The Second Amendment Foundation filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday challenging New York City's ban on stun guns and tasers, arguing that a federal appeals court openly defied a unanimous 2016 Supreme Court ruling that struck down an identical prohibition in Massachusetts.
The petition targets a Second Circuit decision that upheld New York City's categorical ban, a ban so sweeping that even residents who hold carry permits cannot legally possess a stun gun or taser within city limits. SAF says the appeals court reached that result by rearranging the constitutional framework the Supreme Court has laid out for Second Amendment cases.
At its core, the case poses a simple question: Does a unanimous Supreme Court ruling mean anything if a lower court can sidestep it for a decade without consequence?
On March 21, 2016, the Supreme Court issued Caetano v. Massachusetts, a per curiam, unsigned, unanimous, opinion vacating a Massachusetts state court decision that had denied Second Amendment protection to stun guns. The ruling was short and direct. Every justice agreed.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote a concurrence that went further, as the Daily Caller News Foundation reported:
"While less popular than handguns, stun guns are widely owned and accepted as a legitimate means of self-defense across the country. Massachusetts' categorical ban of such weapons therefore violates the Second Amendment."
Alito noted that "hundreds of thousands" of stun guns had been sold across dozens of states. The market for these devices was not marginal. The constitutional protection, in the Court's view, was not optional.
Yet New York City kept its ban in place. Ten years later, it remains on the books, and the Second Circuit blessed it.
William Sack, SAF's Senior Director of Legal Operations, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the appeals court manipulated the standard two-step framework courts use to evaluate Second Amendment claims. The "common use" inquiry, whether a weapon is in common use for lawful purposes, belongs at the second stage of analysis, not the first. The Second Circuit, Sack said, reversed that order to reach the result it wanted.
"What the Second Circuit did was they took the common use test that belongs in the second step and they moved it to the first step."
The practical effect of that maneuver is significant. By requiring a challenger to prove "common use" before the Second Amendment's plain text even applies, the court erected a barrier that the Supreme Court's own precedent does not support. Sack was blunt about the consequences.
"So what they said was the Second Amendment plain text is only implicated if you're talking about arms in common use. That is wrong."
If the Second Circuit's reasoning stands, any jurisdiction could ban a category of arms simply by arguing that the weapon is not popular enough, a circular logic that would let governments suppress ownership of a device and then cite that suppression as proof the device is not in "common use."
SAF's petition opens by drawing a direct line to the 2016 ruling. The filing states:
"This case essentially is Caetano 2.0. In Caetano v. Massachusetts, this Court summarily vacated a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision denying Second Amendment protection to stun guns that blatantly 'contradict[ed] this Court's precedent.' The decision below similarly flouted this Court's precedent to reject a challenge to a ban on stun guns."
The word "flouted" carries weight in Supreme Court practice. Petitioners do not lightly accuse a federal circuit of ignoring binding precedent. SAF is telling the justices that the Second Circuit did not merely misapply the law, it disregarded a ruling the entire Court had agreed upon.
On X, the organization's official account posted the announcement plainly: "New York City still bans stun guns and tasers, even for those with carry permits. We just filed a Petition of Certiorari with the Supreme Court to end this unconstitutional restriction on arms protected by the Second Amendment. The fight continues!"
Democratic Mayor Zohran Mamdani's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation. That silence is worth noting. The city is defending a ban that a unanimous Supreme Court effectively condemned a decade ago in a nearly identical context. If there is a compelling legal distinction between Massachusetts's stun gun ban and New York City's, the mayor's office has not offered one publicly.
The ban applies citywide. It covers stun guns and tasers alike. It makes no exception for residents who have already been vetted and approved for a carry permit. In a city where some Democratic leaders would rather reshape the Supreme Court than follow its rulings, the refusal to bring local law into line with settled precedent fits a pattern.
SAF's petition arrives at a moment when the Supreme Court's authority over lower courts, particularly on Second Amendment questions, is under visible strain. After the Court's 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen established a historical-text-and-tradition test for firearms regulations, several federal circuits have struggled, or declined, to apply it faithfully. The Second Circuit's handling of this stun gun case, SAF argues, is one more example.
The pattern extends beyond guns. The Court has faced questions about whether its rulings carry real force when circuit courts reinterpret or narrow them in ways that produce the opposite result. For conservative legal observers, the issue is institutional: if the highest court's word does not bind the lower courts, the entire structure weakens.
That concern has fueled broader debates about the judiciary's direction. Some Democratic governors have openly called for court-packing in response to rulings they dislike, a reaction that only deepens skepticism about whether progressive officials view judicial independence as a principle or an obstacle.
The Supreme Court has shown willingness to act on Second Amendment cases in recent terms. Caetano itself was a summary reversal, the Court did not even bother with full briefing and oral argument before vacating the Massachusetts decision. If the justices see the Second Circuit's ruling as a repeat offense, they have the tools to act quickly.
The petition now sits with the Supreme Court. The justices will decide whether to grant certiorari, meaning they agree to hear the case, or deny it, leaving the Second Circuit's ruling in place. The Court's docket typically moves on its own schedule, and there is no guaranteed timeline for a decision on whether to take the case.
If the Court grants the petition, it would mark the second time the justices have been asked to tell a major jurisdiction that banning stun guns violates the Second Amendment. The first time, in 2016, the message was unanimous and unsigned, as clear as the Court gets.
The fact that SAF had to come back ten years later and ask the Court to say it again tells you everything about how seriously some jurisdictions take constitutional rights they find inconvenient. Recent Supreme Court decisions on executive authority have shown the justices are willing to enforce their rulings against resistant bureaucracies. Whether the same applies to resistant cities remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, New Yorkers who want a legal, non-lethal self-defense tool remain out of luck. The city that lectures the rest of the country about public safety will not let its own residents carry a device designed to stop a threat without taking a life.
The Supreme Court has not been shy this term about enforcing constitutional boundaries that progressive officials prefer to treat as suggestions. SAF is betting the justices will do it again.
When a unanimous Supreme Court ruling cannot survive ten years without a federal circuit court finding a way around it, the problem is not the ruling. It is the court that refuses to follow it.
