Judge upholds Cuomo’s order closing gun stores during pandemic

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s policy that gun retailers are generally not “essential businesses” – and could be ordered temporarily closed to help stop the spread of COVID-19 – was upheld in a federal court ruling on Wednesday.

The ruling by U.S. District Senior Judge Lawrence E. Kahn dismissed a lawsuit filed by a gun distributor alleging that Cuomo’s closure order violated several aspects of the U.S. Constitution, particularly the Second Amendment bestowing the right to bear arms.

The lawsuit against Cuomo was filed March 30 by Dark Storm Industries, a licensed ammunition and firearm seller based on Long Island. The company contended that executive orders Cuomo issued in mid-March, which required the shuttering of hundreds of categories of non-essential businesses and imposed fines for violating the order, illegally included gun sellers.

After the orders were issued, Dark Storm contacted the Cuomo administration, which relayed that the company could continue business with law enforcement and the military, but not civilians. As a result, Dark Storm closed for business, even as other gun sellers such as Walmart, which sells a far broader array of types of goods, were allowed to remain open.

Because guns were available even during the height of the pandemic, Second Amendment rights were not unduly infringed upon, Kahn stated in Wednesday’s ruling.

The Cuomo administration “made a policy decision about which businesses qualified as ‘essential’ and which did not. In the face of a global pandemic, the court is loath to second-guess those policy decisions,” Kahn stated in his ruling. “Having found that the burden on plaintiffs’ Second Amendment rights is insubstantial, the court has no need to apply any form of heightened scrutiny to the executive orders.”