N.Y. ’Proper Cause’ Law for Carrying Gun Upheld by Court
A New York law requiring “proper cause” for getting a license to carry a handgun in public doesn’t violate the constitutional right to bear arms, a federal appeals court ruled.
A three-judge panel in Manhattan today upheld a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit filed by five people who were denied full-carry concealed handgun permits in New York. They sued along with the Second Amendment Foundation, a Bellevue, Washington, group that supports gun rights. A federal court in White Plains, New York, threw out the case in September 2011.
In its opinion, the appeals court said that the state has “a fair degree of latitude” to regulate the possession and use of guns in public without violating the Constitution.
“We decline plaintiffs’ invitation to strike down New York’s one-hundred-year-old law and call into question the state’s traditional authority to extensively regulate handgun possession in public,” U.S. Circuit Judge Richard Wesley wrote in the opinion.
The case is Kachalsky v. County of Westchester, 11-3642, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (Manhattan).
To contact the reporter on this story: Bob Van Voris in New York at rvanvoris@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net
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