guns

‘The Constitutional Right to Carry Firearms in Public Will Harm Public Health’

In a new commentary, Michael Ulrich explains the negative consequences of the Supreme Court’s ruling this past June that declared the Constitution protects an individual’s right to carry a gun in public.

In a landmark ruling last June, the US Supreme Court declared that Americans have a constitutional right to carry a firearm in public places, arguing that a century-old New York law requiring a “proper cause” to carry a gun outside of the home is a violation of Second Amendment rights.

The New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen case stemmed from a lawsuit two New York men filed after they were denied licenses to carry a firearm because they could not prove that they had a particular need, beyond self-defense, to carry them in public. In the first major Supreme Court ruling on guns in more than a decade, the court declared that this denial was unconstitutional, putting into question the ability of other states to enforce similar public-carry laws—including those in California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Washington, DC.

“Because the State of New York issues public-carry licenses only when an applicant demonstrates a special need for self-defense, we conclude that the State’s licensing regime violates the Constitution,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the 6-3 majority opinion.

Reversing the long-held basis for gun licensing and public carry on sufficient reasoning (known as a “may-issue” framework) will harm public health, writes Michael Ulrich, assistant professor of health law, ethics & human rights, in a new commentary published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“In striking down the law, the Court paid no attention to escalating gun homicides—which have reached rates this country has not seen in decades—or to the fact that the law was New York’s attempt to balance protection of Second Amendment rights with public safety,” Ulrich writes. “Ultimately, all that mattered was the right of ‘law-abiding citizens’—an ambiguous term not further defined—to decide they wanted to carry a gun to protect themselves.”

Comprehensive research has shown that lenient concealed carry policies often lead to an increase in gun violence, and also overlook the underlying causes of this violence, such as poverty and stable housing, Ulrich argues.

Increasing the number of firearms in public is also likely to exacerbate racial disparities in gun violence, racial injustice, and mental health conditions, he cautions. “We need only consider well-known cases such as those of Philando Castile, Tamir Rice, and John Crawford to recognize the high prevalence of racial biases and prejudice in law enforcement.”

In the opinion, Thomas also declared that courts need to consider the country’s “historical tradition” when determining whether a firearm law is constitutional. This position, Ulrich writes, is unnecessarily narrow and restrictive, which will ultimately reverse critical gun restrictions currently in place.

“Setting aside the problems with relying on policies that were in force at the country’s founding (such as legal slavery) and during Reconstruction (Black Codes and lynching), the notion that the policies available for addressing modern gun violence are limited to those that held sway hundreds of years ago is illogical,” he writes, adding that this standard also threatens restrictions on assault-style weapons such as the AR-15, as well as bans on large-capacity magazines.

“Work to stem gun violence can and will persist, including efforts currently under way in New York and California, but the Supreme Court’s elevation of history above all other concerns has undoubtedly created a much more difficult path forward to accomplish that goal,” Ulrich concludes.

Click here to read the full commentary.