New York City, New York, 8 February 2023: Operation Blazing Sword - Pink Pistols, alongside the Asian Pacific American Gun Owners Association, the DC Project Foundation, the Liberal Gun Club, the National African American Gun Association, and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals arguing that the part of New York’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA) which requires applicants to register their social media names and accounts with the government is unconstitutional.
“While New York plainly has a legitimate interest in regulating concealed carry, its regulations must conform to the First Amendment, and this particular provision of New York’s new gun law does not,” said Anna Diakun, staff attorney at the Knight Institute. “Not only has the state failed to demonstrate that the social media registration requirement will actually further its goals, but it has also failed to acknowledge its costs: It will have a profound impact on the right to speak anonymously and associate privately online, and it will invite discrimination by licensing officials.”
Under current New York law, applicants for concealed carry permits must turn over to the state a list of social media accounts used in the past three years, including applicants’ pseudonymous accounts, thereby directing the state to a vast number of personal posts, pictures, and likes, across an unlimited number of social media platforms.
Operation Blazing Sword - Pink Pistols et al. argue that the social media provision chills concealed-carry applicants’ constitutionally protected speech and conditions their ability to get a permit on their willingness to give up their rights to speak anonymously and associate privately online. Moreover, the groups highlight that these harms will be exacerbated for members of marginalized communities whose members already have particular reasons to distrust law enforcement and fear the government’s scrutiny of their online lives.
“The state’s dragnet social media registration requirement goes far beyond what is necessary, and will set a dangerous precedent for broad intrusions on individuals’ First Amendment rights,” said Katie Fallow, senior counsel at the Knight Institute. “If the New York law is allowed to stand, one can easily imagine the government imposing these requirements in any number of other situations.”
Operation Blazing Sword, Inc. is a grass-roots 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to helping queer people become responsible firearm owners through volunteer education by maintaining a database of over 1500 queer-friendly firearm volunteer educators residing in every state of the USA. It also submits legal briefs (Amicus Curiae) to protect the rights of not just queer people, but all peaceable citizens, to have access to the most effective tools for self-defense. www.blazingsword.org
Pink Pistols, a division of Operation Blazing Sword, is dedicated to the legal, safe, and responsible use of firearms for self-defense of the gender and sexual minority community. www.pinkpistols.org
Media Contact: Adriana Lamirande
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