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Attorney General Paxton joined two Montana-led amicus briefs challenging New Yorks Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA), which makes it a felony to possess a firearm in any place of worship or a sensitive location.

After New York enacted the CCIA, several religious leadersReverend Dr. Jimmie Hardaway, Jr., Bishop Larry A. Boyd, and Pastor Micheal Spencersued, arguing that the law violated their Second and Fourteenth Amendment rights. A district court then issued a preliminary injunction, which New York appealed. The amicus briefs are thus being filed in defense of the religious leaders, as well as the Second Amendment rights of all Americans, in the New York City-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

The amicus brief filed in Hardaway and Boyds case highlights that there is effectively no historical basis for a ban on the possession of firearms in places of worship: Apart from a handful of state and territorial laws enacted during the late nineteenth centurynearly a century removed from the foundingthe historical record doesnt show an enduring American tradition of restricting the right to carry firearms in places of worship.

Additionally, the amicus brief that was filed in Spencers case notes that, since our nations inception, the Second Amendment has long protected the right of Americans to carry firearms in public places: [E]vidence closer in time to the Second Amendments adoption is most relevant for understanding the Amendments scope. . . . The Second Amendment protects the right to possess handguns, both in the home and in public, for the purpose of self-defense. And New York fails to identify a single similar or analogous place-of-worship restriction before 1870.

To read the brief filed in Hardaway and Boyds case, click here.

To read the brief filed in Spencers case, click here.

The rest is here:
Paxton Defends Religious Leaders and the Second Amendment ... - Texas Attorney General (.gov)