Court Rules Church Gun Ban Unconstitutional: A Big 2A Win

I’m Lance Rankin, a Texas FFL and gunsmith at Western Sport in Roanoke. A federal judge in Buffalo just declared New York’s ban on carrying firearms in churches and other places of worship unconstitutional, and the reasoning matters well beyond New York. The usual caveat applies: this was a temporary restraining order in active litigation, so this is dated commentary. Check where the case stands today before assuming anything below is still the operative law.

What the judge ruled

Federal District Judge John Sinatra issued a temporary restraining order halting enforcement of New York’s prohibition on guns in churches, synagogues, and other houses of worship, finding the law violates the Second Amendment under the Supreme Court’s decision in NYSRPA v. Bruen. Notably, he refused the state’s request to limit relief to just the plaintiffs who sued. He declared the law itself unconstitutional, which meant the ban couldn’t be enforced against anyone while the order stood.

The “sensitive places” question

New York passed this ban as part of its response to losing Bruen, essentially declaring huge swaths of the state “sensitive places” where carry could be forbidden. But Bruen said sensitive places must be narrowly construed, historically analogous to polling places, legislative assemblies, and courthouses as understood around 1791. Judge Sinatra found New York offered no historical evidence that churches belonged on that list.

The history actually cuts the other way. In parts of the colonial era, some congregations were encouraged or even required to bring arms to services. The state could point to a few scattered restrictions from the late nineteenth century, but the judge treated those as what they are: outliers, decades removed from the founding, not a long-standing American tradition of disarming worshippers. That’s the correct application of Bruen’s method, which looks to 1791, not to whatever a few jurisdictions tried in the 1880s.

Why this one hits home for me

This isn’t abstract in North Texas. In December 2019, at a church in White Settlement, maybe twenty minutes from my shop, a volunteer security team member stopped a shooter seconds after he opened fire. Armed congregants ended that attack before it became a massacre. Texas law trusts churches to make their own security decisions, and plenty of my customers serve on volunteer church security teams; I’ve helped outfit more than a few. The idea that a state would criminalize exactly what saved lives down the road from me has never made sense, and now a federal court has said the Constitution doesn’t permit it either.

The pattern since Bruen is hard to miss. When judges actually apply the text-and-history test, laws with no founding-era analogue keep falling. Expect similar challenges anywhere legislatures responded to Bruen by multiplying “sensitive places,” New Jersey and California included. And expect appeals; as of this writing, this was a TRO, the first round rather than the final word.

For Texas readers

Here, carrying at your own church is generally lawful unless the property gives proper notice otherwise, and many churches actively welcome trained carriers on security teams. If you’re getting equipped for that role, my guides on the Texas LTC and constitutional carry cover the legal side, and the right defensive ammo matters more in a crowded room than anywhere else. A good holster that stays put through a two-hour service matters too. Questions about any of it? [email protected] or 817-393-4000.