The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that there is a constitutional guarantee to carry firearms in public.
The 6-3 ruling expands upon a 2008 Supreme Court decision allowing for the right to possess guns at home. The court has now said that the 2nd Amendment also protects the right to carry a gun outside of them home, NBC News reported.
The case was fought over a New York law that stipulated a special need to be able to get a concealed carry handgun permit in the state. Open handguns are banned in New York but residents can apply for a licences to carry them if they are concealed.
With the ruling, the Supreme Court said that the law that required permits to only be granted to those who had a special need, which gun owners alleged was nearly impossible to quality for as an ordinary citizen, was unconstitutional.
The court sided with the challengers and struck down the requirement. But the court did not go as far as to rule against states imposing future limits on carrying guns in public.
"The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not 'a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees,'” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority. "We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need."
In a dissenting opinion, liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, Justice Stephen Breyer commented that mass shootings, such as in Uvalde, Texas, Buffalo, New Yor made it necessary for the court to take into account gun violence when adjudicating on Second Amendment cases.