MA GUN LAWYER

This week, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear a New York case challenging certain of that state’s laws passed, very arguably, in retaliation for SCOTUS’s 2022 Bruen decision. One of the the state’s laws at issue requires residents to show “good moral character” to obtain a firearms license. The new law defined that term to mean “having the essential character, temperament and judgement necessary to be entrusted with a weapon and to use it only in a manner that does not endanger oneself or others.” Whatever this means beyond “Your 2nd Amendment right means nothing more than what we- the New York legislature and Governor- say it does.”

The parallels to the Massachusetts “suitability” standard are manifest.

“Unsuitability” in Massachusetts law means that in the subjective belief of the chief of police, the applicant “may pose a public safety risk.” In other words, this standard encompasses every adult in Massachusetts.

Predictably, the same national media that scorned the Court for its Bruen decision, calling it an “expansion of the 2nd Amendment,” reported with glee on the Court’s “decision” not to hear the latest New York challenge. I would caution, however, that we should not read too much into SCOTUS’s denial of certiorari, i.e. its decision not to hear this case. The Court may have looked at the case record developed in the trial court and concluded it was not a sufficient enough one to justify taking on this issue just yet.

Regardless, this type of wholesale subjective decision-making in a firearms licensing procedure is precisely what New York Rifle & Pistol v. Bruen forbids.