* 10:25 am - The US Supreme Court has decided not to hear arguments of an appellate decision upholding New York’s restrictive concealed carry law. From the SCOTUS Blog…

The denial of review in Kachalsky, et al., v. Cacace, et al. (docket 12-845) was the latest in a series of denials of attempts to get the Justices to explore the reach of the Court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, recognizing a Second Amendment right to have a gun for personal self-defense. That decision, though, was limited to a right to have a gun ready to shoot inside one’s own home.

In the Heller decision, the Court emphasized that the personal right it was recognizing for the first time was not an “absolute” right, and that gun ownership could be subjected to “reasonable” regulations. It provided some examples, such as having a gun in a sensitive public place, but that list was not intended to be complete. That has left it to Congress and to state legislatures to decide whether they want to impose new forms of gun control. […]

There is now such a clear split among federal appeals courts on whether constitutional gun rights extend beyond the home, and yet that was not sufficient to draw the Court back into the center of the controversy in the new case from New York. The new case sought to test the constitutionality of limiting a citizen’s right to a license to carry a concealed gun in public to those who can show they have a “proper cause” for their belief that they need a gun for self-defense away from home.

Essentially, the Court’s decision allows New York’s quite restrictive concealed carry laws to stand as-is. That could strengthen the hands of gun control advocates here, who have bitterly disputed the Chicago federal appellate court ruling that Illinois’ blanket prohibition on concealed carry was unconstitutional. At minimum, gun control groups say, any new state law ought to be pretty darned restrictive. Gun rights advocates had hoped that the Supremes would take the NY case and toss out that state’s law.

I’m assuming the pressure will also increase on Attorney General Lisa Madigan to appeal the appellate court’s ruling that gives Illinois until June 9th to revamp state law.

*** UPDATE *** Washington Times…

Alan Gura, counsel for the [New York] plaintiffs — five residents who had applied for a “full-carry license” — disagreed.

“The only thing worse than explicitly refusing to enforce an enumerated constitutional right would be to declare a right ‘fundamental’ while standing aside as lower courts render it worthless,” Mr. Gura wrote in a reply brief on March 26. “Few outcomes could promote as much cynicism about our legal system.”

The other way of looking at this is that the US Supreme Court hasn’t yet decided that concealed carry truly is a “fundamental right.”

So far, no response from ISRA.