By: Iris Shen

The US Supreme court recently made its most important judgement in decades about guns: it struck New York’s law that restricted gun carrying rights. The court found that a New York law that requires residents to prove a good reason to carry firearms in public violates the US Constitution.

Justice Breyer noticed gun violence took a significant number of lives in the US this year. “Since the start of this year alone, there have already been 277 reported mass shootings – an average of more than one per day,” he said.

Just after the mass shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo, the majority on the Supreme Court stood by a broad interpretation of the Second Amendment to “keep and bear arms”.

The last gun decision issued by the court was in 2008, which upheld individual gun-ownership rights within homes nationwide.

About one-quarter of the U.S. population lives in states expected to be affected. More than 390 million guns are owned by citizens in the US. In 2020 alone, more than 45 thousand Americans died from firearm-related injuries.

President Biden said he was “deeply disappointed” by this decision, which he said “contradicts both common sense and the Constitution, and should trouble us all.” He added that “we cannot allow New York to become the wild, wild west.”

On the other hand, the National Rifle Association (NRA) celebrated this decision. The new gun law had helped support two plaintiffs from New York – Robert Nash and Brandon Koch -who had applied for a concealed carry permit but were denied despite having licenses for recreational gun ownership.

On last Thursday night, the Senate passed the first national gun control bill in nearly three decades, and they voted 65-33.

The new law includes measures such as checking the background of gun buyers under 21 years old and offering funding to states that have emergency programs in place to take guns from people deemed dangerous by a judge.

The bill will have to clear the US House of Representatives and then go to President Biden’s desk for his signature.

Source articles: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61915237