The U.S. Supreme Court turned down on Oct. 10 an emergency application from gun dealers to block New York state police from implementing background checks in ammunition purchases and from carrying out on-site annual inspections of gun dealers.
New York is one of several states that critics say is openly defying the Supreme Court’s June 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which struck down a New York gun law and held that there is a constitutional right to carry firearms in public for self-defense.
The application is Gazzola v. Hochul (court file 23A230), which was brought on Sept. 11 by federally licensed gun dealers in the Empire State.
The lead applicant is Nadine Gazzola, co-owner and president of Zero Tolerance Manufacturing, a family-owned gun shop in Hudson, New York.
The four co-respondents are New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat; Steven Nigrelli, acting superintendent of the New York State Police; Rossana Rosado, commissioner of the Department of Criminal Justice Services of the New York State Police; and New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat.
The legal action is one of many now pending in the courts that challenges the new state law called the Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit previously refused to block the state law.
Justice Clarence Thomas referred the application to the full court, which declined the case on Oct. 10 in an unsigned order. The justices didn’t explain their decision.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor previously denied the application without comment on Sept. 12. Later the same day, the applicants refiled with Justice Thomas.
Ms. Hochul “has made clear her current political position is anti-Second Amendment and that she intends to shut down the firearms industry. Hochul is abusing federally licensed firearms dealers for political theater, using [state police] ‘Joint Terrorism Taskforce’ investigators to go out to dealer’s shops, unannounced, and start asking questions, including with customers present,” the application reads.
“As if it isn’t enough for citizens and firearms dealers in New York to face the probability of statewide collapse of all Second Amendment-protected firearms transactions ... the NYS Police maliciously dispatched investigators from their ‘Terrorism’ units to start on-site, unscheduled dealer ‘inspections’ ... [that] had the intended effect of destabilizing these individual dealers, in addition to sending a tremor through the industry.”
When the governor learned on Sept. 26 that the application had been directed to Justice Thomas, she defended the CCIA, saying at a news conference that the law was enacted “to meet the dictates of the Supreme Court.”
“In our opinion, it passed muster, it was effective, and of course, because it works, it was challenged in court,” she said.
“They are dead set on placating their [National Rifle Association] donors and supporters, and we are the ones left to clean it up ... And we don’t want a situation where there’s an incident, tempers flare, tensions rise, and instead of just a shove or an angry word, someone happens to have a concealed weapon on them. That is not the New York we envision, not the New York we want, and not the New York that we’ll stop fighting for.”
The CCIA that Ms. Hochul champions created “gun-free” corridors in New York state.
The law, which has been heavily litigated in the courts, inhibits the public-carry right articulated in the Bruen case by designating much of the state as so-called sensitive areas, or gun-free zones, making them off-limits to concealed weapons. Critics say there are so many prohibited places that it’s hard for carry permit holders to go about their daily business in public.
Airports, establishments that serve alcohol, day care facilities and playgrounds, schools, entertainment venues, libraries, hospitals, houses of worship, polling locations, public demonstrations and rallies, public transit, and Times Square are on the list.
The law also frustrates the public-carry right by creating a “no carry” presumption for private property that can only be rebutted if the property owner posts signage saying concealed carry is allowed.
The law provides that carry permit applicants undergo a “character and conduct review,” in which they must provide access to three years of their social media accounts. The law’s supporters say such a review is needed because murderers sometimes hint at planned acts of violence before carrying them out. Critics denounce the policy as Orwellian.
On Sept. 14, the state began tracking all ammunition sales. Local gun store owners reportedly complained that the database administered by the state police doesn’t work well.
New York Assemblyman Robert Smullen, a Republican, previously said the CCIA was “unconstitutional” and “heavy-handed.”
Ms. Gazzola’s attorney, Paloma Capanna of Beaufort, North Carolina, and New York Solicitor General Barbara Dale Underwood didn’t respond by press time to requests by The Epoch Times for comment.
