After a middle schooler on Long Island told a school counselor she was feeling depressed in February 2023, police ordered her parents to turn over their guns and suspended their pistol licenses while they investigated the child’s safety.
The parents complied, but later sued Nassau County, claiming police violated their Second Amendment rights. Last week, a federal judge agreed with them and decided that the parents are entitled to get their guns and licenses back.
The ruling spotlights the challenges local governments face as they try to keep people safe from gun violence while also protecting gun owners’ rights. It comes as courts continue to scrutinize what types of gun regulations are allowed in an evolving legal landscape.
Attorneys on opposite ends of the political spectrum disagreed about the merits of the ruling and its potential impact. Second Amendment lawyer Peter Tilem said the decision bolsters gun owners’ constitutional rights.
“ Just because you live in a house with someone who is a danger to themselves or others doesn't mean that everyone in the house loses their rights,” said Tilem, who often represents gun owners.
In contrast, an attorney who advocates for gun safety policies called the ruling “dangerous,” “legally vulnerable” and likely to be overturned on appeal.
“This is failing to protect a child,” said Douglas Letter, chief legal officer at the gun reform group Brady.
The Nassau County Police Department declined to comment on pending legislation. Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a Second Amendment supporter running as the Republican candidate for governor, said in a statement that officials are “reviewing our processes to make sure there is no interference with constitutional rights.”
Gothamist is not naming the gun owners to protect the private health information of their minor daughter. Neither the parents nor their attorney could be reached for comment.
Police department suspends licenses
The Nassau County case stems from a meeting between a school counselor and the gun owners’ daughter about three years ago. The daughter, who was in middle school at the time, reported she was feeling depressed and had thought in the past about hurting herself, according to the judge’s decision. When the counselor asked if there were firearms at home, she said there were, the ruling states.
The parents took their daughter to a hospital a couple days later, and a psychiatrist who evaluated her determined that she “does not represent an imminent danger to self or others,” according to a doctor’s note filed in the court docket. Police and caseworkers also visited their home and found their guns were stored in locked safes with trigger locks, the ruling states. New York law requires gun owners to lock their firearms in a safe or disable them with a locking device if they live with someone under 18.
After law enforcement came to the home, the girl’s father reported his daughter’s comments and the visit from police to the Nassau County Police Department’s pistol license section, according to court records. Even though officers who examined the safes found the firearms were safely locked, according to the lawsuit, an officer told the father on the phone that his and his wife’s licenses would be suspended and that they would need to turn in their guns, because of their daughter’s comments about self harm. The couple took their firearms to a gun store for safekeeping the same day, the ruling states.
The couple said in their lawsuit that police would only reinstate their licenses if they met certain conditions, including buying two biometric safes, which can only be opened with personal information like a fingerprint. In written declarations to the court, they said they did not intend to buy biometric safes, which they called “costly and unnecessary” in their lawsuit.
Police also told the gun owners they needed a note from their daughter’s doctor that said it was safe for her to live in a home with firearms, according to court records. The couple said in their declarations to the court that they were unable to get a note with that language from the doctor and would “not make any additional efforts to obtain such a letter.”
Firearms were the leading cause of death for 1- to 17-year-olds in the United States in 2024, the last year for which finalized data is available from the Centers for Disease Control, according to a data analysis published this month by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health. Researchers found that the number of gun suicides nationwide reached a record high that year, accounting for about 60% of all firearm deaths.
Legal experts disagree about the ruling
Nassau County argued in court records that a “reasonable jury” could find it was appropriate for police to suspend the couple’s licenses and secure their weapons after learning a minor who lived in their home had reported thoughts of suicide. The county said it could use a "targeted and time-limited” measure while it managed a safety risk. Officials also said in court papers that the couple’s gun safes did not eliminate the danger to their daughter.
But Eastern District Judge Sanket Bulsara, a President Joe Biden appointee, said the safety risk went away long ago “if it ever existed at all.” In a 21-page ruling, he said the police department imposed requirements to get their guns and licenses back that weren’t based on any policies or laws. The judge also said Nassau County offered “zero evidence” that its actions were consistent with the country’s “historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
Officials’ “ongoing refusal to return the firearms or licenses appears to be entirely arbitrary or unlawful,” Bulsara said.
“Defendants’ conduct is a plain violation of the Second Amendment,” the judge added.
Tilem said the ruling follows recent Supreme Court decisions that are forcing local governments like Nassau County to “recalibrate” how they approach gun ownership and treat it as a right, rather than a privilege.
“I think the government is going to have to get away from, just as a reflex, taking people’s gun rights away for any reason, or no reason,” he said.
The intersection of mental health and the Second Amendment is “probably the hardest conversation surrounding guns,” the attorney said.
“ The mix of mental health issues and guns is a scary situation,” Tilem said, adding: “But we also have to continue to follow the Constitution and the law.”
He said the Supreme Court has established in recent years that modern-day gun regulations should be rooted in the “history and tradition of the Second Amendment” — not a test of whether it’s more important to protect people’s safety or their constitutional rights.
But Letter, the gun safety attorney, said the judge in this case mistakenly interpreted how to evaluate whether a firearm regulation fits with rules from the past. He said a 2024 Supreme Court ruling established that today’s gun laws and policies don’t need to be exactly like the laws that were in place when the Second Amendment was ratified back in 1791, as long as they’re similar to regulations from that time in both “why and how” they restrict people’s rights.
“We know it’s not just freezing history there,” he said. “We have to try to make the Second Amendment work for the modern world.”
Letter said the judge seemed to have made “a very serious mistake that could have deadly consequences.”
“ It's not just, ‘Oh, no. Oh, dear. The child might drop the gun on her foot and break a toe,’” he said. “People may die.”
The parents won’t immediately get their guns and licenses back, according to the ruling, while remaining legal questions in their case are resolved.
