US Supreme Court.
Washington: In a landmark verdict, the Supreme Court of the United States pronounced on Thursday that Americans have the fundamental right to possess firearms in public. The new ruling will prevent states from restricting citizens from carrying them, Agence France-Presse reported.
The ruling won 6 against 3 in the court but comes at a time when the country witnessed a series of gruesome gun crimes, has invalidated the New York law, which regulates a person to prove that he has legitimate reasons of such as self-defence to get a firearm permit.
Justice Clarence Thomas pronounced the majority opinion that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual's right to carry a gun for self-defence outside his or her home. AFP quotes the judge that "New York's proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defence needs from exercising their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms in public for self-defence."