Syracuse, NY – Starting Thursday, New York is poised to become the first state to criminalize the carry of handguns on all private property without explicit permission – a felony that could carry prison time.
The new gun-control law will also increase training requirements and require disclosure of social media accounts for new gun applicants.
If all goes as planned, the new restrictions will impact nearly every gun owner and anyone with an interest in guns in society.
But there’s more confusion than clarity over how the law will be rolled out. Some counties, such as Onondaga, say they’re still waiting for state guidance on how to proceed. In Oswego County, applicants will face a live interview for a first time, but no one’s sure who’s going to conduct those. It’s likely that the infrastructure needed to implement the new requirements won’t all be ready by Thursday.
The state court system has not provided direction to local judges – who ultimately decide who gets a permit and who doesn’t (outside of New York City). And there are also court challenges to the new law that could impact whether it actually goes into effect Thursday or not.
If the law takes effect, it will impact existing gun-owners the most. There are more than 70,000 licensed gun-owners in Onondaga, Oswego and Madison counties alone, according to local officials.
Overnight, gun possession will become illegal on all private property without permission (written, if possible) and will be banned outright in certain locations under any circumstances, such as in parks, places of worship and during public gatherings and protests.
That means that gun owners will need to unholster their concealed weapons and secure them before pumping gas, walking into church or attending a pro-gun or other rally. It remains to be seen whether walking through a public gathering place, such as Clinton Square in Syracuse, or carrying a gun in a private parking lot, will be considered against the law. (The Adirondacks and Catskills Parks are officially considered forest preserves, not parks, so concealed guns are allowed within their borders, but subject to the new rules.)
RELATED: See a list of places guns will be prohibited starting Thursday
Carrying an otherwise legal gun in a prohibited location will be a Class E felony, punishable by up to 1 1/3 to 4 years in prison. However, Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick has said that he doesn’t expect otherwise legal gun owners to become felons because of the new law. Instead, he suggested, such a violator might be forced to give up a concealed carry license for a period of time instead of a criminal conviction.
The restrictions will also make it more challenging to obtain a gun license for the first time.
The state has set a 16-hour classroom training requirement, with an additional two hours of live-fire drills. It has also ordered that applicants disclose their social media accounts for the past three years. There are also new restrictions to keep licenses away from people convicted of serious misdemeanors: drunken driving, menacing and third-degree assault. (All felons are barred from gun ownership under existing federal and state laws.)
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Those specific standards for gun ownership – which used to be set by individual counties – will now be set by the state. In Oswego County, for example, that means applicants will face a live interview for the first time. It’s unclear what will happen if an individual county decides to ignore the state protocols, though the applications are ultimately approved by a county-elected judges employed by the state.
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In addition to all the questions surrounding the law’s impact, there are also court challenges that could toss parts of the law all together. Perhaps the one with the biggest chance of having an immediate impact is a Second Amendment challenge being heard by a federal judge in Syracuse.
Chief U.S. District Judge Glenn Suddaby heard arguments last week as to whether or not to let the law go into effect as planned. He has not yet ruled.
The lawsuit seeking to strike down the new law argues it would make “New York the extreme outlier among the states, where the general rule leaves it to property owners to decide whether to allow or prohibit firearms, such as through the posting of a ‘no guns’ sign.”
The lawsuit also claims the increased training is an unfair burden and the disclosure of social media is a violation of First Amendment rights. The lawsuit argues state can’t force someone to choose between their right to own a gun (Second Amendment) and their right to free speech on social media (First Amendment).
On the other hand, a SUNY Oswego professor argued in court papers that the social media requirement is a reasonable defense against mass shootings at schools and other public locations.
“Targeted violence is rarely impulsive or spontaneous; rather, ample research has shown that perpetrators of mass shootings have “follow[ed] a clear, discernible path toward targeted violence,” Jaclyn Schildkraut, a criminal justice professor, wrote in defense of the law.
The law, billed as the Concealed Carry Improvement Act, was passed by the state legislature this summer days after a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June that opened the door to more gun ownership in the state. That decision by the high court’s conservative majority struck down a century-old state law requiring someone to explain a specific need to possess a concealed handgun.
The state could restrict gun ownership to a reasonable degree under historical standards, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the majority opinion. But the state could not demand someone provide a special reason for needing a concealed gun – that reason should always be presumed to be self-defense under the Second Amendment.
The legislature responded by presumptively banning firearms on private property without permission and by making them illegal in a host of “sensitive” locations. It did strip out the need for applicants to provide a specific need for a handgun as part of the new legislation.
Under the new law, existing gun-owners with a restricted (or sportsman) license will still need to write a judge to ask for an upgrade to a concealed carry license. They may need to obtain more training to conform to the new rules. However, those license-holders no longer need a special reason for wanting such an upgrade.
People able to submit applications before Thursday can be approved for concealed carry permits under the old rules, minus the need to for a special reason to obtain a permit.
New applicants starting Thursday will need to have the increased training requirement and disclose their social media accounts, according to the new law.
But it remains to be seen how social media accounts will be vetted.
Onondaga County Sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Jon Seeber said his office was still awaiting guidance from the state on the new application requirements. For now, his office will obtain the required information from applicants and determine later how that information will be used in the vetting process.
Onondaga County has seen a surge in handgun permit applications since the Supreme Court decision this summer. There was already an 11-month wait to turn in an application at the time of the court’s decision. That wait has ballooned to 14 months since then. The first open slot for a concealed carry application is now in October 2023, according to the county’s online reservation system.
In Oswego County, Clerk Terry Wilbur said he spent all day Tuesday accepting gun license applications from residents eager to file before the new law goes into effect.
As of Tuesday, Oswego County has collected 1,955 gun applications in 2022, compared to 1,251 applications in all of 2021. A flood of applications have come in since the Supreme Court decision, with 771 filed in the past two months, Wilbur said. Ultimately, a county judge will decide whether or not the applicant will get a concealed carry license.
But Wilbur said he left a meeting this week with state officials with unanswered questions. For example, the new law requires that applicants list their social media accounts for the past three years. But what qualifies as social media? What should officials do with that information? What if people hide their posts from public view?
“We’ll collect all the new information,” Wilbur said. “What we do with it -- to be determined.”
Staff writer Douglass Dowty can be reached at ddowty@syracuse.com or (315) 470-6070.