Excerpts:
New York City requires its citizens to possess a license to own a gun, and the only license available to most New York City residents is a “premises permit.” With few exceptions, this permit severely restricts people from carrying their handgun outside of their home. Pet’r’s App. 88-90. This Court has recognized that the “right to keep and bear arms” is a fundamental right, a core purpose of which is self-defense. It has also recognized that, at the time of the founding of the country, a gun was also used for providing sustenance for self and family, as well as recreation. Several circuit courts have held that self-defense “is as important outside the home as inside.” See e.g., Moore v. Madigan, 702 F.3d 933, 942 (7th Cir. 2012). Amici agree. But the Second Circuit determined that a rule only implicates the core of the Second Amendment’s protections when it extends into the home.
When a municipality restricts its citizens’ Second and Fourteenth Amendment fundamental rights, it should be based on the Constitution’s text and on history and tradition. If the Court is to apply tiers of scrutiny, such scrutiny should be heightened. Each element of New York City’s rule should have been subjected to this heightened scrutiny. New York City could not possibly meet such scrutiny here.
New York’s regulatory scheme discriminates against interstate commerce because it “deprives outof-state businesses of access to a local market” by forbidding its citizens from hunting and patronizing ranges outside the state with their own guns. C & A Carbone v. Town of Clarkstown, 511 U.S. 383, 409 (1994). “[I]f not one but many or every State adopted similar legislation,” Healy v. Beer Inst., 491 U.S. 324, 336 (1989), the result could gut the right and significantly impact states whose economies depend on hunting and associated tourism involving the use of personal handguns.
Furthermore, taken together with New York State’s restrictive gun possession laws, the New York City ordinance restricts individuals in New York and throughout the United States from traveling with their rights intact. It is impossible to get to six states by public roadways without passing through New York. Thus, citizens on either side of New York cannot travel to the other states while possessing a firearm — whether for self-defense, to hunt or to use recreationally, and even if its unloaded and locked away — without running the risk of arrest and prosecution for illegal possession of the gun. Should restrictions such as those in New York be upheld, and adopted in other jurisdictions, protected and safe interstate travel is in jeopardy.