Bad guys don't bother with gun laws. They don't buy guns from gun stores, for one thing, and they generally ignore any other law that was sold to the public as keeping guns out of their hands.
Gun laws are very bad in New York, though, where some in the city want to renew their lawsuit challenging laws in the Big Apple.
See, there are a number of laws on the books concerning gun purchases. These, again, were sold as a way to keep the wrong people from buying guns, even though federal regulations already require background checks for any sale conducted by a licensed dealer.
And those challenging it have reasons for why they don't like these laws:
A group of New York City gun buyers asked a federal appeals court on Tuesday to reinstate their Second Amendment challenge against the state’s administrative gun licensing requirements, which they claim infringe on their constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
Charles Mills, Craig Sotomayor, and Braden Holliday sued New York City in 2023, claiming regulations like the city’s 90-day waiting period to purchase firearms, background checks and the ban on possessing a backup concealed handgun limit are “absolute bar — even if temporarily — to their right to have and bear arms.”
Holliday, a Bronx resident, separately challenged the city’s imposition of purportedly exorbitant application and renewal fees as a restriction on his ability to possess arms.
He says New York City’s licensing and renewal fees, at $428.50, “grossly exceed” the $10 statutory cap imposed on every other jurisdiction in state, with the exception of Nassau County on Long Island.
Their case was thrown out at the motion to dismiss stage in December 2024 by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, who concluded that “none of the predominantly administrative regulations here operates to permanently deprive applicants of their right to own and carry firearms."
Appealing to the Second Circuit, the gun owners claim Rakoff misapplied and misunderstood the text, history and tradition analysis under Bruen to be applied in Second Amendment challenges, and the viability of constitutional challenges to “exorbitant licensing fees."
What we need to understand is that these measures aren't administrative. They're preemptive. They're designed to discourage gun ownership at all. They create such a burden that many will decide the juice isn't worth the squeeze and skip the whole thing. They might want a gun, but they don't have the time or money to deal with all of this.
Plus, that licensing fee? That's the cost of some pretty decent handguns, and that's just to get the license. It requires potential gun owners to shell out the money for two firearms, while only being able to buy one, all because they want to create as many burdens as possible.
Again, it's to preempt people from buying firearms.
Except for the very wealthy, of course, who won't see that amount as any barrier at all.
It's not about whether it permanently deprives them of their rights. It deprives them for 90 days, at a minimum, and for what? Criminals in NYC have access to plenty of guns. They're not paying fees or anything of the sort. They're either stealing them outright or buying them off the black market. They're not waiting 90 days or spending a pile of money for a license to own a firearm.
The judge made the wrong call, and I pray that the next rung up the judicial ladder has more sense than Rakoff does.
