Gun Control & RKBA

The New York gun law upheld in Kachalsky, although
one of the nation’s most restrictive such laws (under
the law’s “proper cause” standard, an applicant for a
gun permit must demonstrate a need for self-defense
greater than that of the general public, such as being
the target of personal threats, id. at *3, *8), is less restrictive
than Illinois’s law. Our principal reservation about
the Second Circuit ’s analy s i s (apart from
disagreement, unnecessary to bore the reader with,
with some of the historical analysis in the opinion—
we regard the historical issues as settled by Heller)
is its suggestion that the Second Amendment should
have much greater scope inside the home than
outside simply because other provisions of the Constitution
have been held to make that distinction. For example,
the opinion states that “in Lawrence v. Texas, the
[Supreme] Court emphasized that the state’s efforts to
regulate private sexual conduct between consenting adults
is especially suspect when it intrudes into the home.”
2012 WL 5907502, at *9. Well of course—the interest in
having sex inside one’s home is much greater than
the interest in having sex on the sidewalk in front of
one’s home. But the interest in self-protection is as great
outside as inside the home.