Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments about the constitutionality of New York’s strict gun-carry laws. Any local observer listening to the back and forth must have had one question: Have the berobed innocents and ivory-tower advocates from the sticks of Washington, DC, ever been to the big city?
The court’s newest member, Amy Coney Barrett, made the first rookie tourist mistake, common enough to out-of-towners: When she thinks New York, she thinks Times Square.
“If you concede,” she asked, “as I think the historical record requires you to, that states did outlaw guns in sensitive places, can’t we just say Times Square on New Year’s Eve is a sensitive place? Because … people are on top of each other, we’ve had experience with violence.”
This sounds logical (and, bolstering her point, the Supreme Court itself outlaws guns in its building, calling them “dangerous”).
But wait: If Times Square is “sensitive” on a busy night, then so is much of the city, much of the time.
Rockefeller Center is about to get “sensitive” for two and a half months, when the storied Christmas tree arrives. The Triborough and Brooklyn bridges are “sensitive” landmarks, as is the Lincoln Tunnel.
Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and its perimeter are “sensitive,” as are the Salute to Israel Parade and the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, along with the public space around any embassy where people protest.
Grand Central and Penn Station are “sensitive.” So is the World Trade Center memorial, the area around any synagogue or church and the five-borough marathon route.
If the point of this exercise is to rescue us from tyranny, it seems odd to delegate deciding what is “sensitive” to government. Will the court be back in a year to hear whether the Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade is “sensitive”?
Elena Kagan, who is from New York and doesn’t like to drive, naturally asked about the subway.
The attorney bringing the case against New York’s gun laws, frequent Supreme Court scrapper Paul Clement, immediately conceded any 232-year-old constitutional right to bear arms on the subway, based on the carefully reasoned legal argument that his clients don’t want to ride the subway, anyway.
“I suppose I could give away the subway, because they’re not looking to go — they’re not in Manhattan,” he said.
Might his clients change their minds when they learn that the subway also goes to Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx? Will we end up with concealed carry on the L train but not the 7, based on a future client’s transportation needs?
Lest one think the liberal justices know New York City better than the conservative ones, on the topic of carrying guns on private, outdoor property, nobody could figure out whether NYU has a real “campus.” Kagan, Stephen Breyer and Clarence Thomas think — albeit somewhat uncertainly — that it does; Clement insisted it didn’t.
Clement is right. The “campus,” such as it is, is mostly Washington Square Park. (Kagan, an Upper West Sider, maybe hasn’t spent much time downtown.) But some private schools do have campuses, so the point is fair.
Clement said that maybe a college that does have a campus (Columbia) could restrict guns, but “maybe … they wouldn’t enforce the policy anyways.”
No, yeah, they probably would.
It hardly seems likely, too, that the city’s cultural venues — opera, museums, stadiums, Broadway, Whole Foods — are going to welcome armed audiences.
They won’t let you bring in alcoholic beverages or your cat, and the only reason they know about your hidden beer or kitten is that you’ve given up your constitutional right not to be searched as the price of entering most of them.
If carrying on the street is legal but not carrying in the Met, we’re going to get a lot of “But I forgot that my loaded Glock was in my purse when I went to the opera/the store/my kid’s school/’Hamilton’” defenses.
Any compromise may be hollow. Sure, you can carry in New York but not on a bridge, tunnel, subway or bus; nor in or near a crowded avenue, square, park, college campus or major public event or entertainment venue; nor in stores, restaurants, bars or clubs. The beach is probably not looking so great, either.
Our potential newfound right to bear arms may be boring and lonely.
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Nicole Gelinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal. Follow her on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in New York Post