NEW YORK – A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked part of a New York State law that makes it a crime for people to carry weapons to places of worship.
United States District Judge John Sinatra Jr. sided with two Buffalo area priests along with two gun rights organizations who had sued and called for a temporary restraining order to stop law enforcement while the case went on.
The two sides are expected to discuss the matter in court on November 3 as Sinatra considers whether to go further and issue a preliminary injunction.
New York lawmakers rewrote state gun laws last summer, after the US Supreme Court invalidated the state’s long-standing system of granting permits to carry firearms outside the home. Among the provisions of the new law was the prohibition of firearms in places of worship and other places deemed “sensitive”.
In his ruling, Sinatra argued that the state failed to prove that the restriction was consistent with the June Supreme Court ruling, writing that allowing people to carry weapons to places of worship “would serve the public interest by encouraging the self-defense in places of worship. ” of worship throughout the state.
Without it, Sinatra wrote, “the law creates a vulnerable population of worshipers left at the mercy of would-be armed criminals who have no interest in following the law in any way.”
The state had argued that there was historical precedent for banning firearms in places of worship, citing late 19th-century laws in Texas, Georgia, Missouri and Virginia. But Sinatra dismissed them as “outliers” that were not a tradition of accepted prohibitions.
New York law faced other legal challenges. This month a federal judge in Syracuse suspended many of the state’s new licensing rules carrying guns in public, including one that required candidates to hand over information on their social media accounts.
The state appealed and, about a week later, a federal appeals court allowed New York continue to apply the new law while considering the lower court ruling.
