WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to hear a challenge to a New York City gun ordinance that does not allow people licensed to have guns in their homes to transport the weapons outside the city.
The court has not heard a Second Amendment case since 2010. The new case will illuminate the court’s approach to gun rights after the arrival of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh in October installed a reliable five-member conservative majority.
The city’s ordinance allows residents with so-called premises licenses to take their guns to one of seven shooting ranges within the city limits. But the ordinance forbids them to transport their guns anywhere else, including second homes and shooting ranges outside the city, even when they are unloaded and locked in a container separate from ammunition.
Three city residents and the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association sued to challenge the law but lost in a Federal District Court in Manhattan and in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. A unanimous three-judge panel of the Second Circuit ruled that the ordinance passed constitutional muster under District of Columbia v. Heller, the 2008 Supreme Court decision that established an individual right to keep guns in the home for self-defense.