Legal/Law/Criminal Justice and Reform

Pro-2A Group Asks Supreme Court To Allow People To Carry Guns In Parks

New York City (Screen Capture/Smithsonian Channel)

The Supreme Court received another petition to hear a Second Amendment case Wednesday, adding to a potentially massive caseload.

The high court agreed to hear Viramontes v. Cook County, a case challenging a ban on modern semiautomatic firearms, on June 30, while other cases will be discussed during a Sept. 28 conference. In Christian v. James, the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) asked the justices to review a ruling that allowed New York’s ban on carrying firearms in parks to stand.

“Applying the Court’s framework to New York’s ban, it becomes clear that no historical evidence can justify a ban on the peaceable possession of arms in all public parks,” SAF argued in its petition for a writ of certiorari.

In the decision reached in May, United States Circuit Judges Eunice Lee, Joseph Bianco and Steven Menashi all agreed that the state’s “vampire rule” violated the Second Amendment. Lee, a Biden appointee, and Bianco, a Trump appointee, both allowed the ban on carrying in parks to stand, while Menashi, a Trump appointee, wrote a separate opinion saying the ban on parks violated the Second Amendment.

Crime at city parks was an issue previously, with New York City’s Central Park having its own NYPD precinct. CompStat numbers through Sunday showed 75 major crimes year-to-date versus 59 in the same stretch of 2025—an increase driven mainly by more rapes, robberies, and grand larcenies, while felony assaults and burglaries dropped and no shootings or murders occurred.

The year 2025 ended with 85 major crimes, still a fraction of the hundreds recorded in the early 1990s. Robberies and some assaults jumped in 2024, which led to extra patrols, but overall crime in the park fell in 2025 compared with the year before even as a few violent and sex-offense categories rose, according to the New York Post.

Crime is not the only security issue at parks; attacks by animals also occurred at various parks across the country.Bison at Yellowstone National Park attacked visitors on multiple occasions that made headlines, including one incident where a 65-year-old grandfather was thrown eight feet into the air, suffering broken bones.