Quick Post-Bruen Update on the Constitutionality of Gun Laws

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. __, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022), holding that New York could not constitutionally require residents to show a special need (beyond the general concerns about self-defense that any person might have) in order to obtain a permit to carry a handgun outside the home. I wrote a detailed summary of the case in this prior post. North Carolina doesn’t require any such showing, so the direct impact on our state was minimal. However, Bruen’s holding arose from a new interpretive approach. The Court rejected the intermediate scrutiny test most lower tribunals had used when analyzing gun laws and replaced it with a historical analysis in which a limit on gun rights is constitutional only if it is “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Lower courts have now begun to apply this framework to assess the constitutionality of various gun laws. The early returns suggest that Bruen’s impact may be substantial across a wide range of federal and state gun laws. What follows is a collection of some notable post-Bruen opinions. Significantly, these are trial court rulings. I’m not aware of major appellate opinions interpreting Bruen yet, though several federal circuits are currently considering cases in which Bruen will be relevant. In some cases, courts have requested additional briefing focusing on the historical record. Additionally, I selected cases in which courts questioned or invalidated gun laws based on Bruen. There are, [...]