Antonyuk v. Bruen

Case Information: Ivan Antonyuk, et al., v. Kevin Bruen, No. 1:22-cv-00734-GTS-CFH (United States District Court for the Northern District of New York, filed August 17, 2022)

At Issue: After the Supreme Court struck down New York’s discretionary licensing scheme in Bruen, the state passed a revised set of laws outlining requirements for obtaining a public carry handgun license.The challengers argue that the laws burden their Second Amendment rights. New York’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act takes steps to promote public safety by defining sensitive locations where guns are not permitted, requiring an interview with a licensing agency before a concealed carry permit will be issued, mandating firearm safety training, and setting storage requirements, among other measures. These steps both limit the ability to carry guns in certain areas and ensure that those who do carry guns in public are doing so safely.

Our Brief: Bruen’s ruling described a new  methodology for deciding cases involving gun regulations. Ultimately, Bruen held that gun safety laws are permissible if they set out objective standards and can be analogized to historical gun laws either through a corresponding case or analogical reasoning, an approach that examines the “hows” and “whys” of modern and historical gun regulations to determine if they are part of the nation’s history and tradition.

When analogizing modern regulations to historical regulations, courts may look to see if the regulations share a common purpose. The foundational justification—or “why”—underpinning both historical gun regulations and the regulation before this Court is public safety. Reliable studies consistently demonstrate that lenient right-to-carry (“RTC”) laws are associated with increased violent crime and homicide rates. And data from the National Crime Victimization Surveys provide little evidence that defensive gun use is beneficial in reducing the likelihood of injury or property loss. In fact, one study concluded that carrying a firearm may increase a victim’s risk of firearm injury during the commission of a crime. The government, as governments have since the time of founding, acted in the interest of public safety, based in sound social science.

For these reasons, we argue that the Court should uphold New York’s licensing law.

Read the full text of our amicus brief here.

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