On October 21, 2026, Judge John L. Sinatra Jr. of the United States District Court for the Western District of New York held New York’s ban on civilian purchases of body armor unconstitutional in Heeter v. James, No. 1:24-cv-00623 (JLS) (HKS). The plaintiffs, Benjamin Heeter, Joseph Wurtenberg, and the Firearms Policy Coalition, won summary judgment. The result matters for New Yorkers who want protective armor. The method behind it matters for the whole country, because it is the method the Supreme Court will use in Viramontes v. Cook County, No. 25-238, and Grant v. Higgins, No. 25-566.
The Holding
The opinion opens by stating its conclusion:
“Indeed, body armor is an ‘Arm’ protected by the plain text of the Second Amendment. As such, regulation in this area is permissible only if the State demonstrates that the new enactment is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of sufficiently analogous regulations. New York fails that test.”
The court enjoined enforcement of N.Y. Penal Law sections 270.21 and 270.22 and N.Y. General Business Law section 396-eee as to the sale and purchase of body armor, and granted the State’s request for a fourteen-day stay pending appeal. An appeal to the Second Circuit is the expected next step, and I will not predict its outcome. The reasoning is what I urge every Second Amendment litigator to read. It runs about forty-seven pages, and the standing discussion can be skimmed.
The Text Defines “Arms”
Judge Sinatra began where Heller began, with the words. The Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 581 (2008), defined “arms” by reference to eighteenth-century dictionaries. Samuel Johnson’s 1773 dictionary called arms “weapons of offence, or armour of defence.” Timothy Cunningham’s 1771 legal dictionary defined them as “any thing that a man wears for his defence, or takes into his hands, or useth in wrath to cast at or strike another.” Judge Sinatra drew the obvious conclusion:
“[T]his Court is bound by Heller’s textual analysis, which demonstrates that the word ‘arms’ included armor at the Nation’s founding (as it does today).”
The State argued that Kevlar did not exist in 1791. The court answered that “[t]hat Kevlar did not exist at the Founding does not alter the constitutional principles guiding the Court’s analysis.” Heller had already said the Amendment reaches “all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.” Plain-text analysis is a linguistic inquiry, and the word “armour” is in the dictionary the Supreme Court cited.
History Fixes the Boundaries
Reciting “shall not be infringed” does not end the inquiry. The Second Amendment codified a pre-existing right, as Heller explained, so history determines what that right included and excluded. That is why no one claims a constitutional right to commit murder with a firearm: the tradition never contained one.
Once the plaintiffs showed that armor is an arm, the burden shifted to New York under New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, 33-34 (2022). The State pointed to English armor restrictions and the Statute of Northampton. The court rejected both, noting that Bruen said the statute, “at least as it was understood during the Middle Ages,” “has little bearing on the Second Amendment adopted in 1791.” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 41. It found that the State could not “identify a single regulation on body armor post-ratification,” and concluded:
“[T]he body armor ban is a novel outlier unsupported by any mainstream tradition from which Defendants could rely upon.”
Common Use and Legislative Facts
The opinion also addressed common use. Market reports in the record estimated that more than 82,000 units of body armor were sold in 2023, more than 87,000 in 2024, and more than 93,000 in 2025. The court added that “49 states do not ban body armor,” which “suggests that it is jurisdictionally common as well.” It overruled the State’s hearsay objections to the market reports.
The court then made a point that many judges miss. Common use may be established through legislative facts, which are “general facts which help the tribunal decide questions of law.” Citing Judge Friendly’s opinion in Langevin v. Chenango Court, Inc., 447 F.2d 296, 300 (2d Cir. 1971), it observed that such facts are the only kind relevant to a constitutional challenge to a statute. Nobody needs a witness at trial to establish what the founding generation understood.
What This Previews for the AR-15 Cases
The State relied on the Second Circuit’s “unusually dangerous” standard from National Association for Gun Rights v. Lamont, 153 F.4th at 227 (2d Cir. 2025), the decision now under review in Grant v. Higgins. The district court acknowledged a circuit divide over whether common use belongs at the textual step or the historical step, and held that Heller produced the same answer either way.
That is the sequence I expect the Supreme Court to follow in the AR-15 cases: text first, then a state’s burden to prove a tradition, with common use measured by ownership and by how many states have acted. I offer that as a forecast, not a certainty. A district judge in Buffalo has shown that the framework yields a principled answer when applied faithfully, and that the answer does not depend on what a legislature finds dangerous. In the court’s words, this is “another one of the policy choices taken ‘off the table’ by the Second Amendment.”
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.