The Supreme Court of the United States on Thursday reaffirmed the right of citizens to carry firearms in public, a decision made just weeks after a new deadly school shooting.
The ruling of 6 votes against 3 annuls a law of New York which required a person to demonstrate legitimate self-defense needs to receive a gun permit and will prevent states from restricting people’s right to arm themselves.
Despite growing calls to limit firearms after two mass shootings in May shocked the country, the high court sided with those who argue that the Constitution guarantees the right to keep and bear arms.
This is the first failure of the Supreme Court in a decade on the Second Amendment and a major victory for the National Rifle Association (NRA, for its acronym in English), the powerful gun lobby.
“Today’s ruling is a decisive victory for the good men and women of all USA and is the result of a decades-long struggle led by the NRA,” said NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierreit’s a statement.
“The right to self-defense and to defend the family and loved ones should not end at home,” he added.
For the mayor of New York, Eric AdamsInstead, the ruling can fuel armed violence. “We cannot allow New York to become the Wild West,” he said in a statement.
Judge Clarence Thomaswho wrote the ruling for the majority of the Court, said that “the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry a firearm for self-defense outside the home.”
“New York’s good cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms in public for self-defense,” it added.
mass shootings
On May 14, an 18-year-old used an AR-15-style assault rifle to kill 10 African Americans at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
Less than two weeks later, 19 children and two teachers were shot to death at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, by another teenager with the same type of high-powered semi-automatic rifle.
New York law says that in order to receive a permit to carry a firearm outside the home, the owner of the firearm must clearly demonstrate that the firearm is necessary for self-defense.
More than half of the states in the country already allow the carrying of firearms without a permit. Most of them did it in the last decade.
At the other extreme, more than 20 states still maintain restrictions that they may now be forced to drop depending on the court’s ruling.
The court struck down a New York law dating back to 1913 based on the understanding that every state has the right to regulate the use and possession of guns.
In the last two decades, more than 200 million weapons have reached the US market, led by assault rifles and personal pistols, fueling a surge in murders, mass shootings and suicides.