Understand the law. Know where you stand.
A plain-English guide to New York City firearm law, with every legal claim linked to its primary source and every important court change explained where it matters.
Three things that put licensed New Yorkers in handcuffs.
A license answers one question — whether you may carry at all. It does not answer where, or under what conditions. These are the rules that catch people who did everything right on the application.
Where you cannot carry a firearm in New York City
New York bars carrying a firearm in twenty categories of 'sensitive location' — including government buildings, health care facilities, places of worship, schools, parks, libraries, public transit and the subway, bars, theaters and stadiums, polling places, protests, and Times Square. A valid New York carry license is not a defense.
Read the entry Penal Law §265.01-dCarrying on private property in New York
New York's 'restricted locations' rule made it a class E felony to carry a firearm onto private property unless the owner affirmatively permitted it by signage or express consent — reversing the ordinary default. In Christian v.
Read the entry Penal Law Article 265Penalties for unlicensed gun possession in New York City
Carrying a loaded, unlicensed handgun on a New York City street is criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree under Penal Law §265.03(3) — a class C violent felony carrying a determinate sentence with a three-and-a-half year mandatory minimum and a fifteen-year maximum. Possessing an unlicensed handgun unloaded is criminal possession of a firearm under §265.01-b, a non-violent class E felony.
Read the entryFind the answer by what you need to do.
The full library is grouped around real decisions: carrying, getting licensed, ownership, and special cases.
Carrying
What a license lets you do, and the two rules that decide where it stops.
Getting licensed
Eligibility, training, and keeping the license alive.
Owning
Purchase, storage, and the rules that apply after the license is issued.
Consequences and special cases
What goes wrong, and the categories that follow different rules.
The courts have been rewriting this continuously.
Most published guidance on New York firearm law describes injunctions that have since been vacated, or misses ones entered last year. Here is what actually moved, and where it stands today.
| Decided | Case | What it held | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 2024 | Antonyuk v. James 2d Cir. | Vacated the injunctions against the sensitive-location list, the good-moral-character standard, the four-reference requirement, the in-person interview, and the training requirement. Certiorari denied April 2025. | In effect |
| Sep 2025 | Frey v. City of New York 2d Cir. | Upheld the Times Square provision and the public transit and subway provision of the sensitive-location statute. | In effect |
| Mar 2026 | Antonyuk v. James N.D.N.Y. | Consent injunction against the social media disclosure requirement; New York agreed the State Police application form would not include social media language. | Enjoined |
| May 2026 | Christian v. James 2d Cir. | Rejected the facial challenge to the public parks provision, and affirmed a permanent injunction against the private-property rule as applied to property open to the public. | Split |
We publish nothing we cannot cite. Where the law is contested, we say so on the page rather than picking whichever reading reads better — because a firearm-law page that is confidently wrong is worse than one that is carefully uncertain.
Reading the law is step one. Applying is step two.
Our main website turns everything on this page into a tracked application: a personalized document checklist, character-reference invitations, training coordination, and a case file that shows exactly what is outstanding.
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