The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit recently upheld New York’s requirement that applicants for handgun carry permits demonstrate “good moral character,” deeming it consistent with the Second Amendment. But the appeals court enjoined enforcement of the state’s demand that applicants submit information about their social media accounts, deeming it inconsistent with the First Amendment as well as the Second.
The 2nd Circuit also delivered a mixed verdict on New York regulations that prohibit even permit holders from carrying guns in specified locations. The court rejected the state’s default rule against carrying guns in businesses open to the public while upholding several other bans on firearms in places that legislators deemed “sensitive.”
The decision by a unanimous three-judge panel, published on Friday, addresses four challenges to regulations that New York enacted after the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which upheld the right to carry guns in public for self-defense. In Bruen, the Court rejected New York’s requirement that residents show “proper cause” for bearing arms, which it said was not “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
New York legislators responded by eliminating the “proper cause” criterion while retaining a reference to “good moral character,” which they defined as “the essential
character, temperament and judgement necessary to be entrusted with a weapon
and to use it only in a manner that does not endanger oneself or others.” That requirement, U.S. District Judge Glenn T. Suddaby concluded last year in Antonyuk v. Hochul, “is just a dressed-up version of the State’s improper ‘special need for self-protection’ requirement.”
Suddaby found “historical support for a modern law providing that a license shall be issued or renewed except for applicants who have been found, based on their
past conduct, to be likely to use the weapon in a manner that would injure themselves or others (other than in self-defense).” That standard, he wrote, “is objective, easily applied, and finds support in numerous analogues that deny the right to carry to citizens based on their past conduct.” By contrast, he said, New York’s “good moral character” requirement gave licensing officials “open-ended discretion” to reject applicants based on a subjective standard—precisely the situation that the Supreme Court had deemed unconstitutional in Bruen.
Hellbound and Down 