Supreme Court agrees to take up major Second Amendment case, related to concealed carry of handguns

The Supreme Court said Monday that next term it will consider a Second Amendment case concerning a New York law that restricts a person from carrying a concealed handgun in public for self-defense, marking roughly a decade since justices have ruled on a significant case about gun rights.

The announcement follows several recent mass shootings and the Biden administration's push to for tighter gun-control laws. The case marks the court's first on gun rights since Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the bench last year, giving it a  6-3 conservative majority, according to the Associated Press. 

The court had turned down review of the issue in June, before Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death.

New York is among eight states that limit who has the right to carry a weapon in public. The others are California, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island, the wire service also reports.

Paul Clement, representing challengers to New York’s permit law, said the court should use the case to settle the issue once and for all. “

"The nation is split, with the Second Amendment alive and well in the vast middle of the nation, and those same rights disregarded near the coasts,” Clement wrote on behalf of the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association and two New York residents.

Calling on the court to reject the appeal, the state said its law promotes public safety and crime reduction and neither bans people from carrying guns nor allows everyone to do so.

Barrett is considered to have a more expansive view of gun rights than Ginsburg had. She wrote a dissent in 2019, when she was a judge on the federal appeals court in Chicago, that argued that a conviction for a nonviolent felony – in this case, mail fraud — shouldn’t automatically disqualify someone from owning a gun, the Associated Press also reports.