U.S. Supreme Court takes major case on carrying concealed handguns

The U.S. Supreme Court stepped back into the heated debate over gun rights on Monday, agreeing to hear a challenge backed by the National Rifle Association to New York state’s restrictions on people carrying concealed handguns in public in a case that could further undermine firearms control efforts nationally.

The justices took up an appeal by two gun owners and the New York affiliate of the NRA, an influential gun rights group closely aligned with Republicans, of a lower court ruling throwing out their challenge to the restrictions on concealed handguns outside the home.

Most of those are committed with handguns, not something likely to penetrate body armor. While they are a tragedy, the supreme court has ruled against us being able to do anything to stop it. pic.twitter.com/gyyjCR29e1

— YouthfulScrub (@YouthfulScrub) July 9, 2020

Lower courts rejected the argument made by the plaintiffs that the restrictions violated the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. The lawsuit seeks an unfettered right to carry concealed handguns in public.

The case could lead to the most consequential ruling on the scope of the Second Amendment in more than a decade. The court’s 6-3 conservative majority is seen as sympathetic to an expansive view of Second Amendment rights.

A state firearms licensing officer had granted the two gun owners “concealed carry” permits but restricted them to hunting and target practice, prompting the legal challenge.

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The debate over gun control in the United States has intensified in the wake of a spate of recent mass shootings. A day after an April 15 mass shooting in Indianapolis in which a gunman killed eight employees at a FedEx facility and then himself, President Joe Biden called gun violence in the United States a “national embarrassment.”

Biden, a long-time advocate of gun control, has taken some steps to tighten federal firearms regulations. But major policy changes would require congressional passage, and Senate Republicans stand in the way of Democratic-backed gun control measures already passed in the House of Representatives.