A federal judge in New York on Thursday issued a temporary injunction against portions of the state’s new gun law to allow a pro-gun group to pursue a lawsuit to challenge the measure.
Going into effect on Sept. 1, the law created new requirements to obtain a firearms license, including submitting social media accounts for review and creating a list of private and public places prohibiting the carrying of a gun even for license holders. A bill was proposed by Democrats in New York’s legislature after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a 100-year-old concealed carry law over the summer.
On Thursday, Chief Judge Glenn Suddaby of the U.S. District Court in Syracuse agreed to issue the order at the request of six New York residents who are members of Gun Owners of America.
“Simply stated, instead of moving toward becoming a shall-issue jurisdiction, New York State has further entrenched itself as a shall-not-issue jurisdiction. And, by doing so, it has further reduced a first-class constitutional right to bear arms in public for self defense … into a mere request,” wrote Suddaby.
Suddaby said his order would not take effect for three days to allow the New York government to appeal his ruling in a higher court.
Suddaby’s order blocked provisions of the law that gave new requirements for background checks for gun permits, including handing over social media accounts. One of those provisions he blocked includes the requirement that a license applicant has to provide evidence to show they have “good moral character,” according to the ruling.
He also barred the statewide ban on guns being carried in some public and private properties, according to Syracuse.com.
The judge last month ruled that much of the newly enacted law was unconstitutional in dismissing an earlier lawsuit by Gun Owners of America in which he found neither the group nor an individual member of it had standing to sue before the law came into effect.
Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat up for reelection in November, claimed the bill would help “keep New Yorkers safe from harm” despite the Supreme Court ruling, adding that the Supreme Court “may think they can change our lives with the stroke of a pen, but we have pens, too.”
Other than the Gun Owners of America suit, several lawsuits challenging the new law have been filed. Earlier this month, several dozen churches in upstate New York filed a lawsuit to challenge the law’s provision to ban guns in houses of worship.
“The law seems another overreach by the state,” George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley wrote in July after the bill was proposed. “New York has thus far been about as effective in curtailing gun rights as Monty Python’s ‘Judean People’s Front Crack Suicide Squad’ was effective in combating Roman occupation.”
The National Rifle Association (NRA), which is not a plaintiff in the Gun Owners of America case, sharply criticized the bill after its proposal.
“Gov. Hochul and her anti-Second Amendment allies in Albany have defied the United States Supreme Court with an intentionally malicious rewriting of New York’s concealed carry law,” Darin Hoens, the New York NRA state director, said in a statement in July.
From The Epoch Times