” while a “premises” license only permits gun owners to “have and possess in his dwelling” a handgun. Under a now-repealed rule, premise license holders were only allowed to bring the gun out of their home for limited purposes, including to practice shooting at seven specific gun ranges.
The plaintiffs in New York State Rifle had asked for very limited relief. They asked that gun owners who hold “premises” licenses — which allow gun owners to keep a gun in their home and also to practice shooting at seven specific gun ranges — also be allowed to bring the gun to different ranges. One plaintiff also asked to be able to transport the same gun between two homes.
Almost immediately after the Supreme Court announced last January that it would hear the case — the first major Second Amendment case to reach the Court since Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation gave the Court a solid conservative majority — New York officials tried to make it go away.
New York City changed its rules to allow people with premises licenses to do exactly what these plaintiffs wanted to do, and New York State passed its own law preventing the city from ever restoring the old legal regime.