WASHINGTON, April 26 — The US Supreme Court stepped back into the heated debate over gun rights today, agreeing to hear a challenge backed by the National Rifle Association to New York state’s restrictions on people carrying concealed handguns in public.

The justices will take up an appeal by two gun owners and the New York affiliate of the NRA, an influential gun rights group closely aligned with Republicans, of a lower court ruling throwing out their challenge to the restrictions on concealed handguns outside the home.

Lower courts rejected the argument made by the plaintiffs that the restrictions violated the US Constitution’s Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. The lawsuit seeks an unfettered right to carry concealed handguns in public.

The case could lead to the most consequential ruling on the scope of the Second Amendment in more than a decade. The court’s 6-3 conservative majority is seen as sympathetic to an expansive view of Second Amendment rights.

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A state firearms licensing officer had granted the two gun owners “concealed carry” permits but restricted them to hunting and target practice, prompting the legal challenge.

The debate over gun control in the United States has intensified in the wake of a spate of recent mass shootings.

A day after an April 15 mass shooting in Indianapolis in which a gunman killed eight employees at a FedEx facility and then himself, President Joe Biden called gun violence in the United States a “national embarrassment.”

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Biden, a long-time advocate of gun control measures, already has taken some steps to tighten federal gun regulations. But major policy changes would require congressional passage, and Senate Republicans stand in the way of Democratic-backed gun control measures already passed in the House of Representatives.

The case taken by the justices centres on New York’s law on carrying concealed handguns, which requires a showing of “proper cause.” Under the law, residents may obtain licenses that are restricted to hunting and target practice, or if they hold certain jobs, such as a bank messenger or correctional officer.

But to carry a concealed handgun without restriction, applicants must convince a firearms licensing officer that they have an actual - rather than a speculative - need for self-defense.

Supreme Court precedents

The Supreme Court in a landmark 2008 ruling recognized for the first time an individual’s right to keep guns at home for self-defence, and in 2010 applied that right to the states. The plaintiffs in the New York case asked for that right to be extended beyond the home.

A ruling invalidating New York’s law could imperil similar laws on the books in other states setting various criteria for a concealed-carry license. Seven other states and the District of Columbia impose restrictions that give authorities more discretion to deny concealed firearm permits.

A ruling against New York could also force lower courts to cast a sceptical eye on new or existing gun control laws. Gun control advocates are concerned that the conservative justices could create a standard for gun control that could imperil measures that states already have implemented such as expanded criminal background checks for gun buyers and “red flag” laws targeting the firearms of people deemed dangerous by the courts.

In the past decade, Republicans and gun rights advocates have pressed the justices to take up a new case to further extend gun rights. The court has moved rightward during that time period with the addition of three justices appointed by Republican former President Donald Trump.

The New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, along with two of its members from the upstate capital region, Robert Nash and Brandon Koch, sued in federal court. Both men said they “do not face any special or unique danger” to their lives but want carry a handgun for self-defense.

Last August, the Manhattan-based 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a judge’s decision to throw out the challenge, citing its prior rulings that the state’s proper cause requirement does not violate the Second Amendment.

The NRA, facing investigations and internal strife, said in January it was declaring bankruptcy and would reincorporate in Texas rather than New York. — Reuters