BAD NEWS For New York: Second Circuit Destroys the Vampire Rule

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:20]The vampire role in New York is dead for now. Let's go ahead and talk about it.

[00:00:38]What's up, guys? My name is John Crump and I'm an investigative journalist and I keep an eye on 2A issues. And today, we're going to be talking about a 2A issue out of the state of New York. So, let's go ahead and back up here and talk about the CCIA. First, the CCIA was a law passed after the Brewing decision where New York decided they wanted to thumb their nose at the Supreme Court.

[00:01:05]So, they did by passing all these draconian gun laws which actually made New York less permissible to conceal carry than before.

[00:01:17]And in this case that we're going to be talking about here is known as Christian verse James and it was brought by the firearms policy coalition and also the second amendment foundation and this challenges the vampire rule in New York State. The vampire rule says unless someone puts up a sign saying that people are welcome to carry firearms that it is illegal to carry firearms in New York. If you got caught doing that, it would be a class E felony to carry firearms on private property without the person knowing. So basically you had they had to post a sign that says firearms are welcome here which hardly anyone let me just adjust my fe here. Hardly anyone in New York was going to do. So let's go ahead and talk about what happened. A district court judge issued a preliminary injunction against the rule stating that there is no historical tradition of firearms regulations that this law could be rectified against. So what New York did it is they apply they appeal to the second circuit court of appeals which covers a bunch of different states and it was argued in front of a three judge panel consisting of Stephen G. James, Michael Keane. Um, actually, no, sorry.

[00:03:06]Oh, Biancco, Manashi, and Lee. I almost gave you who was the who was the defendant, but yeah.

[00:03:15]So, those were the three judges that were it was argued in front of. The appeal actually had two different parts.

[00:03:23]We're going to talk about both, but let's talk about the vampire role first because this one is important.

[00:03:32]So the first part of the brun analysis which the second circuit did was look at the plain text of the second amendment.

[00:03:41]The plain text of the second amendment says the right of people shall not be infringed blah blah blah. You know that.

[00:03:46]So who are the people? The people are the political class. basically the people who ra who reach the age of the majority in the United States in the United States is 18 and over. So uh the the plaintiff um Rick Christensen met that requirement. He is member of the political class and he's 18 and over. So he met that political requirement. The conduct that he wanted to do was to bear arms. and bear arms.

[00:04:17]That's pretty obvious that is covered under the plain text of the second amendment. So, because the plain text of the second amendment covered his conduct and he is of the people, the conduct is presumably constitutional. Now, it moves to the second step of a bru analysis where the state has to present historical analoges from the founding era 1791. Um, some anti-gun guners will argue it's 1868, but they have to produce bounding era laws that is consistent.

[00:04:54]They showed that the new law is consistent with the tradition and history of firearms regulations in the United States. Now, Raheem, which is another case, said that the law doesn't have to be a dead ringer, but it has to be similar to be useful.

[00:05:11]What New York tried to do is they tried to present historical analoges, but all these historical analoges dealt with trespassing and hunting, basically hunting on private land and poaching. So when the second circuit looked at the breakdown of the cases that they were given by the state, they said these laws are not remotely similar to be useful in this case because these all dealt with poaching and hunting. So therefore, you failed step two of brewing. And because they failed step one of brewin and step two of brewin, the second circuit affirmed the district court's ruling that the vampire law is unconstitutional.

[00:06:05]There is a case at the Supreme Court court called Warford Woodford verse Lopez which is out of Hawaii. And that case is being argued by our friend Alan Beck. It was argued by Alan Beck. We are waiting to get something back from that case. But that also deals with the vampire rule. And it looks like the Supreme Court is going to knock down the Yeah, Wolfford. I I don't know why I have such a hard time saying it, but that looks like the Supreme Court's probably going to knock down that vampire rule. So it could be that the second circuit was reading into this and said, "Hey, this law is probably going to get knocked down by the Supreme Court. So let's go ahead and keep the injunction on it." Now, this isn't the merits of the case. This is a preliminary injunction which means that it looks at the likelihood to succeed on the merits, the balance of interest and a few other things but mostly likelihood to see on and irreputable harm is the third one by the way. So yeah, so this is a a victory here. There was another part of the case which a lot of people aren't talking about and that was a defeatedish and that is whether the state can ban um carrying of firearms in urban parks and the courts said that New York gave specific analoges to show that that law is consistent with the the the history and tradition of firearms. regulations in the United States on a facial challenge. Now, they didn't really address the as applied challenge because the as applied challenge would be applied to rural parks and not urban parks, but the facial challenge has to be overall arching, which means it applies to all parks. So what they are saying is the facial challenge fails because there are historical analoges and this is what the court said, not me, that shows that banning firearms in an urban park is consistent with the history and tradition of firearms regulations in the United States. I don't exactly agree with that, but that is what they said.

[00:08:37]So they upheld that. So this is a partial victory, a partial defeat I guess you can say, but the big part of it is that the vampire role is dead and that affects a lot more people than then it doesn't. So uh we won on the major part. This goes um in line with what the court said in Antioch. And I don't think that the vampire rule is going to come back. I think it's probably dead. Uh with that Supreme Court case, which looks like it's going to go our way as Second Amendment advocates, that's going to take care of this anyway. So, we're going to have to figure that out now. And let me see something here. Um but yeah, I got to get out of here, guys. Thank you so much for watching. I will have other news in a little bit.

[00:09:40]So, talk to you guys later. Bye.