New York City and the Empire State are poised to implement new gun restrictions in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling declaring unconstitutional the state’s strict gun licensing law, which amounted to a de facto handgun ban.

Even with gun policy analysts expecting the high court’s ruling this week to set a precedent that will affect nearly a quarter of the country, Mayor Adams and Governor Hochul are already promising new, ruling-compliant restrictions on the ability to carry firearms outside the home.  

“We have been preparing for this decision and will continue to do everything possible to work with our federal, state, and local partners to protect our city,” Mr. Adams said Thursday. “This decision may have opened an additional river feeding the sea of gun violence, but we will do everything we can to dam it.”

The mayor added: “Those efforts will include a comprehensive review of our approach to defining ‘sensitive locations’ where carrying a gun is banned, and reviewing our application process to ensure that only those who are fully qualified can obtain a carry license.”

Specifically, the mayor has pointed to plans to restrict the carrying of firearms on transit systems and around schools. There is also a possibility that the state will look to restrict the right to carry in places such as sports stadiums and other large venues, and in bars.

Restrictions could include both strict objective requirements for acquiring permits as well as situational restrictions.

Governor Hochul vowed that the state legislature would convene a special session in Albany during which measures would be taken to define “sensitive locations” where guns could not be carried and to revamp the state’s permitting system.

“We are going to require training involved and also that they have specific firearm training,” the governor said. “We are also going to create a higher threshold for those who want to receive a concealed carry permit.”

The president of the Citizens Crime Commission, Richard Aborn, one of the engineers of the 1994 federal assault weapons ban, predicts a number of new regulations will be put into place.

“New York could pass mandatory safety training and compliance with safe storage, vetting, and enhanced background checks,” he said. “That would all be within the realm of the constitutional right to carry a gun.”

Mr. Aborn also predicts that New York’s new regulations will be immediately challenged in court by gun rights advocacy groups such as the National Rifle Association.

Gun-rights advocacy groups are touting the Supreme Court decision as a win for the people of New York, predicting that it will lead to safer streets across the state.

“Decades of Right-to-Carry laws all across America have proven that good men and women are not the problem,” the NRA’s president, Wayne LaPierre, said in a statement. “This ruling will bring life-saving justice to law-abiding Americans who have lived under unconstitutional restrictions all across our country, particularly in cities and states with revolving door criminal justice systems, no cash bail and increased opposition to law-enforcement.”

In their decision, the Nine directed the state to mandate “sensitive location” restrictions, saying that they “assume it settled” that such regulations are consistent with their interpretation of the Second Amendment.

The decision itself concerned New York’s “may issue” licensing scheme, which left a considerable amount of discretion to local police precincts in deciding whether to issue gun permits.

The court noted that an applicant must convince the licensing officer that “he is of good moral character, has no history of crime or mental illness, and that ‘no good cause exists for the denial of the license.’”

Under New York’s Sullivan Law, local police precincts decided the definition of a “proper cause” for a concealed carry permit, as well as whether applicants met it, leading to uneven standards across the state.

During arguments in the case, Chief Justice Roberts likened New Yorkers’ need to show “a non-speculative need to carry a handgun,” as New York’s solicitor general, Barbara Underwood, put it, to a requirement to demonstrate a need for free speech.

“You don’t have to say, when you’re looking for a permit to speak on a street corner or whatever, that, you know, your speech is particularly important,” Chief Justice Roberts said.

This system led to the New York law being criticized as a de facto ban on the carrying of handguns, which the plaintiff in the case, the New York Rifle and Pistol Association, argued only affected “law-abiding gun owners.”

This decision will affect other “may issue” states, which include California, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, among others. These states also have some sort of “proper cause” requirement to obtain a concealed carry permit.

Mr. Aborn tells the Sun that “no one should underestimate how monumental this decision is,” in reference to  the legal precedent that this case sets.

“This is the first time in the history of the United States that the Supreme Court has ruled that Americans have the right to carry a handgun any time and any place,” he said.