The Louisiana Department of Justice is leading a 17-state coalition in an effort to counter a threat to the Second Amendment.

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, a St. Martinville native, said Tuesday that federal court decisions impact Louisiana residents, regardless where lawsuits originate. Landry points to a New York City gun restriction called a “premises permit” scheme as the latest action endangering the Second Amendment.

“The restrictive policies memorialized in New York City’s ‘premises permit’ scheme unduly burdens the Second Amendment rights held by all Americans,” Landry said in a prepared statement. “Criminalizing travel with a securely stored firearm creates an imbalance in our federal system that weighs against lawful exercise of the Second Amendment inside and outside of New York City.

Terms of the pricey permit prohibit removing any firearm from the home with two exceptions — practicing at a range in the city or hunting in the state — and hunting requires authorization from the city’s police department. Removing a firearm from the home for any other purpose requires a separate, yet similarly expensive, “carry” permit that is very difficult to obtain.

Landry, in an amicus brief filed Tuesday, asks the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the permitting scheme’s burden on Second Amendment rights, the full extent of those rights and the applicability of those rights to self-defense outside the home. Louisiana, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin through their Attorneys General and Mississippi and Kentucky through their governors argue that New York City failed to show sufficient cause to burden citizens’ gun rights in their pursuit of crime prevention and public safety, both of which are frustrated by restricting licensed and trained gun owners from carrying outside their homes.

“The need for self-defense is not limited to the home and the right to possess a firearm should not be, either. From self-defense to hunting, the lawful exercise of our second Amendment rights should be fully supported,” Landry said.

The regulation does more than offend the Second Amendment, he said, noting it poses a serious economic burden.

“New York’s regulatory scheme discriminates against interstate commerce because it ‘deprives out-of-state businesses of access to a local market’ by forbidding its citizens from hunting and patronizing ranges outside the state with their own guns,” Landry and the others wrote.

New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. et al. v. City of New York et al should be interesting to follow. Hopefully, the high court considers the merit and common sense in the argument against the “premises permit” in New York.

Landry is spot on. This country cannot afford even the slightest chink in the Second Amendment.

DON SHOOPMAN

SENIOR NEWS EDITOR