To be clear on what the Supreme Court said today: It is still okay for states and cities to reasonably regulate guns, so long as those regulations don’t effectively create a general prohibition against carrying guns for self-defense.
The following kinds of requirements are still okay:
- Requiring a reasonable amount of training to carry a gun
- Passing a criminal background check and mental health check to carry a gun.
- Requiring people who carry guns to inform police officers of that fact.
- Prohibiting guns in sensitive areas like courtrooms or schools.
- And so on.
What is now not okay:
- A complete prohibition against law-abiding citizens of sound mind carrying guns for self-defense.
- Requiring someone who wishes to carry a gun for self-defense to demonstrate that they have a specific need to carry a gun that is more significant or unusual than members of the general public.
- This is what got New York in trouble — their law said a law-abiding citizen of sound mind still needed to show a particular reason they needed to carry a gun, and New York rejected most of those applications (effectively prohibiting law-abiding citizens of sound mind from carrying guns for self-defense).