The CCIA represents New York's blatant refusal to comply with the mandate set forth in the landmark case NYSRPA v. Bruen in 2022. For those unfamiliar, Bruen overturned New York's may-issue licensing scheme for concealed carry permits. Unfortunately for New York gun owners, the CCIA's system to replace this scheme is somehow even more restrictive than what preceded it.

That's because the CCIA is an attempt to nullify the Bruen decision. In the immediate aftermath of the case, New York politicians decried that decision as "reprehensible," vowing to resist the "insanity" of "gun culture."

New York decided that, if the State must issue concealed carry licenses to ordinary citizens after Bruen, they would have to do whatever they could to discourage applicants. They did this by imposing novel and onerous licensing requirements, and then render any remaining licenses practically void by prohibiting carry virtually everywhere in the State by declaring a multitude of brand new "sensitive locations."

In New York's defense of the Concealed Carry Improvement Act, they have relied almost entirely on a few outlier laws from the late nineteenth century as justification for their new restrictions. These laws that New York uses as examples were created to disarm minority communities during the reconstruction period after the Civil War.

Gun Owners of America sued over these restrictions and won at the district level. However, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals was eager to intervene on behalf of New York's anti-gun politicians.

In their ruling, the 2nd Circuit ended upholding most of New York's law. And while GOA did manage to squash parts of the law, some of the most egregious sections remain intact, including the "good moral character" requirement.

The "good moral character" requirement of the CCIA stands in direct opposition to the Supreme Court's clear rejection of discretionary "suitability" determinations in the Bruen case.