'Tidal wave' of gun laws struck down a year after Supreme Court Bruen ruling

[pipedreams]

The Supreme Court's landmark 6-3 opinion on gun laws, emphasizing "historical tradition," has quickly become a vital lifeline for gun rights advocates challenging state firearms regulations in lower courts.

The high court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen on June 23 last year, in which Justice Clarence Thomas, the most conservative justice on the bench and a staunch defender of Second Amendment freedoms, wrote for the majority that New York's 108-year-old "proper cause" concealed carry regime was unlawful.

"It's the framework that is going to be used on almost all challenges that will be coming up regarding the Second Amendment," Tom King, executive director of the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, the plaintiff in the landmark case, told the Washington Examiner.

Although the ruling directly affected New York's law, it had a sweeping influence on other states, leading lawmakers to evaluate new regulations complying with the Supreme Court decision while preserving strict ownership laws. Attorneys general in California, Hawaii, and New Jersey issued similar directives informing residents they could no longer require concealed carry permit applicants to demonstrate a justifiable need to carry a handgun.

In the immediate eight months after the Bruen decision, there were 31 successful claims in lower court legal fights where it's been cited, according to Jake Charles, an associate professor at Pepperdine University’s Caruso School of Law who has tracked lawsuits against firearms laws.

"It's definitely more than 31 claims now," Charles told the Washington Examiner, nearly 12 months after the decision. His data from June of last year to February indicate a 14.6% success rate out of around 212 lower court cases that cited the recent Bruen opinion.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/courts/gun-laws-struck-down-after-scotus-bruen-ruling

Andrew Willinger, executive director for the Center of Firearms Law at Duke University Law School, told the Washington Examiner the "million-dollar question" is whether Bruen signals a trend where the justices will take up more Second Amendment disputes.

"Or is it going to be something like Heller, where the court just sits there and doesn't take a case for a long time? There were essentially 10 years [between] McDonald and Bruen where the court received a lot of petitions and did not take a single major Second Amendment case," Willinger said.

"I think that this court is somewhat more likely to take these cases and to hopefully clarify a little bit about what this Bruen test looks like, but we'll see," Willinger added.