In a 2022 case called New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Supreme Court affirmed that ordinary Americans have a right to bear arms in public for self-defense, and struck down New York’s restrictive framework for issuing concealed carry permits. This framework, in effect, left most civilians in the state without any lawful way to exercise their Second Amendment rights outside of the home.
Bruen immediately drew the ire of gun control activists, who decried the ruling as a threat to public safety. But now it’s clear that the only thing Bruen has done is give peaceable New Yorkers a better chance to protect themselves from violent criminals, without being treated as violent criminals themselves.
Consider a recent example out of Syracuse, New York. A grand jury determined that a concealed carry permit holder was justified in fatally shooting a knife-wielding man who lunged at him during a road rage incident.
Astonishingly, the local newspaper noted this was the first time in the area’s recent history that a person who used lethal force to defend himself or others wasn’t charged with a crime.
Why? Because, historically, the state’s incredibly restrictive gun laws meant the victim would nonetheless face charges for criminal possession of a weapon.
Fortunately, this legally armed New Yorker appears to be a beneficiary of Bruen’s demand that the state give ordinary residents at least some method of obtaining a concealed carry license. Rather than continue its attempts to undermine Bruen at every opportunity, New York should (as so many other states have) recognize that respect for the Second Amendment is, in fact, an important aspect of improving public safety.
Almost every major study has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times annually, according to the most recent report on the subject by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2021, a professor at the Georgetown McDonough School of Business conducted the most comprehensive study ever on the issue, and concluded that roughly 1.6 million defensive gun uses occur in the United States every year.
For this reason, The Daily Signal publishes a monthly article highlighting some of the previous month’s many news stories on defensive gun use that you may have missed—or that might not have made it to the national spotlight in the first place. (Read accounts from past months and years here.)
The examples below represent only a small portion of the news stories on defensive gun use during crimes that we found in April. You may explore more by using The Heritage Foundation’s interactive Defensive Gun Use Database.
As these examples clearly demonstrate, the ability to exercise one’s Second Amendment rights—both in the home and in public—often makes all the difference in the world to victims of violent crime. Instead of seeking to undermine Bruen at every opportunity and return to a restrictive status quo where crime victims are punished for having the audacity to exercise their natural rights, states like New York should embrace the Bruen decision for bolstering public safety.