New York gun ban in public parks survives appeal

MANHATTAN (CN) — New York’s ban on concealed firearm carry in urban public parks passed constitutional muster Monday at the Second Circuit — with judges noting gun bans were part of the original plans to build New York City’s iconic Central Park — but the appeals court declined to restore the state’s restriction on private property.

A three-judge panel affirmed a lower court ruling enjoining the state from restricting concealed carry on private property that’s open to the public, unless it’s expressly permitted by the owner. Judges agreed the state failed to show the 2022 Concealed Carry Improvement Act was in line with historical firearms regulations.

The ban in parks, on the other hand, survived the plaintiffs’ facial challenge, as the state showed it’s consistent with historical gun bans in urban public parks. That was the right call by the lower court, the circuit found. The panel declined to address bans in rural parks since the challenge wasn’t raised in the lower court.

In its 43-page ruling, the appellate judge panel examined New York’s laws under the Supreme Court precedent set in the Bruen and Rahimi cases.

More than 60 laws nationwide directly prohibit carrying guns in urban public parks, the judges noted — starting in 1858 with the plan to build Central Park in New York City, which came with a regulation requiring signs stating it was forbidden to carry firearms inside the park.

“With the explosion of urban parks came contemporaneous regulations that, like the Central Park regulation, flat out prohibited gun carriage inside those parks,” U.S. Circuit Judge Joseph F. Bianco, a Donald Trump appointee, wrote for the majority.

None of those city ordinances were invalidated by a court, Bianco said; “indeed, we have not located any constitutional challenges to any of them.”

U.S. Circuit Judge Steven Menashi, a fellow Trump appointee, dissented on that point. He said the court needed to look back even further, to the country’s founding.

“Regulations during the founding period restricted the misuse of firearms and the manner of carriage but did not prohibit carriage in public parks or other places reserved for recreation and public gatherings,” Menashi wrote. “In my view, the historical evidence from the founding period cannot be discounted.”

Brett Christian of Cheektowaga, New York, brought the underlying challenges. He claims the state’s concealed carry restriction prevents him from carrying a gun “for self-defense purposes when going about his day-to-day life,” including in local parks, while hiking on trails and when using Buffalo’s metro rail system.

Firearms Policy Coalition, another plaintiff, celebrated the portion of Monday’s ruling that stops private property fun bans, which fun rights advocates refer to as a “vampire rule.”

“The FPC Grassroots Army put a stake in the heart of New York’s ‘vampire rule’ carry ban today. We’ll keep fighting in this and other cases to eliminate unconstitutional bans on carry in public parks so people can defend their lives in these public places,” Brandon Combs, the organization’s president, said in a statement.

The advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety praised the circuit ruling with regard to the parks ban.

“By upholding New York’s parks law, the Second Circuit has made it clear that we have a right to protect our communities from the unique dangers of guns in sensitive places,” Janet Carter, managing director of Second Amendment litigation at Everytown Law, said in a statement.

U.S. Circuit Judge Eunice C. Lee, a Joe Biden appointee, rounded out the panel.

The issue of whether states can ban guns on private property that’s open to the public, sans the owner’s consent, is before the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Wolford v. Lopez, which involves a Hawaii law implemented in Bruen’s wake.

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