NEW YORK GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL DEFIES U.S. SUPREME COURT AND BRUEN RULINGS; INTENDS TO WEAKEN EXERCISE OF THE RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE
On November 3, 2021 the U.S. Supreme Court heard Oral Argument in the third major Second Amendment case, NYSRPA vs. Bruen.
The Hearing was a mere formality. Both parties, Plaintiff Petitioners, and Defendant Respondent New York State Government, knew the outcome before the hearing took place, or had good reason to suspect a positive outcome for Petitioners and a decidedly adverse one for the State.
New York’s Handgun Law was in the crosshairs of U.S. Supreme Court for at least a couple of years.
New York, like several other jurisdictions, had pushed back on the Court’s rulings in Heller and McDonald for years, angering Americans who sought to exercise their natural law right to armed self-defense, and rightfully irritating several members of the Court having perceived State Government administrations and courts failing to jurisdictions failed to adhere to the High Court rulings in those two landmark Second Amendment cases.
Heller made clear the right to armed self-defense is an individual right, unconnected with one’s service in a militia, a point plain from the text of the Second Amendment. This is consistent with the Standard Model, grounded on “the text of the Second Amendment and its historical underpinnings.” See, e.g., Critical Guide To The Second Amendment,” 62 Tenn. L. Rev. 461, 466 (Spring 1995), by Glenn Harlan Reynolds. Heller conforms to the most reasonable interpretation of the Second Amendment, which foes of the Second Amendment dismiss outright.
Failing to appreciate the import and purport of the Second Amendment, Anti-Second Amendment jurisdictions went their merry way. State Government administrations and their legislatures immediately rebelled against Heller, and the Courts of those jurisdictions, giving their imprimatur on unconstitutional acts. Through tortuous legal reasoning they gave their imprimatur on unconstitutional acts, requiring the U.S. Supreme Court to step in once again.
McDonald held the right of the people to keep and bear arms applies equally to the States and the Federal Government, albeit, apropos of the States, it applies to them through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Relying on its own case law precedent, in Barron ex rel., Tiernan vs. Mayor of Balt, 32 U.S. 243, 7 Pet. 243, 247, the High Court conceded the right codified in the Second Amendment applied originally to the Federal Government only, not to the States.
But, through its further analysis of the Constitution, the Court’s Majority inferred that the Right does in fact apply to the States, albeit through the Fourteenth Amendment.
But does that fact alter the force of the Bill of Rights, and do we treat these Rights contained therein, like any other Constitutional provision?
These are not trivial questions. For if the Rights contained therein are to be construed as elemental, fundamental, illimitable, immutable, unalienable and eternal Natural Law Rights, as the Founders of our Republic accepted as axiomatic, then these Rights are not the sorts of things that government, any government—State, Federal, or local—has the lawful authority to ignore, dismiss, tinker and tamper with, or abrogate, in any matter. That is to say, these are primordial Rights existent in the individual by Grace of the Divine Creator. They are “Natural Law.” They are not constructions by man. So, if Government, a collection of men, did not create these natural law rights, then it follows that Government has no lawful authority to bestow them on other men, or to rescind the right thus bestowed, or to deny the exercise of them. Yet many State governments do just that and insist they, alone, maintain and retain the sole right to do so. This leads inevitably to a problem of logic, more basic than one of law, and this logical conundrum plays out amply on review of the New York Sullivan Act.
New York State and Federal Courts acknowledge that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right. But then they argue that, since the State requires the individual to acquire a license as a condition precedent to the exercising of the right to keep and bear arms, and as acquisition of a license is within the sole prerogative of the State, and since the Governmental act of bestowing a license on one person and denying it to another, all the while maintaining that such licenses once bestowed are subject to rescission, revocation, or suspension at the whim of Government, this means that acquisition of a license to exercise a fundamental right, is itself, a privilege, not a right. And the Courts have ruled.
This reduces a fundamental right to mere platitude, and it is one without force or effect. The Government interposes itself between a preexisting natural law right and one’s desire to exercise it.
The impact of the logical issue is not resolved through Heller or McDonald; nor does Bruen resolve it. It is a man-made problem, arising from a man-made act——
Government licensing of firearms.
LICENSING OF FIREARMS, PARTICULARLY THE LICENSING OF HANDGUNS UTILIZED FOR SELF-DEFENSE OUTSIDE THE HOME IS AT ONCE THE SOURCE OF THE PROBLEM FRUSTRATING ONE’S EXERCISE OF THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS AND THE MECHANISM EMPLOYED FOR DAMAGING THE MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL FUNDAMENTAL, UNALIENABLE RIGHTS—EXERCISE OF WHICH ALONE FORESTALLS ENCROACHING GOVERNMENT TYRANNY
The Fourteenth Amendment that McDonald relies upon, is, of course, not part of the Bill of Rights that three-fourths of the States, then existing in the United States, ratified on December 15, 1791.
Better it would be for the High Court to rule that the Bill of Rights, as a collection of Natural Law, stand outside the power and authority of Government to regulate.
If that idea sounds outlandish, is it any less outlandish for a State, like New York, to claim that, although the right to keep and bear arms “cannot be” infringed, the ability to do so is dependent on first securing a license to do so, and the issuance of a license is a privilege gained by grace of the State, not a right existent in a person which he may therefore demand of the State? “‘That’s some catch, that catch-22. . . .’ ‘It’s the best there is.” [re: Joseph Hellers’ novel, “Catch-22.”]
The Indiana Courts recognized the problem but attempted to chart a course between Scylla and Charybdis.
‘The people shall have a right to bear arms, for the defense of themselves and the State.’ However, the Indiana Constitution also ‘affirmatively recognizes the state's police power.’ ‘It declares that government is ‘instituted for [the People's] peace, safety, and well-being.’” Id. (quoting City Chapel, 744 N.E.2d at 446 (quoting Ind.)). In this case, the governmental police power of regulating arms challenges the limitations on government when addressing the right to bear arms.” Reddington vs. State, 992 N.E.2d 823 (Ind. Ct. App. 2013). [citations generally omitted].
New York was likely the first jurisdiction to impose handgun licensing on American citizens. That was the Sullivan Act in 1911.
The Sullivan Act was created on a lie, besmirching entire national groups or ethnic classes, new to the City, Italians and Jews as “dangerous people” responsible for crime in New York City:
“Whatever the actual dangers of the automatic revolver, immigrants scared authorities on both sides of the Atlantic. Crime by Jewish and Italian immigrants spurred New York State to enact the Sullivan Law in 1911, which required a license for handgun buying and carrying, and made licenses difficult to obtain. The sponsor at the Sullivan Law promised homicides would decline drastically. Instead, homicides increased and the New York Times found that criminals were ‘as well armed as ever.’” “All The Way Down The Slippery Slope: Gun Prohibition In England And Some Lessons For Civil Liberties In America,” 22 Hamline L. Rev. 399 (Winter 1999), by Joseph E. Olson and David B. Kopel.
The Sullivan Act created out of a paroxysm of fear is still very much with us. In fact the impact of it is worse than ever.
Through time the Sullivan Act grew more elaborate, more burdensome, more restrictive. The New York Government intended this to occur.
Slowly at first, but inexorably, and gaining momentum in the second decade of the 21st, Century, notwithstanding or in spite of and contemptuous of the Heller and McDonald rulings, the New York Government made patently clear its disgust for and abhorrence of the natural law right to armed self-defense codified Second Amendment.
Challenges were inevitable.
New Yorkers’ anger toward the State’s actions, reining in exercise of a natural law right to armed self-defense grew in direct proportion to and relation with the Government’s own recalcitrance and arrogance.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the first challenge to the State’s Handgun Law in 2020.
The case NYSRPA vs. City of New York, 140 S. Ct. 1525 (2020), is referred to colloquially as the “New York Gun Transport” case. The Arbalest Quarrel has written several articles on this. Among our published papers, See, e.g., article posted on April 27, 2020.
The Court could have taken up review of the merits of the case, the Constitutionality of Sullivan, head-on. Justices Thomas and Alito certainly wanted to. And had the Court done so, it might have spared both itself and handgun licensees in New York the time, expense, and frustration of having to deal with further challenges down the road.
Even as Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito would have wished that, the Leftwing did not and Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, sided with the leftwing of the Court.
Those Justices—Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan— don’t merely oppose exercise of the natural law right of armed self-defense, they detest it. This is plain in their opinions.
The New York Government under Andrew Cuomo, through sleight of hand, amended the Handgun Law ever so slightly to allow Roberts, Kavanaugh, and the leftwing of the Court to declare the case moot.
The Justices dismissed it, avoiding review of the case on the merits.
This is precisely what both the New York Government and those Justices, who dismissed the case on the ground of mootness, wanted.
Justices Alito and Thomas were rightfully livid.
The machinations of Cuomo did not meet the test for mootness, but there was nothing Justices Thomas and Alito could do except prepare a comprehensive dissent.
Justice Kavanaugh, who sided with Chief Justice Roberts and the leftwing of the Court, wrote an odd concurring opinion. He obliquely acknowledged the disappointment of his brethren, and perfunctorily declared there would be other opportunities to vindicate Heller and McDonald. Whether he meant it or not, another opportunity did arise: the case was NYSRPA vs. Bruen.
With Justice Amy Coney Barrett now on the Bench, the Conservative wing of the Court had garnered sufficient votes to grant review of the case but with the aim of vindicating and clarifying the salient points of the two prior seminal Heller and McDonald cases.
Unlike the previous New York City case that could have emerged as the third landmark Second Amendment case, the present Bruen case did just that. This case challenged the core of the Sullivan Act: the idea of armed self-defense outside the confines of one’s home or place of business.
Governor Kathy Hochul, who had replaced Andrew Cuomo whom the secretive and powerful Globalist elites had grown both concerned about and tired of, forcing Cuomo to resign, knew that Bruen posed the greatest risk to the Sullivan Act since the Act’s inception, over a hundred and ten years ago.
The Government could not easily amend the Handgun Law, as Cuomo did in the prior New York case.
The Bruen rulings had the potential of gutting Sullivan Act. Hochul and the Progressives in Albany had no intention of allowing that to happen, regardless of the outcome of Bruen.
But how could Hochul and Albany preserve and even strengthen the Handgun Law consistent with past practice and with its goal of whittling away at exercise of the right to armed self-defense.
News accounts would have the public believe the New York Government had worked feverishly to amend the Handgun Law only after the Court published the decision on June 23, 2022.
But, given the breadth and depth of the Amendments to the Handgun Law, and the ingenuity that must have gone into the crafting of a response, severely weakening the impact of the Bruen rulings on that Law, it is unlikely the Hochul Administration and the Progressive Legislators in Albany could have accomplished this task within a week of publication of the decision.
Albany passed the packet of amendments, referred to as the “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” (CCIA), on July 1, 2022, just one week after publication of the decision in Bruen, becoming the first State to amend its Handgun Law. See CNN article published July 1, 2022.
Hochul and Albany likely knew the U.S. Supreme Court would strike down the State’s May Issue “Proper Cause” Requirement, the day after Oral Argument in Bruen, held months before.
The mainstay of the CCIA includes two provisions: one aimed at restricting exercise of the right to armed self-defense in the public domain upon those whom State licensing officials have issued a concealed handgun carry license, and the other aimed at restricting the number of licenses so issued.
The upshot of all this is the Hochul Government aims, through the CCIA, to maintain the same oppressive standards for handgun carry in the State post Bruen, as it had done pre Bruen. That, of course, has led to a flurry of challenges many of which rest at the moment at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Decisions should be forthcoming.
Individuals who obtain a concealed handgun carry license pursuant to the CCIA, will see that “unrestricted carry” no longer exists.
TWO PRINCIPAL PROVISIONS OF THE AMENDED NEW YORK HANDGUN LAW SEVERELY WEAKEN THE NEW YORKERS’ RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE AND THEIR APPLICATION IS INCONSISTENT WITH THE BRUEN RULINGS
With enactment of the CCIA the Hochul Government has established a new set of stringent requirements, replacing “Proper Cause.”
It is true a person no longer has to establish a reason for carrying a handgun for self-defense in the public arena.
A demonstration of “EXTRAORDINARY NEED” to carry a handgun for personal protection” IS OUT.
The Government has deleted the words from the Handgun Law, and the import of ‘PROPER CAUSE.’
A right of Armed self-defense IS IN, and it is presumptively demonstrative of sufficient need to keep and bear arms and need not be stated in the application.
But, on scrutiny, the amendments to the Handgun Law are no less deleterious, confusing, and confounding as the Law prior to Bruen. The two new provisions establish new hurdles to acquiring a license to carry, for those who are lucky enough to acquire one, the utility of having it is now much in doubt. The provision is worrisome.
SENSITIVE PLACE RESTRICTIONS
With a plethora of “Sensitive Place” restrictions added to the Penal Code, holders of valid concealed handgun carry licenses see themselves unduly constrained from using a handgun for self-defense if the need arises. All concealed handgun carry licenses are now de facto “restricted carry” licenses, but with exemptions made for retired police officers, thereby creating an equal protection problem right off the bat.
Justice Thomas, who authored the decision in Bruen, anticipated that New York might attempt to dilute the utility of carrying a handgun for self-defense in New York and warned the Government of attempting to do so.
Hochul and the Anti-Second Amendment legislators who controlled the legislative process in Albany, didn’t listen. They did what they wanted to do anyway. They severely constrained the carrying of firearms for self-defense.
Hochul’s insolence and brazenness toward the Court isn’t subtle. It’s glaring as evidenced in her response to queries from reporters. See NY Times article, posted on June 30, 2022, titled, “N.Y. Democrats to Pass New Gun Laws in Response to Supreme Court Ruling.”
“‘When asked by reporters what areas would be left for permit holders to legally carry a firearm, Ms. Hochul said: ‘Probably some streets.’”
That perfunctory assertion is hardly reassuring. And she follows that caustic and defiant retort with another one—and this one also incongruous in light of the first:
“‘We know we have to make sure this is constitutional. we’re not looking to go back to the court,’ Ms. Hochul said, adding that, “I will go right up to the line, not cross the line.’” Id.
Well, Hochul did cross it.
If she honestly thought she would avoid a challenge, she is more of the fool for thinking so. There is nothing in the new ponderous, unconscionable amendments to the New York Handgun Law that would suggest that applicants for a New York handgun carry license would find the State’s amendments to the Handgun Law fair, aboveboard, and consistent with the Bruen rulings.
Be that as it may, the new “Sensitive Place” requirement against lawful carry of handguns only applies if a person is awarded with a concealed handgun carry license in the first instance. Just obtaining a handgun carry license is no less difficult than under the now defunct “Proper Cause” requirement. And, for renewal applicants who had met the arbitrary standards that licensing officials created—since the Legislators in Albany never defined what “PROPER CAUSE/EXTRAORIDINARY NEED” means, and each jurisdiction in New York had concocted its own standard or left entirely open what the requirement meant and what was required of an applicant to meet it—those individuals hoping to renew their applications, having, in many cases, held valid concealed handgun carry licenses for decades would now find renewing those applications in jeopardy. They would have to meet stringent new requirements, just as subjective and arbitrary as under the old “PROPER CAUSE/EXTRAORDINARY NEED” requirement.
GOOD MORAL CHARACTER
NEW YORK’S GOOD MORAL CHARACTER REQUIREMENT IS BOTH UNREASONABLE AND, IN THE CONTEXT OF THE NATURAL LAW RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE, INCONGRUOUS
Through a combination of audacity, sly ingenuity, and craftiness, the Hochul Government has repurposed the “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” Requirement, that Justice Thomas, author of the Bruen Majority Opinion, mentions merely in passing.
Of course, the issue of whether application of a “Good Moral Character” requirement infringes the natural law right to armed self-defense was not at issue in Bruen. But clearly the Conservative wing was aware of a potential issue, reading the Hochul Government’s “mind” like an open book.
The Court clearly, categorically, emphatically ruled that “PROPER CAUSE”/“EXTRAORDINARY NEED” as used in New York’s Handgun Law is unconstitutional, the Hochul Government could not slither around it in a bald-faced attempt to keep it in the Sullivan Act. Hochul and Albany had to strike it from the Handgun Law. And, since “PROPER CAUSE”/“EXTRAORDINARY NEED” was the vehicle through which the State’s licensing regime severely constrained the number of concealed handgun carry licenses it would issue, the State needed to engineer another vehicle through which it could continue to remain a stringent “MAY ISSUE” jurisdiction, severely curtailing issuance of New York concealed carry handgun licenses, and those the State would issue would have little use for armed self-defense. The ‘SENSITIVE PLACE’ provision would suffice to deny a license holder an adequate means to lawfully defend him or herself with a handgun, without a roadmap, pinpointing the numerous areas in New York that a handgun could not be used for self-defense and, in fact, could not be lawfully carried.
To take up the slack at the other end—to control issuance of concealed handgun carry licenses—Kathy Hochul and Albany didn’t create a new device to severely constrain exercise of a Constitutional right, but reconfigured a thing already present in the Sullivan Act, which the High Court did not strike down or even carefully scrutinize: “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER.” There is much wrong with the way the Hochul Government repurposed this, and New York Plaintiffs challenged the constitutionality of it, but what they did not challenge and, in fact, did not address, but merely assumed to be within the prerogative of the State to insist upon, is whether assessment of a person’s “CHARACTER” is proper to consideration of one’s right to keep and bear arms in the first instance. That, as used in the CCIA, the expression is inherently vague. That is a fault in and of itself. Plaintiffs also object to a specific manner in which “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” verbiage appears, suggesting that a person cannot be of “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” under New York Law if he were to use a handgun for self-defense. Plaintiffs in Antonyuk vs. Hochul, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 182965, ____F. Supp.3d___ (N.D.N.Y. 2022), suggested verbiage which would exclude use of a handgun for self-defense. Apparently, Plaintiffs were concerned, and justifiably so, that use of a handgun for self-defense MIGHT NOT serve as a defense to aggressive attack on a person whose life would be placed in mortal danger, and that failure to exclude armed self-defense from the language of “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” means that armed self-defense is not justified and that a person cannot be considered to have “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” that he would consider using a handgun at all for self-defense—the most effective means to ensure one’s self-preservation against life-threatening assault—in an increasingly hostile environment like New York City.
But, this notion of “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER,” applied to exercise of a fundamental, unalienable right, is singularly bizarre.
How does a Government of men, THIS Government of men, GO ABOUT DECIDING who, among the great body of men, have the proper character and bearing to keep and bear arms? And That question entails another one:
How does a Government of men, This Government of men, GO ABOUT DISTINGUISHING those men who exhibit the proper character to keep and bear arms from other men whom the Government infers do not have the proper character and bearing to keep and bear arms?
This was the problem besetting New York Governor Hochul and her compatriots in Albany.
But why should these questions be entertained at all?
The questions are incongruous and absurd. They presume that moral character is an appropriate area of inquiry. The Hochul Government assumes that one’s moral character is here, an appropriate area of inquiry, and, further, takes as axiomatic that only people whom the Government deems to have “Good Moral Character,” however that trait is defined and tested for, may keep and bear arms.
But the question of the NATURE of one’s CHARACTER presumes what must be proved:
IS THE QUESTION OF MORAL CHARACTER AN APPROPRIATE AREA OF INQUIRY, where exercise of one’s fundamental, unalienable right to keep and bear arms is involved? Resolution of that question precedes inquiry into how one’s character is to be assessed—if in fact, it should be assessed at all.
Why should Americans presuppose that “Good Moral Character” is a legitimate area of inquiry here?
What does “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” or “BAD MORAL CHARACTER,” or, for that matter, the notion of “CHARACTER,” at all, have to do with one’s exercise of the natural law right of self-defense against predatory man, predatory beast, and as against the most dangerous predator of all, the MAN-BEAST predatory Government? Anything?
From whence does the natural law right of self-defense or any other natural law right derive?
The Hochul Government responds that such rights derive from the grace of Government, which entails the denial of such things as NATURAL LAW RIGHTS. But to deny such Rights is to dismiss an idea that the Framers of the Constitution, the Founders of our Republic, took as self-evident, true. But, then, Political Progressives such as Kathy Hochul demonstrate little regard for the Founders of our Republic, and dismiss out-of-hand their belief system upon which a Free Constitutional Republic sits.
From a pragmatic viewpoint, alone, it is difficult to refute the benefits and success of our Nation. So, then, why tinker with something that has worked so well for so many people, for almost two hundred and fifty years. A backwater Country has become the most powerful and successful Country in the world. Were it not so, we would not see literally millions of people from all over the world wishing to enter here, most of them illegally.
The Bill of Rights is a codification of Natural Law. That Natural law is wholly unlike man-made law.
Man-made law is transitory, modifiable, limited to a particular time and place, and subject to the whim and caprice of those men who wield power over other men. Natural law is innate, bestowed on and in man by the Divine Creator. For this reason, natural law rights are inextricably linked to one’s essence. Such rights are fundamental and unalienable, immutable and illimitable, not capable of modification, eternal.
It is in this belief of the Framers that our Constitution took shape. The Ethical System suffusing the Constitution is grounded in Deontology, predicated on morality. And that morality derives from the Divine Creator, not within Man, himself. Good conduct and bad conduct are based on one’s intentions first. Political and Social Progressives do not accept this. Their Political and Social system is based on Collectivism, the antithesis of Individualism. It substitutes the sanctity and inviolability of the Individual Soul with the well-being of Society, the Hive. The needs and desires of the Individual are secondary considerations if they are considered at all. And the Ethical System that underlies Collectivism is Utilitarianism. Consequences of actions alone dictate what constitutes good or bad moral conduct. Collectivists seek to maximize utility—the greatest good for the greatest number of people. That means the needs and desires of the individual must be sacrificed to the needs and desires of the Hive. But what constitutes the greatest good for greatest number of people? In other words, how does the Collectivism define ‘UTILITY’ and ‘UTILITY MAXMIZATION.’ We have a clue. On the Governor’s website (Undated to suggest a broad policy statement), Hochul drops a number of hints and none of them have anything to do with recognition of the right and responsibility of the individual to protect him or herself against the ravages of a society that has run amok with sociopathic criminals, psychopathic killers, and psychotic lunatics free to prey on innocent civilians——
“Governor Kathy Hochul is committed to protecting public safety, ending gun violence, and combatting the rise of domestic terrorism. The FY 2023 enacted budget invests in bold initiatives that will strengthen gun violence prevention efforts, change our public safety laws to make our state safer and more just, and protect victims of hate crimes and domestic violence.
In early June 2022, less than one month after the tragic shootings in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas, Governor Hochul signed a comprehensive legislative package to immediately strengthen the state's gun laws, close critical loopholes exposed by shooters in Buffalo and Uvalde, and protect New Yorkers from the scourge of gun violence that continues to infect our nation and endanger our communities.
In response to the Supreme Court's decision in NYSRPA v. Bruen, the State has taken steps to address the consequences of the Supreme Court decision and the resulting increase in licenses and in the number of individuals who will likely purchase and carry weapons in New York State. Less than a week after the ruling, Governor Hochul signed landmark legislation to bolster restrictions on concealed carry weapons, expand eligibility requirements, add background checks for ammunition, expand safe storage & amend a ban on body armor.”
Armed self-defense doesn’t factor into the above equation and, in fact, is considered a danger to the sanctity of and well-being of New York as a COLLECTIVE. How, then, can a person who must acquire a handgun license before he or she can exercise the fundamental, unalienable right to armed self-defense demonstrate the proper character to own and possess a handgun, or any firearm, if the armed citizen, the HIGHEST COMMON DENOMINATOR of society, is classified with the LOWEST by the very fact that a person chooses to exercise the fundamental right to armed self-defense?
The natural law right of self-defense SUBSUMES armed self-defense.
There is nothing in Nation’s codification of the right of the people to keep and bear arms that mentions or alludes to an idea of “CHARACTER” as a defining or limiting factor in the exercise of a fundamental, unalienable, right to keep and bear arms.
IT BEARS REITERATING: The natural law right of self-defense proceeds from and is grounded on the instinctual need for self-preservation. As with all natural law rights, the right of self-defense is not bestowed onto man by other men but exists innately in all men.
Natural law rights are CENTRAL to the human condition. They AREN’T OR OUGHT NOT TO BE SUBJECT TO CONDITIONAL EXERCISE AS DETERMINED BY A GOVERNMENT AND BESTOWED ON ONE BY THE GRACE OF GOVERNMENT.
As with all natural law rights, the right to armed self-defense is not one bestowed onto man by other men, or by Government—which are, basically, just a collection of men—flawed, yet vested with power to act over other men and, if not themselves constrained, exercising their power and authority with impunity.
And if a man, on behalf of Government, is given authority to judge the character of another man to keep and bear arms, how does that man assess the character of another man? And there is a more basic question? Who is it that assesses the character of the judge? Is that not a fair question to ask? Apparently not for Kathy Hochul and for her friends in Albany.
When the New York Government under the Progressive Hochul, and the Democrat Party majority in control of the Legislature in Albany, mulled over the problem of constructing a new mechanism to limit issuance of concealed handgun carry licenses in New York, and decided on utilizing a robust “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” requirement, they didn’t bother themselves to ask the questions we ask, let alone provide answers for them.
And, yet answers are necessary precisely because we are discussing Government constraints here on the exercise of a natural law right.
New York does have a problem. New York has a host of problems and most of them are of the Government’s own making.
To be sure, the New York Government has a serious crime problem that it masks as a “Gun” problem. But there is no “Gun problem,” while there IS a crime problem. BUT that problem is tied to the criminal. Guns are objects, not agents. They have no sentient will.
GUNS DO NOT CAUSE VIOLENCE BECAUSE THEY CANNOT CAUSE VIOLENCE. Yet the Hochul Government insists on talking about a scourge of “GUN VIOLENCE” in New York.
What Hochul is really talking about is the Criminal Element THAT CAUSES VIOLENCE. And that Criminal Element CAUSES VIOLENCE with whatever means are available. Guns are just one of many means. If the Hochul Government dealt with CRIME and CRIMINALS with the same tenacity as she deals with GUNS, there would be little of any “CRIMINAL VIOLENCE” and little of what she refers to as “GUN VIOLENCE,” in New York.
But Kathy Hochul and her Progressive compatriots in Albany aren’t interested in tackling crime. What they are interested in doing is disrupting exercise of the right of armed self-defense of normal, average, rational, responsible, law-abiding citizens—the vast majority of Americans, WHO ARE NOT THE CAUSE OF so-called “GUN VIOLENCE.” But it is those people whom she is targeting and blaming the U.S. Supreme Court all the while for wrecking her plans to create a “GUN FREE” NEW YORK, even as violent crime escalates. And why is this? The answer is at once plain and disturbing.
The Hochul Government is afraid of the normal, average, rational, responsible, law-abiding New Yorker. This is not something new, even as it is strange. New York has for centuries abhorred and detested and feared the idea of the armed citizen. All autocratic governments do—State Governments under Hochul in New York and Gavin Newsome in California, to name two of them, and the Federal Government under the Biden Administration.
Happy the New York Government was to ratify the Nation’s Bill of Rights in 1791 that included the natural law right of the people to keep and bear arms, so long as, when having done so, the Government did not bind itself recognizing a citizen’s exercise of the natural law right in the State. In the first version of the State Constitution, a Bill of Rights was noticeably lacking. When the State got around to including a Bill of Rights in a subsequent State Constitution, there was no mention of the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
Perhaps, as an afterthought, the State Legislature thought it prudent to recognize the right but, would do so only by placing it in the Civil Rights Statute as an act of the State Legislature rather than in the Constitution which would require assent of the people. This is no small matter.
Situated in Statute, rather than in the Constitution, means the right is a creation of Government, not a right residing in the person, bestowed on man by the Divine Creator, instead of Government.
The New York Government could and, thereafter, would control exercise of the right by crafting a massive set of laws governing firearms, and, eventually, would create an elaborate handgun licensing regime to suppress and repress the urge of many New Yorkers to exercise their right to armed self-defense, and oppress those who would insist on exercising their fundamental right to armed self-defense, regardless of the hurdles they would be forced to contend with.
Coming now to the present, after Bruen, the New York Government has, through the creation of a discordant requirement of “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER,” shown its hand. The Government intends to reduce the number of concealed handgun carry licenses that it would otherwise, under Bruen, be expected to issue.
Although the “Proper Cause” Requirement was always Constitutionally suspect because a demonstration of need for armed self-defense is inconsistent with both the plain meaning of the Second Amendment and with the logic of self-preservation, especially, where, as here, one resides in a dangerous jurisdiction, there is, in the “Good Moral Character” requirement something even more concerning and just as inconsistent with the plain meaning of the U.S. Constitution, and logic. Good Moral Character is difficult to assess even where it has utility, and in the context of a fundamental, unalienable right it has none.
Furthermore, if the Good Moral Character requirement is grounded on risk, then delineate those risk factors and, if they do not offend the core of the Right, then application of them will weed out those considered a risk to others from keeping and bearing arms.
The State doesn’t need and should not be using a “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” where application of objective “RISK FACTORS” can be better employed and utilized. And, at the same time, the State can direct its energies to clamping down on criminals who would not bother to apply for a New York State concealed handgun carry license anyway.
New York’s padded “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” requirement as applied to those individuals seeking a New York concealed handgun carry license is no more than a ruse, and a ridiculous one at that. We continue our analysis of The New York Handgun Law’s “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” in the next article of this Post-Bruen series.
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