Supreme Court hears first big Second Amendment case in a decade

The following is an excerpt from Blaze Media’s Capitol Hill Brief email newsletter:

On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York — the most significant Second Amendment case the high court has taken up in years.

The cases asks whether New York City laws about transporting a licensed, unloaded, and locked firearm to a residence or shooting range outside the five boroughs are consistent with the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms. A Federalist Society blog post explains that, under the regulations in question, “a New Yorker whom the City itself has licensed to possess a handgun cannot transport her handgun to a weekend second home (even to exercise the core constitutional purpose of self-defense), to an upstate county to participate in a shooting competition, or even across the bridge to a neighboring city for target practice.”

New York City authorities, however, have said that the controversy is now moot because they relaxed those travel and transport restrictions earlier this year, but the court told them to try again at oral arguments.

For many observers, the big question is how the court’s two newest members will rule on the matter. Justice Neil Gorsuch has some fairly big shoes to fill on the issue, having replaced Antonin Scalia, who authored the landmark opinion in the 2008 D.C. v. Heller case. Meanwhile, Brett Kavanaugh has taken the place of infamous swing vote Anthony Kennedy, who joined in the Heller decision but reportedly insisted upon language limiting its scope.

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