In a 6–3 ruling, the Supreme Court struck down a New York handgun-licensing law that made it difficult to obtain a license to carry a concealed handgun.

The Court’s decision in New York Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen vindicated the legal and historical reasoning of Independent Institute Senior Fellow Stephen P. Halbrook. Halbrook has authored numerous landmark books on the history and law of the Second Amendment, including the very timely and authoritative new book, The Right to Bear Arms: A Constitutional Right of the People or a Privilege of the Ruling Class?.

“In ruling New York’s proper-cause requirement violative of the right of law-abiding citizens at large to bear arms,” Halbrook said, “the Supreme Court provides the method on whether various gun laws do or do not violate the Second Amendment. That method is text and history, particularly the original understanding. No more ‘means-ends’ scrutiny in which courts balance away the right.” Halbrook stated that the decision doesn’t require New York or the other six states with “may-issue” licensing schemes to rewrite their laws–they need only to consider their “special need” requirements to be crossed out and to issue carry licenses to citizens with clean records as they otherwise would. “The sky will not fall as they conform to the Second Amendment as 43 other states have done.”

One of the world’s foremost experts on the Second Amendment, Halbrook has successfully argued three cases before the U.S. Supreme Court: Printz v. United States, United States v. Thompson/Center Arms Company, and Castillo v. United States. 

Halbrook’s book The Founders’ Second Amendment was cited in the majority opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), and in the majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito in the milestone case of McDonald vs City of Chicago in 2010.

This week’s Supreme Court decision also vindicates the reasoning in the formal amicus brief submitted by the Independent Institute last summer in support of the New York Rifle and Pistol Association in the Bruen case.