How Every Court Win Stacks:
The Legal Domino Effect Dismantling New York’s Gun Laws — One Case at a Time

Here is the most important thing to understand about constitutional litigation: no case is an island. Every ruling adds a brick to a wall that eventually becomes impossible to ignore. Right now, the wall being built against magazine bans, carry restrictions, and the broader architecture of the NY SAFE Act is the tallest it has ever been. And it just got a whole lot taller on March 6, 2026.

This article is a guided tour of the entire legal stack — the full sequence of decisions, from the Supreme Court’s landmark Heller ruling to last week’s Benson bombshell — and what each layer means for the New Yorkers who have been treated as constitutional second-class citizens for over a decade. We will walk through the Bruen test that changed everything, the cases that are applying it right now, the circuit split that makes Supreme Court intervention nearly inevitable, and the post-CASA world that ensures only one court can deliver the universal relief that actually frees everyone.

We will also be direct about what this means tactically for New York gun owners: what the law is right now, what to watch for, and why the legal landscape in 2026 represents the best chance in New York’s living memory to see the SAFE Act’s most punishing provisions fall.

How Dominos Work: Understanding Why Court Cases Stack

Most people think of court cases as individual events. A ruling comes down, some people celebrate, others are angry, and then life goes on. That’s not how constitutional law actually works.

Constitutional litigation is cumulative. Every case that goes up the ladder either adds to the legal foundation for the next challenge or erodes the government’s ability to defend its restriction. The cases that matter most — the ones that create lasting change — don’t operate in isolation. They build on each other in a very specific sequence:

New York gun owners are currently between Steps 5 and 6. The dominoes are stacked. Several have already fallen. The question is not whether the magazine ban will be resolved by the Supreme Court. The question is when, and whether the Court’s composition and the quality of the cases in the pipeline will produce the sweeping ruling that law-abiding New Yorkers deserve.

Let’s walk through every domino, in order.

Domino #1 — District of Columbia v. Heller (2008): The Foundation Everything Rests On

Before 2008, the Second Amendment’s meaning was genuinely contested. Many courts treated it as a collective right — the right of militias, not individuals. If you lived in Washington, DC and wanted to keep a handgun in your home for self-defense, you couldn’t. The District banned it.

Heller ended that ambiguity forever. In a 5-4 decision authored by Justice Scalia, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms — specifically including the right to possess a handgun for self-defense in the home. The DC handgun ban was struck down.

But Heller did more than just strike down one law. It established the foundational architecture that every subsequent Second Amendment case has been built on:

• The Second Amendment guarantees an individual right, not a collective or militia-dependent right.
• That right extends to arms in “common use” by law-abiding Americans for lawful purposes — particularly self-defense.
• The government cannot ban arms in common use. The “dangerous and unusual” exception is narrow and applies only to genuinely unusual weapons, not to the most popular firearms in America.
• Interest-balancing — weighing the government’s policy goals against individual rights — is not an appropriate test for Second Amendment analysis.

That last point was critical. Governments had long argued that gun regulations were justified because they served important safety interests. Heller said: we don’t weigh rights that way. You don’t get to strip someone of their right to free speech because your safety argument is compelling. The same logic applies to arms in common use.

What it means for New York: The NY SAFE Act’s magazine ban prohibits possession of standard-capacity magazines that come standard with the most popular firearms in America. Under Heller‘s logic, banning commonly-owned arms is exactly what the Second Amendment forbids. The foundation was laid in 2008. Albany just didn’t read the blueprints.

Domino #2 — McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010): The Right Now Applies to Every State

Heller applied to Washington, DC — a federal enclave. The question immediately arose: does the right apply to the states? Chicago maintained a handgun ban similar to DC’s. Otis McDonald, a 76-year-old African American man who wanted to protect his home from the gang violence plaguing his neighborhood, sued.

In 2010, the Court ruled 5-4 that the Second Amendment is incorporated against the states via the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Every state. Every city. Every county. The individual right to keep and bear arms binds them all.

This was the domino that made New York’s laws constitutionally vulnerable. Before McDonald, a state could theoretically argue that the Second Amendment simply didn’t apply to it. After McDonald, that argument was gone. Albany’s laws were subject to the same constitutional standard as DC’s. They just hadn’t been seriously tested yet.

What it means for New York: Every provision of the NY SAFE Act — every magazine restriction, every assault weapon definition, every onerous registration requirement — now operates in the shadow of federal constitutional review. Albany cannot hide behind “state sovereignty” on Second Amendment questions. McDonald closed that door permanently.

Domino #3 — NYSRPA v. Bruen (2022): The Nuclear Option That Changed Everything

This was the most important Second Amendment decision in American history since Heller itself — and it was written about New York.

New York had required anyone seeking to carry a concealed handgun in public to demonstrate “proper cause” — a special need distinguishable from the general public. If you said you wanted to carry for general self-defense, you were denied. If you could prove you had been specifically threatened, you might qualify. Most people were simply turned away. The law had been in force for over 100 years.

The NRA affiliate, the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, backed a challenge. Two men — Robert Nash and Brandon Koch — applied for unrestricted carry licenses and were denied. The Supreme Court took the case.

In June 2022, Justice Thomas wrote for a 6-3 majority and detonated a constitutional bomb under the entire framework that lower courts had been using to evaluate gun restrictions:

The “proper cause” requirement was struck down. But the implications of Bruen extended far beyond that single provision. The interest-balancing test that lower courts had used to uphold restriction after restriction — weighing public safety against individual rights — was explicitly abolished. Every gun restriction in America now had to survive a historical test that most modern regulations were never designed to meet.

New York’s response was telling. Rather than scaling back its unconstitutional laws, Governor Hochul called an emergency special session of the legislature and signed the Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA) within days — a sweeping counter-law that created the most extensive network of “sensitive locations” in the nation, effectively recreating the permit-denial regime through geographic restriction rather than explicit “proper cause” language. As we’ve documented extensively in our analysis of the NY sensitive locations law, Albany’s response to a constitutional defeat was to double down with a new set of restrictions that are themselves being litigated as unconstitutional.

That pattern tells you everything about Albany’s attitude toward the Second Amendment: not respect for the constitutional ruling, but a strategic rearguard action to preserve as much of the restrictive regime as possible. The courts are forcing compliance one ruling at a time.

What Bruen means for the magazine ban: The NY SAFE Act’s prohibition on magazines holding more than 10 rounds must now survive the Bruen test. That means New York must show a historical tradition — from the Founding era or analogous periods — of governments banning magazines of the type now in common use by hundreds of millions of Americans. That tradition does not exist. The SAFE Act’s magazine provision is constitutionally indefensible under Bruen. The question is simply which court, in which case, will be the one to strike it down.

What Albany Built in the Rubble: The NY SAFE Act’s Constitutional Violations

The NY SAFE Act was signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo in January 2013, less than a month after the Sandy Hook shooting. It was rushed through the legislature in the middle of the night with a message of necessity that bypassed the standard three-day public comment period. It remains one of the most constitutionally aggressive firearms restrictions in American history.

Here is what the SAFE Act did that directly implicates the constitutional framework we’ve just described:

The SAFE Act is not a coherent public safety policy. It is a collection of politically motivated restrictions, many of which were already constitutionally suspect when enacted, and which look far worse in the light of every subsequent Second Amendment ruling. As we’ve detailed in our analysis of the double standard in New York’s gun laws, the SAFE Act’s requirements fall exclusively on law-abiding civilians while exempting the very law enforcement community that Albany claims is the model for responsible gun ownership.

The law creates a legal and financial burden on responsible gun ownership — one that is becoming harder to justify with every passing Supreme Court decision. We’ve documented this burden in detail in our post on NY’s rising ammo costs. The ATF’s own data, which we analyzed in depth, shows these laws have had no measurable effect on criminal violence. As we covered in our post on why NY gun laws don’t work, the guns used in New York crimes are overwhelmingly sourced illegally. The SAFE Act has only succeeded in criminalizing competence.

Domino #4 — Benson v. United States (2026): The Newest Brick in the Wall

On March 6, 2026, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals — the highest local court in the nation’s capital — handed down one of the most significant magazine-ban rulings since Heller itself. It matters enormously not just for DC but for the entire constitutional ecosystem we’ve been describing.

Tyree Benson was arrested in October 2022 when DC police recovered a Glock 45 equipped with a 30-round magazine. Under DC law, the magazine was contraband. So was the unregistered firearm and the ammunition. But here’s the thing: DC’s magazine ban made it legally impossible to register a firearm equipped with that magazine. The entire prosecution rested on a law that, if unconstitutional, poisoned every charge that followed from it.

In a 2-1 ruling applying the Bruen framework, the court reached a three-part conclusion that should ring like a bell for every New Yorker living under the SAFE Act:

The court also noted something remarkable about the Trump DOJ’s role. The federal government had originally prosecuted Benson under the Biden DOJ. Midway through the appeal, the new DOJ reversed course entirely and argued that the ban violated the Second Amendment. DC was left to defend the law alone — the very federal government that prosecuted the case had concluded the prosecution was unconstitutional.

Perhaps most importantly for the broader legal landscape: the court specifically rejected the Ninth Circuit’s “accessories” argument in Duncan v. Bonta. Two courts — one in California and one in DC — have now reached directly opposite conclusions applying the same constitutional standard to the same category of items. That is not a gray area. That is a bright, unmistakable circuit split.

Read more about this ruling and its immediate implications in our original analysis: Carrying a Spare Magazine in New York: The Law, The Experts, and the Case You Can’t Ignore.

Domino #5 — Duncan v. Bonta (9th Cir. 2025): The Defiant Circuit That Created the Crisis

California’s magazine ban challenge has been running for the better part of a decade. Virginia Duncan and the California Rifle & Pistol Association challenged California’s prohibition on magazines holding more than 10 rounds — including the 2016 law that banned even possession of magazines Californians had lawfully owned for years, requiring them to be surrendered, altered, or destroyed.

Judge Roger Benitez of the Southern District of California struck it down. Twice. The Ninth Circuit reversed. The Supreme Court vacated that reversal in light of Bruen and told the Ninth Circuit to try again. On March 20, 2025, the en banc Ninth Circuit tried again — and reached the same conclusion through a different path.

The majority, written by Judge Susan Graber, held that magazines are not “arms” under the Second Amendment at all. They are optional accessories. Firearms “operate as intended” without large-capacity magazines, the court said. Because they aren’t arms, they’re outside the Second Amendment’s text entirely. Analysis ends at step one.

The dissents were some of the most pointed judicial writing in recent Second Amendment jurisprudence. Judge Patrick Bumatay, joined by Judges Ikuta and Ryan Nelson, wrote that the majority had gutted Bruen‘s methodology, reintroduced discredited interest-balancing under different language, and produced a conclusion that was logically impossible to square with Heller‘s framework. Judge Lawrence VanDyke filed an 18-minute video dissent — demonstrating, quite literally with guns in his hands, that the majority’s claim that a firearm “operates as intended” without its standard magazine was mechanically false for the overwhelming majority of firearms sold in America.

On August 15, 2025, the NRA and CRPA filed a petition for certiorari at the Supreme Court. The NRA put it plainly: “After nearly a decade of litigation, two en banc decisions, and a prior remand from the Supreme Court, this case is more than ready for the Court’s review.”

Justice Kavanaugh had already signaled awareness that the Court would need to address the “common arms” question soon. The Duncan petition is sitting on the conference list. Benson just created the clearest version of the split the Court has been watching develop. The conditions for cert are now better than they’ve ever been.

The Constitutional Lottery: Mapping the Circuit Split on Magazine Bans

Here is the full picture of where the courts stand today. This is not an abstraction. This is a map of your constitutional rights as determined by your address:

Snope v. Brown and Kavanaugh’s Warning Shot: “Term or Two”

On June 2, 2025, the Supreme Court declined to hear Snope v. Brown, a challenge to Maryland’s assault weapon ban. Three justices — Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch — would have granted the petition. Three votes are one short of the four needed to take a case.

But the denial of certiorari is not what matters most here. What matters is what Justice Kavanaugh wrote in his statement respecting the denial — because it amounts to a judicial telegraphing of intent.

Kavanaugh wrote that while he would not vote to take the assault weapons case at this time, he believed the lower courts had gotten the analysis wrong, and that the “common use” question underlying both assault weapon and magazine ban cases would need to be resolved “in the next Term or two.” He pointed explicitly to the ongoing Duncan petition as a potential vehicle.

Justice Thomas, in a blistering dissent from the denial, called the Fourth Circuit’s conclusion that AR-15s are not protected “arms” a “surprising” result that directly contradicted Heller‘s framework. The most popular rifle in America — owned by millions of law-abiding citizens — is not a “dangerous and unusual weapon” by any reasonable definition. Thomas argued the Court was abdicating its responsibility to enforce its own precedent.

Read the score: Three justices would have taken the assault weapons case immediately. One justice (Kavanaugh) is signaling the Court will act soon, just not on that vehicle. A fourth (Roberts) has been characteristically silent. The five remaining justices have not tipped their hand on the specific question of assault weapons and magazine bans.

But here’s what Kavanaugh’s statement means as a practical matter: the Supreme Court is not unaware of the chaos in the lower courts. It is not ignoring the circuit split. It is watching the cases develop and waiting for the right vehicle — the cleanest factual record, the clearest legal issue, the most developed split. Benson just added another brick. The Third Circuit’s NJ case may add the decisive one.

Trump v. CASA: Why Only the Supreme Court Can Actually Free New Yorkers — And Why That’s a Blessing

This case has nothing to do with guns. It was about birthright citizenship. But its implications for how constitutional rights get vindicated in federal court are enormous — and profoundly relevant to every New Yorker waiting for relief from the SAFE Act’s magazine ban.

The Old World: Universal Injunctions

Before June 27, 2025, federal district courts had the power to issue universal injunctions — court orders blocking the government from enforcing a law against anyone, not just the plaintiffs in the specific case. When a court struck down a gun restriction, a well-crafted injunction could immediately protect every gun owner in the jurisdiction, or even nationwide.

This was a powerful tool. It meant a single favorable ruling could end enforcement of an unconstitutional law across an entire state or circuit with a stroke of a judge’s pen. Gun rights groups used it effectively. Anti-gun legislators hated it.

What CASA Changed

In Trump v. CASA, a 6-3 majority led by Justice Amy Coney Barrett held that the Judiciary Act of 1789 — the statute granting federal courts their equitable powers — does not authorize universal injunctions. The traditional English courts of equity, which the Judiciary Act codified, issued party-specific relief. The Court found no historical tradition supporting injunctions that extend to nonparties.

The holding: injunctions may only extend as far as necessary to provide “complete relief” to the named plaintiffs in the case before the court. A district court or circuit court can protect the people who sued. It cannot protect everyone else.

What This Means for the Magazine Ban Fight

Here is the new reality: even if a gun rights organization wins a decisive ruling in a district court striking down New York’s magazine ban, the injunction that follows only protects the named plaintiffs — unless the court certifies a broad class action. Every other New Yorker remains subject to the law.

This sounds like bad news. It is actually a hidden strategic blessing.

Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence in CASA noted that the Supreme Court itself retains the ability to issue broad injunctive relief in appropriate cases — precisely to maintain national constitutional uniformity on questions of fundamental rights. A SCOTUS ruling on magazine bans would apply everywhere, to everyone, in every state. It’s the only path to universal freedom that the post-CASA legal architecture still provides.

The circuit split is not just a legal phenomenon. Post-CASA, it is also the mechanism that forces the Supreme Court’s hand. Every court that reaches a different conclusion on the same constitutional question makes the case for certiorari more urgent. The DC Court of Appeals ruling in Benson just added enormous momentum to that argument.

The Real Human Cost: What the 10-Round Limit Does to Law-Abiding New Yorkers Every Single Day

We’ve spent a lot of time in the courthouse. Let’s step outside for a moment and talk about what these laws mean for the people who obey them.

The Availability Problem: Guns That Literally Don’t Come in NY-Legal Versions

The most popular handguns in America were engineered around their standard-capacity magazines. The Glock 17 holds 17 rounds. The Glock 19 holds 15. The SIG Sauer P320 holds 17. The Springfield Hellcat Pro holds 15. These are not “large capacity” configurations — they are the baseline, factory-designed specification of weapons that tens of millions of Americans own for self-defense.

In New York, those factory magazines are felony contraband. A law-abiding New Yorker cannot legally possess, carry, or train with the gun configured the way it was designed to be used. In many cases, no factory-made 10-round version exists. Aftermarket compliant magazines, when available, are more expensive, less reliable, and harder to source. In some instances, the firearm simply cannot be purchased in a New York-compliant configuration — effectively making constitutionally protected arms unavailable to state residents.

As the DC Court of Appeals found in Benson: these magazines “come standard with the most popular firearms sold in America today.” When you ban the standard magazine, you don’t regulate the firearm. You ban it. That’s exactly what Heller said the government cannot do.

The Cost Problem: How the Ban Financially Punishes Compliance

The economics of compliant equipment in New York are not neutral. They represent a direct financial penalty imposed on the exercise of a constitutional right:

This is what a rights violation looks like when it’s implemented through regulatory friction rather than outright prohibition. Albany’s strategy is to make the exercise of your Second Amendment rights expensive, complicated, and practically inconvenient enough that many people simply give up. That strategy has a name in constitutional law: it’s called a burden on a fundamental right, and it fails the Bruen test as surely as an outright ban.

The Safety Problem: Magazine Limits Don’t Disarm Criminals

The guns recovered in New York crimes are not purchased at licensed dealers with compliant magazines. They are overwhelmingly obtained illegally through theft, straw purchases, and trafficking from other states. Our in-depth analysis of the ATF’s own data on NY gun traces makes this undeniably clear. The SAFE Act’s magazine limit reaches exactly zero criminals who intend to commit violence.

It does reach the licensed carry holder who has trained diligently and carries a compliant 10-round magazine while the criminal carries whatever he wants. It reaches the parent who read the law carefully and can’t buy the gun she wanted for home defense because no NY-compliant version exists. It reaches the new licensee who pays a premium for pinned magazines while building the skills documented in our guide to CCW training fundamentals.

And it reaches the citizens who face the reality of crime that our posts on NYC crime data, parking lot predators, and Long Island home invasions have documented at length. The people who obey the law are the ones being disarmed. The people who don’t obey the law are carrying whatever serves them best.

The Double Standard That Albany Doesn’t Want to Talk About

New York law enforcement officers — active and retired — are completely exempt from the SAFE Act’s magazine restrictions under Penal Law § 265.20(a)(1)(b). They may carry 15, 17, or however many rounds their department-issued firearm holds, both on and off duty, anywhere in New York State.

Why? Because legislators and law enforcement officials understand — correctly — that 10 rounds may not be enough in a life-threatening encounter. They understand that multiple attackers are a real threat. They understand that misses happen under stress, and that more ammunition means more options. They extend that understanding to people carrying badges.

They just refuse to extend it to you.

As we’ve argued in depth in our post on the double standard embedded in NY’s gun laws, this inconsistency is not just hypocritical — it is constitutionally damning. A restriction that cannot be applied consistently to the people it’s supposedly protecting reveals itself as not really about safety at all. It’s about control.

The Scorecard: How Close Are We?

Let’s be honest with each other. No one can predict when the Supreme Court will take up the magazine ban question or how it will rule. Constitutional litigation is slow, expensive, and nonlinear. Cases that look like sure winners get derailed. Cases that look marginal become vehicles for landmark rulings.

What we can assess honestly is the trajectory. And the trajectory, right now, is better than it has ever been:

Every single indicator is moving in the right direction. The legal case for striking down magazine bans has never been stronger. The institutional alignment — federal DOJ, current court composition, developing circuit split — has never been more favorable. The procedural pressure created by the post-CASA elimination of universal injunctions has never been higher.

Domino #6 — The Next Frontier: Non-Resident Carry Permits and the Fight to Let NY Gun Owners Carry Everywhere

Magazine bans and assault weapon restrictions dominate the headlines, but there is a parallel legal fight unfolding that is equally important for New York gun owners — and whose victories are already putting carry rights in the hands of people who were locked out entirely just two years ago. The question: can a state constitutionally ban non-residents from even applying for a carry permit?

The answer, under the Bruen framework, is increasingly clear: no. The historical tradition of American firearm law explicitly protected travelers and non-residents. Multiple courts have already said so. And the fight just landed in the most restrictive state in the Pacific — Hawaii.

What Was Won in New York: Higbie v. James (2025)

In August 2025, U.S. District Judge Mae A. D’Agostino — an Obama appointee — ruled in Higbie v. James that New York’s categorical ban on non-residents applying for concealed carry permits is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. The plaintiffs were three law-abiding gun owners from Connecticut and Massachusetts with valid carry permits in their home states who could not legally carry when they crossed into New York for work, family visits, or property ownership.

The court applied the Bruen test and found precisely what the Solinsky complaint later documented: there is no historical tradition at the Founding of states categorically barring travelers and non-residents from carrying arms. To the contrary, the historical record — from 1686 East Jersey through dozens of 19th-century state and municipal laws — consistently treated travelers as a protected class, explicitly exempting them from carry restrictions that applied to residents.

The implications extend in both directions. Higbie is not just about people coming into New York. It establishes the constitutional framework that other states — including Hawaii — cannot use residency as a categorical gatekeeping tool for Second Amendment rights. What was won in New York becomes a precedent weapon for fighting the same restriction everywhere.

We cover the full landscape of multi-state carry options for NY residents — including DC, Utah, Maryland, and Massachusetts permits — in our dedicated guides on DC non-resident permits and Utah non-resident permits.

What Was Won in California: Hoffman v. Bonta (2025)

California’s ban on non-resident carry permits fell in the same legal cycle. On July 1, 2025, U.S. District Judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo ruled in Hoffman v. Bonta that California’s exclusion of non-residents from the CCW permit process was unconstitutional. She applied the same foundational reasoning: a categorical denial of a constitutional right based solely on where someone lives has no historical tradition to support it and therefore fails the Bruen test.

California subsequently established a non-resident permit application procedure. The state’s compliance was grudging and bureaucratically onerous — true to form — but the right was established. Non-residents meeting qualification criteria can now apply for California carry permits, with RKBA organization members noted specifically in the court’s implementation framework.

Two of the most restrictive gun-control states in America — New York and California — have now been compelled by federal courts to open their carry permit processes to non-residents. That is not a coincidence. It is the Bruen framework working exactly as intended.

The New Battlefield: Solinsky v. Lopez — Hawaii (Filed March 7, 2026)

This case, filed just three days before this article was published, may be the most powerful non-resident carry lawsuit yet. And it is worth understanding in detail — because the plaintiff, the legal arguments, and the historical record assembled in the complaint are all extraordinarily compelling.

Who is Johnathon Solinsky? A 33-year-old Virginia resident, U.S. Marine Corps veteran with 8 years active duty service as an infantryman and sniper, who was stationed at Marine Corps Base Hawaii between 2011 and 2016. He is currently employed as a senior shooting instructor under contract with the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service. He has extensive ties to Hawaii and visits regularly. He completed Hawaii’s training requirements. He registered his firearm with the Honolulu Police Department. He met every single criterion for a carry permit under Hawaii Revised Statutes § 134-9.

Except one: he doesn’t live there.

On February 3, 2026, HPD sent him a denial letter that confirmed, in writing, that he met all requirements and was being denied solely because he is not a Hawaii resident. The complaint includes that letter as Exhibit 5. It is a remarkable document — a state admitting in black and white that it is denying a constitutionally protected right based solely on an address.

Critically, the Solinsky complaint also notes that this residency restriction in Hawaii’s CCW statute was added in direct response to Bruen — via SB1230. Hawaii didn’t always have this particular barrier. It added it specifically to try to limit the reach of post-Bruen carry rights. The complaint calls this what it is: a legislative reaction designed to frustrate constitutional compliance, not to advance legitimate regulation.

The Historical Argument That Will Win This Case

The Solinsky complaint does something methodologically impressive: it assembles a catalog of over 50 historical laws — from 1686 through the early 20th century — demonstrating that the American legal tradition did not merely permit non-residents to carry arms. It affirmatively protected them. Travelers were explicitly exempted from carry restrictions that applied to residents. The law was more permissive for visitors than for settled inhabitants.

From the 1686 Province of East Jersey law exempting “strangers, travelling upon their lawful occasions thro’ this Province,” through Indiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Alabama, Nevada, California, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Mississippi and dozens of others — the pattern is consistent and nationwide: concealed carry bans contained express traveler exceptions. Some laws literally used the language “not being a traveler” to define who was subject to restriction.

Under Bruen, the government must demonstrate a historical tradition supporting its restriction. Hawaii cannot. The historical tradition runs precisely the other direction. Solinsky’s lawyers — Kevin O’Grady and Alan Beck, experienced 2A litigators — have built an airtight historical record. Combined with the precedents from Higbie and Hoffman, the legal path to victory in Hawaii is well-marked.

What About Illinois and South Carolina?

Illinois currently issues non-resident permits — but only to residents of Arkansas, Idaho, Mississippi, Nevada, Texas, and Virginia. New Yorkers are explicitly excluded. The state’s concealed carry law is also facing its own constitutional siege: in January 2025, the Illinois Supreme Court heard oral arguments in People v. Tyshon Thompson, challenging the constitutionality of Illinois’ dual-licensing system (requiring both a FOID card and a separate Concealed Carry License) under the Bruen framework. If that challenge succeeds and the overall licensing scheme is simplified, pressure to expand non-resident eligibility — potentially through a Bruen-based challenge to the residency-state restrictions — increases substantially.

South Carolina currently does not issue non-resident permits and has a limited reciprocity framework. However, SC passed permitless constitutional carry for residents in 2023, and the same historical tradition argument that won in New York and California applies equally to South Carolina’s non-resident exclusion. No court has yet taken up that specific challenge, but the legal theory is identical and the precedent from Higbie and Hoffman applies directly.

The practical reality for New York residents today is this: the multi-state permit strategy we teach — NY CCW, DC non-resident, Utah, Maryland — covers a substantial portion of the country. The states that remain inaccessible are being litigated one at a time. Hawaii is next. Illinois and South Carolina are foreseeable future battlegrounds. The map is expanding. The question is only how fast the courts move.

The trajectory is clear. Two years ago, New York and California were locked closed to non-residents. Both have been opened — at least partially — by federal courts applying the Bruen framework. Hawaii is next in line. Illinois and South Carolina follow the same constitutional logic and are foreseeable future wins. Every one of these cases uses the same historical traveler-protection tradition, the same Bruen test, the same precedent from Higbie and Hoffman.

For NY Safe Inc., this is not just a spectator sport. Our multi-state training programs — DC, Utah, and the states where NY licenses are recognized — are built around exactly this expanding landscape. As new states open up through litigation, we will be there with the training and guidance NY gun owners need to exercise those rights lawfully and competently.

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