Mills v. New York City, New York has been at a standstill for a little while now, due to the way the court system works. However, we’d like to provide a status update on this case and an explanation in plain terms for where the case currently is in the courts.
On October 31st, 2023, Judge Paul Crotty held a pre-motion conference to discuss whether or not he would allow NYC to submit a motion to dismiss (MTD), and a motion for summary judgment. Judge Crotty issued an order that NYC shall have the opportunity for a motion to dismiss, and our motion for summary judgment will be deferred until the outcome of the MTD.
On December 8th, 2023 NYC submitted a motion to dismiss and as NY typically does, their entire case rests upon the idea of standing. Essentially stating that we do not have the proper right to challenge the actions of NYC. NYC is claiming all sorts of nonsensical things. For one, they state that this is along the lines of just because this applies to dealers, doesn’t mean this doesn’t apply to NYC residents. One thing we are suing in this case is the idea that we (NYC residents) shouldn’t be limited to one firearm purchase per category of firearm (currently limited to one hand gun and one rifle/shotgun) every 90 days. They claim the dealers are only prohibited from selling more than 1-in-90 to residents. Thus, we cannot possibly be harmed by this. This is nonsense and obviously doesn’t make any sense.
Who would dealers sell firearms in New York City to? They sell them to US citizens who are likely residents of New York state and New York City. The irony is that the aforementioned laws are applicable to a New York City resident who is licensed and wishes to legally purchase firearms and have them on their respective license.
A Federal Firearms License dealer (FFL), cannot legally transfer a firearm to a New York City resident as they need to follow this purchase requirement. Depending on the type of firearm purchased, additional paperwork is provided to the resident, which officially legally allows the firearm to be transferred to the New York City resident (handguns require a license to have the serial number of the firearm that is being purchased and a purchase authorization slip; and rifles and shotguns require a purchase authorization slip of a serial number that needs to be sent back to the NYPD.)
In response, on January 22nd, 2024 we filed an opposition to the motion to dismiss. This opposition to the MTD lays out how we have standing, and that NYC didn’t even correctly challenge our standing. There is no reason New York City residents should be burdened by these inane regulations creating more bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy.
NYC of course, filed a response to our opposition, and that is when we are caught up with the modern day. Further playing coy and pretending like we don’t have standing, they spent 7 pages pretending that owning several guns is not protected by the Second Amendment. This is something that NYC constantly does in case they know they will lose, which is a stalling tactic to drag out the case in court.
We are currently waiting on Judge Crotty to issue a decision as to whether or not to allow this case to proceed. If the motion is approved by Judge Crotty, then we must start over again at the beginning. If it is denied, we will immediately be filing a motion for summary judgment and seeking to have immediate relief.
