“The exercise of other constitutional rights does not require individuals to demonstrate to government officers some special need. The Second Amendment right to carry arms in public for self-defense is no different.” Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas simply, yet eloquently, laid out his case for why the majority ruled for the plaintiff in NYSRPA v. Bruen.
New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, NYSRPA, sued the State of New York over New York’s handgun concealed carry permit law. Under the law, police departments had the final authority to grant or deny an application for a concealed carry permit. This discretion was exercised after the permit application was completed - the applicant had already undergone the training and background check requirements before they submitted their application. It placed unelected officials as the sole judge of whether or not someone could exercise their right to self-defense through concealed carrying a firearm outside their own home.
While done under the guise of “public safety” New York’s scheme was fraught with corruption and often discriminated against lower income individuals and historically marginalized groups. In their amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs, the Black Attorneys of Legal Aid, the Bronx Defenders, and Brooklyn Defender Services wrote: “For our clients, New York’s licensing regime renders the Second Amendment a legal fiction. Worse, virtually all our clients whom New York prosecutes for exercising their Second Amendment right are Black or Hispanic.”
This system of state discretion over constitutional rights was known as a “may-issue” system. The state had the option of whether or not to issue a permit to a qualified applicant. Fortunately, most states prior to the ruling didn’t follow this method. The majority of states, hosting a majority of Americans, are “shall-issue” states. This means if an applicant meets the state’s requirements to receive the permit, the state is obligated to grant them their permit.
In New Mexico, we are already a shall-issue state. Therefore, we won’t see any immediate impact on our gun laws as a result of the ruling. But the state is prohibited from attempting to move our concealed carry laws from their current form to a may-issue regime. Even though we won’t see an immediate impact to our laws, there could be implications for New Mexico elsewhere in the opinion.
While the law struck down dealt with one facet of exercising Second-Amendment rights, Justice Thomas used his opinion to take lower courts to task over how they have handled other Second-Amendment cases. “Since Heller and McDonald, the Courts of Appeals have developed a “two-step” framework for analyzing Second Amendment challenges that combines history with means-end scrutiny. The Court rejects that two-part approach as having one step too many. Step one is broadly consistent with Heller, which demands a test rooted in the Second Amendment’s text, as informed by history. But Heller and McDonald do not support a second step that applies means-end scrutiny in the Second Amendment context.”
In layman’s terms, lower courts have allowed states to invoke their “purpose” of passing a gun law when arguing why their law is constitutional in a court of law. This approach was inconsistent with Heller v DC and now is explicitly condemned by Justice Thomas. While NYSRPA v. Bruen was a ruling over may-issue handgun concealed carry laws, the framework courts must adopt has far-reaching implications for Second-Amendment laws and litigation. This element of the ruling very well could have an impact on current and future gun-related legislation in New Mexico.
“The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not ‘a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.” Justice Thomas, and the Supreme Court, ruled correctly in NYSRPA v. Bruen. In order to bear arms, as described in the Second-Amendment, our rights don’t end at our property lines.
Zac Fort is the President of New Mexico Shooting Sports Association
(Disclaimer: New York State Rifle and Pistol Association is a “sister” organization of New Mexico Shooting Sports Association.)