Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-280_ba7d.pdf
Page Number: 31.0

28 

NEW YORK STATE RIFLE & PISTOL ASSN., INC. v. 
CITY OF NEW YORK 
ALITO, J., dissenting 

licenses, ibid., does not suggest that the City regards viola-
tions as presenting a particularly significant threat to pub-
lic safety.

When  all  that  is  irrelevant  is  brushed  aside,  what  re-
mains are the three arguments noted earlier.  First, Inspector 
Lunetta asserted that the travel restrictions discouraged li-
censees from taking their guns outside the home, but this
is a strange argument for several reasons.  It would make 
sense only if it is less convenient or more expensive to prac-
tice at a range in the City, but that contradicts the City’s 
argument that the seven ranges in the City provide ample 
opportunity for practice.  And discouraging trips to a range 
contradicts  the  City’s  own  rule  recommending  that  licen-
sees practice.  Once it is recognized that a reasonable op-
portunity to practice is part of the very right recognized in 
Heller, what this justification amounts to is a repudiation
of part of what we held in that decision.

Second, Inspector Lunetta claimed that prohibiting trips
to out-of-city ranges helps prevent a person who is taking a 
gun to a range from using it in a fit of rage after an auto 
accident  or  some  other  altercation  that  occurs  along  the 
way.  And to bolster this argument, Inspector Lunetta as-
serted that persons who have met the City’s demanding re-
quirements  for  obtaining  a  premises  license  are  just  as
likely as anyone else to use their guns in a fit of rage.  App. 
77.  If that is so, it does not reflect well on the City’s inten-
sive vetting scheme, see supra, at 4–6, and in any event, the 
assertion is dubious on its face. 

More to the point, this argument does not explain why a
person  headed  for  a  range  outside  the  City  is  any  more
likely to engage in such conduct than a person whose desti-
nation is a range in the City.  There might be something to 
the argument if ranges in the City were closer than those
just  outside  its  borders,  but  the  City  never  attempted  to
show that.  The courts below were incurious about the va-