The Supreme Court has rejected a bid by New York retailers to block new gun control laws in their state, which they say violate the second amendment. Paloma Capanna, attorney for the New York gun retailers, told Fox News on Wednesday, “We are challenging the ability of the state of New York to target dealers in firearms in the lawful stream of commerce, to put them out of business, which is what the new laws will do. So it really was unfortunate to see that we couldn’t get any emergency temporary injunction against those laws.” There was no written dissents or explanations in the Supreme Court’s decision as New York Attorney General Letitia James praised the ruling saying that the “gun safety laws help save lives, and keep our state safer.”
Wednesday’s decision comes only a week after the Supreme Court refused to act on another restrictive New York gun law, the Concealed Carry Improvement Act. But Justice Justice Clarence Thomas did write an opinion on that ruling, saying, “the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.” The Concealed Carry Improvement Act law prohibits carrying a gun in “sensitive areas,” such as stadiums, houses of worship, museums, parks and other public places. The Supreme Court stated that they would not strike down the law before the district court made their decision.
Capanna argued that new record-keeping laws will craete an unconstitutional gun registry.
“The list of new mandatory compliance even goes so far as a turnover of acquisition and disposition records… which the state of New York attorneys have admitted will be used to create the first-ever gun owners registry housed at the New York State Police,” Capanna said Wednesday.