The US Supreme Court has overturned restrictions on public firearms in New York. The Second Amendment on the right to guns and rifles, the majority of the Court said (the vote was 6 to 3), also applies outside one’s home. With this decision it has consecrated the main extension of the right to arms by individual citizens in over a decade.
In 2008, the Court had already established the individual right to possess weapons at home for self-defense. However, he had explicitly indicated that he did not intend to exclude regulations on types of weapons, nor on their presence in places considered sensitive, such as schools or government offices, and not even prohibitions for criminals or the mentally ill.
The now rejected New York law, which has its roots in the early twentieth century, provides that to carry hidden weapons in public places a special license is required, with applicants having to show clear reasons and necessities. Two gun fans, Robert Nash and Brandon Koch, had appealed, saying the requirement made it impossible for ordinary citizens to obtain a permit. They had actually obtained a permit at the gun port to go to shooting ranges and hunting, but away from crowded areas.
As a sign of the importance of the decision and its repercussions, other laws similar to that of New York now appear at risk: in California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island.
The majority opinion was drafted by Clarence Thomas, perhaps the most radical advocate of broad interpretations of the Second Amendment, which many constitutionalists actually consider the most confusing of the American Constitution, harbinger of ambiguity about the right to arms, whether individual or only in scope of a militia officer. Thomas has always theorized that in fact the right to arms is absolute, equal to freedom of expression.