New York Body Armor Ban Struck Down By Federal Judge

A federal judge in Buffalo struck down New York’s ban on buying body armor on Wednesday, Oct. 21.

As Courthouse News Service reported, U.S. District Judge John Sinatra, a Trump appointee, ruled that Penal Law 270.21 violates the Second Amendment. The opinion runs 47 pages, declaring that if the state wants to criminalize a defensive tool, it has to point to a historical tradition of doing so, and New York couldn’t.

A Ban Born From a Tragedy

Governor Kathy Hochul initially signed the ban in 2022 as part of a larger gun-control package, soon after a gunman in a racist attack killed ten Black shoppers at a Buffalo supermarket. He wore steel-plated body armor sturdy enough to stop a handgun round fired by a store security guard. Regardless of where anyone sits along the gun control line, that is a horrifying fact, and the impulse to respond to it is understandable.

The problem is that the law that followed did not target the attacker’s crimes, which were already felonies of the gravest kind, but rather targeted the equipment. It made it a Class A misdemeanor for an ordinary New Yorker to buy a vest, and a Class E felony for any repeat purchase.

Police officers, peace officers, and military personnel were exempt.

Ordinary People Looking to Protect Themselves

The Firearms Policy Coalition brought the case in 2024 with two members, Benjamin Heeter and Joseph Wurtenberg. They said they wanted body armor for lawful self-defense and couldn’t buy it because of the ban. Nobody alleged they had threatened anyone. They wanted a way to survive being shot at.

That detail is the heart of the case. Body armor does not fire a round, and it cannot be pointed at anyone. A vest only reduces the harm if someone else tries to hurt you. A law that makes it a crime to buy one is hard to defend as a public safety measure against the people it actually restricts.

What did the Court Say About Body Armor?

Judge Sinatra applied the test the Supreme Court set in 2022 in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

First, does the plain text of the Second Amendment cover the conduct?

Second, if so, can the government show the regulation fits the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation?

On the first question, the judge concluded that the founding-era understanding of “arms” included defensive armor, not just weapons. The Firearms Policy Coalition made the same argument, leaning on District of Columbia v. Heller and Bruen, that those definitions covered both offensive weapons and defensive gear.

On the second question, he found that New York failed to show a comparable historical tradition, and that state officials had not shown modern body armor to be “dangerous or unusual.”

That last point may be the most important. The state didn’t argue that vests hurt people, instead arguing, in effect, that they might make some criminals harder to stop.

By that logic, almost any protective tool could be banned. Bulletproof glass, metal detectors, pepper spray, even your own front door. The urge to do something after a tragedy is a natural one, but to blatantly target body armor, a defensive tool, is just another example of a politician walking the path of least resistance rather than doing the necessary work of treating the actual cause.

Does The Body Armor Ruling Affect Other States?

This is a federal district court decision, and the New York Attorney General’s office says it is reviewing the ruling, so an appeal to the Second Circuit is possible. The reporting does not say how broadly the relief applies, and after the Supreme Court’s recent limits on universal injunctions, a ruling like this does not automatically protect everyone in the state.

Other states with their own body armor restrictions are not bound by it.

Gun-control advocates will also point out, fairly, that body armor has appeared in some of the worst mass shootings and that criminals wearing it are harder for police to stop.

Those are real concerns, if rather shortsighted ones as mentioned above.

The question the court answered is a narrower one: whether a state can meet its constitutional burden for banning purchases by ordinary, law-abiding people. This court said it did not.

Short Sighted Legislation, Short Term Effects

For years, the debate over gun laws has focused on what you can own and carry. This ruling extends the same framework to protection you wear. If the Second Amendment protects the right to arm yourself against violence, it is hard to argue that it doesn’t also protect the right to shield yourself from it.

As our right to bear arms is more firmly cemented in modern legal interpretation, this won’t be the last time gun control legislators try to find easy-win work arounds to bring to their constituency and say “look, we’re doing something!”

Just in the same way that the recent government proclamation declaring that SBR’s, or pistols with stocks, no longer need ATF approval, without eliminating the potential future need for approval again, these sorts of supposed easy wins can be quickly reversed.

The best thing a responsible gun owner can do when their rights are challenged is take a proactive approach to letting their voice be heard against such narrow-sighted legislation and keep their eyes open for any other attempts to circumvent our rights.