Citizens for a Safer Community v. City of Rochester

164 Misc. 2d 822, 627 N.Y.S.2d 193, 1994 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 671
CourtNew York Supreme Court
DecidedSeptember 16, 1994
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 164 Misc. 2d 822 (Citizens for a Safer Community v. City of Rochester) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New York Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Citizens for a Safer Community v. City of Rochester, 164 Misc. 2d 822, 627 N.Y.S.2d 193, 1994 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 671 (N.Y. Super. Ct. 1994).

Opinion

OPINION OF THE COURT

Charles J. Siragusa, J.

This matter comes before the court on a motion for partial summary judgment brought by the plaintiffs and on a cross motion for summary judgment brought by the defendants. The plaintiffs commenced this action with a complaint dated August 24, 1993, requesting that ordinance No. 93-62 be declared "invalid and illegal”, and further, that the defendants be permanently enjoined from enforcing the law. Ordinance No. 93-62 concerns the possession and sale of semiautomatic rifles and shotguns, as well as the possession and use of air guns and imitation weapons.

It is the determination of the court that ordinance No. 93-62’s regulation of semiautomatic rifles and shotguns, when possessed with ammunition feeding devices permitting them to be loaded with a combination of more than six rounds in the feeding device and chamber, is a lawful exercise of police power on the part of the City of Rochester. However, the court finds that the ordinance violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, insofar as it attempts to make criminal the sale or the possession of certain guns of some manufacturers while allowing the possession of essentially identical guns made by others. Also, the court finds that the definition of air guns, as contained in the ordinance, is vague and overbroad, and that the regulation of both air guns and imitation weapons is preempted by State and Federal law. The remainder of the ordinance is, in the court’s judgment, lawful.

The plaintiffs have alleged 17 separate causes of action. However, many of these overlap, and are more efficiently analyzed in the categories enumerated below.

THE SECOND AMENDMENT

Central to the plaintiffs’ contention that a municipality may not limit the rights of individuals to possess such guns as [827]*827they choose is the reliance on the words of the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Plaintiffs’ reliance on this language to support their position is at odds with the weight of current legal authority. In United States v Warin (530 F2d 103, 106 [6th Cir 1976], cert denied 426 US 948 [1976]), the Sixth Circuit United States Court of Appeals stated "the [Supreme] Court did not hold * * * that the Second Amendment is an absolute prohibition against all regulation of the manufacture, transfer and possession of any instrument capable of being used in military action.” This language is perhaps most significant because it has been universally held that the Second Amendment guarantees no right to keep and bear a firearm if it does not have some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia (see, e.g., Lewis v United States, 445 US 55, 65, n 8 [1980]). Moreover, as noted in the well-reasoned decision of the Ohio Supreme Court in Arnold v City of Cleveland (67 Ohio St 3d 35, 39, 616 NE2d 163, 166 [1993]), "[t]he question of whether individuals have a fundamental right to bear arms has, seemingly, been decided in the negative under the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution [citations omitted]” (see also, Justice v Elrod, 832 F2d 1048 [7th Cir 1987]).

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has found "the right to possess a gun is clearly not a fundamental right” (United States v Toner, 728 F2d 115, 128 [2d Cir 1984]).

The Second Amendment limits only the power of Congress to infringe upon the right to keep and bear arms necessary for the militia. It creates no bar to State or local action. "We note that the Second Amendment has not yet been held applicable to the states. The amendment has not been absorbed either directly or through selective incorporation in the Fourteenth Amendment.” (Arnold v City of Cleveland, supra, 67 Ohio St 3d, at 41, 616 NE2d, at 168, citing Malloy v Hogan, 378 US 1 [1964]; see also, Fresno Rifle & Pistol Club v Van De Kamp, 965 F2d 723 [9th Cir 1992]; Sklar v Byrne, 727 F2d 633, 639 [7th Cir 1984]; Cases v United States, 131 F2d 916 [1st Cir 1942], cert denied 319 US 770 [1943]; United States v Kozerski, 518 F Supp 1082, 1090 [D NH 1981], affd 740 F2d 952 [1st Cir 1984], cert denied 469 US 842 [1985]; United States v Hale, 978 F2d 1016 [8th Cir 1992], cert denied — US —, 113 S Ct [828]*8281614; People v Morrill, 101 AD2d 927 [3d Dept 1984]; Matter of Moore v Gallup, 267 App Div 64 [3d Dept 1943].)

The Second Amendment does, of course, limit the power of Congress to enact legislation effecting the possession of certain types of weapons. The holding in United States v Miller (307 US 174, 178 [1939]) found that Congress was prevented from banning guns which have "some reasonable relationship to the * * * well regulated militia”. As recently as Lewis v United States (supra), the United States Supreme Court has recognized a need for this relationship between the actual weapon sought to be possessed and the militia service.

Congress is not limited, however, from regulating weapons merely because they may have some theoretical or hypothetical military use or merely because of some technical definition of the term "militia”, which includes all or substantially all the people in the country: "Since the Miller decision, no federal court has found any individual’s possession of a military weapon to be 'reasonably related to a well regulated militia’. 'Technical’ membership in a. state militia [e.g., membership in a 'unorganized’ state militia] or membership in a non-governmental military organization is not sufficient to satisfy the 'reasonable relationship’ test.” (United States v Hale, 978 F2d, supra, at 1020, citing United States v Oakes, 564 F2d 384, 387 [10th Cir 1977], cert denied 435 US 926 [1978].)

The plaintiffs’ challenge to the regulation of certain semiautomatic weapons must fail for three additional reasons. First, all members of the military, as well as military uses of firearms, are exempted under the express terms of the ordinance (§ 47-5 [f]). Second, as plaintiffs have repeatedly argued, the guns subject to this law are not military weapons, but merely look like military weapons, since they are identical in action to sporting guns and are not capable of full automatic fire. Third, the plaintiffs have not alleged that they are members of the State or Federal National Guard nor that the banned weapons are in use by these military groups. This court is of the opinion, that at least since 1933, the State and Federal National Guard, have been the organized, and therefore, the "well regulated militia” of the Second Amendment (see, Perpich v Department of Defense, 496 US 334 [1990]; Maryland v United States, 381 US 41, 46 [1965]).

new York’s civil rights law

For many of the same reasons as stated above regarding the Second Amendment, the plaintiffs’ claim that the ordi[829]*829nance is in contravention of Civil Rights Law, article 2, § 4 must fail. The courts of this State have concluded that the language of Federal law interpreting the Second Amendment (which is identical in its language to article 2, section 4 of the Civil Rights Law) should be used in interpreting the provisions of this State law.

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Bluebook (online)
164 Misc. 2d 822, 627 N.Y.S.2d 193, 1994 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 671, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/citizens-for-a-safer-community-v-city-of-rochester-nysupct-1994.