Three years after NYSRPA v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), buried the “proper cause” may-issue regime, the right to carry a handgun for self-defense remains effectively theoretical in a half-dozen blue states. The Court’s 6–3 ruling was unambiguous: the Second Amendment protects the right to carry in public, and licensing schemes that rest on subjective official discretion are unconstitutional. And yet New York, California, New Jersey, Hawaii, Maryland, and Massachusetts haven’t surrendered — they’ve gotten creative. What I’m seeing is a coordinated pattern of bureaucratic resistance, a regulatory Operation Choke Point aimed squarely at Americans who want nothing more than to exercise a right the Supreme Court has already confirmed they possess.
The Choke-Point Playbook
The Obama-era Operation Choke Point used financial regulators to pressure banks into cutting off services to legal firearms businesses — not by banning anything outright, but by manufacturing friction until the industry bled out. The anti-gun states are running the same play on concealed carry. They’ve nominally converted to shall-issue regimes, as Bruen demands, but they’ve loaded the process with enough friction that “shall-issue” in practice looks a lot like “probably won’t issue, eventually.” Here are the six bottlenecks I keep seeing replicated across the usual suspect jurisdictions.
Six Bottlenecks, One Coordinated Goal
Staffing shortages. Licensing agencies claim they’re chronically understaffed — not enough personnel to conduct interviews, process fingerprints, or move applications through the queue. The result: backlogs that stretch for months. I spoke with an Uber driver in California in the fall of 2024 who had applied for his CCW permit and whose interview wasn’t scheduled until April 2025 — a six-to-seven-month wait just to sit across from someone and explain why he wanted to exercise his constitutional right. That is not an accident. That is a policy.
Restricted and inconvenient office hours. If the licensing office is only open Tuesday through Thursday between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., and in-person fingerprinting is mandatory, you’ve effectively made the permit inaccessible to anyone who works a normal job. This is deliberate scheduling as gatekeeping.
Labyrinthian applications. I’ve seen some of these forms and they read like college admissions applications — past employment history, proof of good moral character, notarized statements, character references. The ATF Form 4473 (Firearms Transaction Record) that governs over-the-counter gun purchases runs about a page of yes/no questions. It initiates a NICS background check and you’re done. Why does a carry permit require something that looks like a dating-website profile? Because complexity is a filter, and these states know it.
Burdensome supplementary documentation. Beyond the application itself, some jurisdictions demand character reference letters, written justifications for why you want to carry, and stacks of supporting materials that go well beyond any objective public safety rationale. Every additional document is another opportunity for an applicant to make a mistake — and another reason to deny or delay.
Hidden or unpublished requirements. Some licensing divisions operate with secret criteria — unofficial checklists that aren’t published anywhere but determine whether your application moves forward or triggers additional interviews, phone calls to your references, or an indefinite hold. There is no analog to this in the NICS process. The background check is objective. These hidden rules are subjective gatekeeping dressed up as administration.
Excessive fees. This one has the clearest constitutional analogy. In Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966), the Supreme Court struck down Virginia’s $1.50 poll tax 6–3, holding that even a nominal fee on the right to vote violates the Equal Protection Clause. In Minneapolis Star and Tribune Co. v. Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue, 460 U.S. 575 (1983), the Court struck down 8–1 a use tax on newsprint and ink as an unconstitutional burden on First Amendment press freedom. Fees on enumerated rights face a high bar — and for good reason.
The A Fortiori Argument Against Carry Fees
Here is where my legal argument gets sharper. The right to vote is a civic right — a community function. Serving on a jury, running for office, casting a ballot: these are participations in collective democratic governance. Important, yes. But they are categorically different from personal constitutional rights — free speech, free exercise of religion, the right to keep and bear arms. These rights inhere in the individual as an individual, not contingent on any community function.
A fortiori — “with even stronger reason” — if it is unconstitutional to charge $1.50 for a civic right like voting (Harper), it should be unconstitutional a fortiori to charge hundreds of dollars for the more fundamental personal right to carry a firearm for self-defense. The right to vote is the lesser. The right to self-defense is the greater. And yet carry permit fees in some of these states run into the hundreds of dollars — a nakedly regressive burden that falls hardest on working-class Americans who are deciding between a permit and groceries.
The Supreme Court hasn’t said this explicitly yet. But the logic is airtight, and I expect the courts will catch up.
What This Pattern Tells Us
These anti-gun states are talking to one another. Federalism is supposed to be the “laboratory of democracy” — states experimenting for the public good. What these jurisdictions are doing is something different: sharing innovations in constitutional evasion, optimizing friction until the carry right becomes practically unexercisable. The Sullivan Act of 1911 — New York’s original may-issue law, the grandfather of “proper cause” — took more than a century to reach the Supreme Court. These states are hoping the next set of choke points takes just as long.
My read is that they won’t succeed. Bruen was explicit, the text-and-history test has teeth, and the a fortiori case against carry fees is building. But naming these tactics — staffing games, restricted hours, labyrinthian applications, hidden requirements, document burdens, punishing fees — is the first step toward dismantling them. If you’re living through any of these in your state, I want to hear about it.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.