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The U.S. Supreme Court issued one of its most pro-Second Amendment decisions in nearly two decades a few months ago.
The justices ruled 6-3 that New York’s concealed carry law was unconstitutionally restrictive.
Experts say the ruling is significant because it means similarly restrictive concealed carry laws, limited to mostly blue states, are also likely to be successfully challenged.
The Western Journal recently reported that other states with restrictive gun laws will be revisited.
“The Supreme Court said Thursday that gun cases involving restrictions in Hawaii, California, New Jersey and Maryland deserve a new look following its major decision in a gun case last week,” the Western Journal reported Thursday.
“In light of last week’s ruling — which said that Americans have a right to carry a gun outside the home — lower courts should take another look at several cases that had been awaiting action by the high court, the court said. Those cases include ones about high-capacity magazines, an assault weapons ban and a state law that limits who can carry a gun outside the home,” the outlet reported, noting that by sending the cases back to lower courts, these laws will now get a second look under the new standard applied in Thomas’ majority decision.
They also added:
One of the cases the justices sent back to a lower court Thursday involved a Hawaii statute similar to New York’s. In that case, a panel of 11 judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2021 that the right to “keep and bear arms” in the Constitution’s Second Amendment “does not guarantee an unfettered, general right to openly carry arms in public for individual self-defense.” But the high court said in its latest gun case that the Constitution protects “an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.” A lower court will now have to revisit the Hawaii ruling.
The SCOTUS has also instructed federal appeals courts to take a new look at laws in California and New Jersey that put limits on the number of rounds a magazine can hold.
In 2018, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed Democrat-passed legislation that limits magazines to 10 rounds of ammunition rather than the 15-round limit that had been in place since 1990.
In California, a statute bans all magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds. A panel of 11 judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year ruled 7-4 to uphold the ban.
The justices also remanded a case from Maryland back to an appeals court that challenged that state’s ban on 45 types of “assault” weapons. In 2017, the SCOTUS had turned away a previous challenge to that law.
“Thomas’s opinion states regulations need to be historically consistent with the Second Amendment,” FiveThirtyEight’s analysis noted.
We may continue to see stringent and unconstitutional gun laws overturned in the future.
