Gun dealer has standing to challenge City's "brick and mortar" requirement

This gun rights case involves a New York City law that makes it illegal to purchase more than one gun every 90 days. Another City law under review requires applicants for firearms dealer licenses to maintain a place of business in New York City, what we call a "brick and mortar" location. One challenge succeeds and the other one fails.

The case is Knight v. City of New York, issued on January 13. Plaintiff is a gun dealer in New York City. He challenges the 90-day gun requirement under the Second Amendment, but the Second Circuit says he lacks standing to challenge the law. Standing is a constitutional doctrine that requires proof that you have a personal stake in the outcome of the case; a generalized grievance is not enough. This ensures that the courts resolve actual "cases and controversies," and not hypothetical disputes. You'll find "cases and controversies" in the Constitution itself.

Plaintiff argues that the 90-day rule impacts him personally because he will not sell guns to people who need to obtain a new one that frequently. As a gun dealer, he stands to lose money under this rule. But, the Court of Appeals (Chin, Sullivan and Kahn) says, plaintiff has not identified any New York City customer would buy more than one gun every 90 days. He therefore has no standing to bring this part of the case, as his legal challenge to this rule is academic. Someone else will have to bring such a lawsuit, maybe a gun owner who needs to buy a firearm more frequently than once every 90 days. 

The place-of-business requirement is a different story. Since plaintiff wants to run a commercial gun dealing business in New York City and has taken active steps to make that happen, and because the commercial availability of firearms is related to the Second Amendment, under the City law, he cannot obtain a dealer's license without facing possible criminal prosecution. All of this confers standing upon plaintiff's Second Amendment challenge to the City's gun-control law. The case will return to the trial court to address his legal challenge on the merits: whether the brick-and-mortar requirement is consistent with the Constitutional and the complex legal standards guiding Second Amendment litigation in light of the Supreme Court's Bruen ruling from a few years ago, which asks whether the gun-control law is consistent with the original understanding of the Second Amendment.