The line early Saturday morning was out the door. As we gathered around the entrance to the turn-of-the-century building, with restaurants and furniture stores populating this historic block off Fifth Avenue in New York’s Flatiron District, a gentleman holding a handful of targets spoke up. “I haven’t seen it this busy in a long time. It’s people waking up. What are you here for, the 18-hour class? How much, $500?” He paused for a moment, “$500 for a right. The way things are going, you’re going to need it.”
With coffee in hand, 24 of us waited with the regulars outside the Westside Rifle & Pistol Range on this cold February morning—there for the start of our state-mandated two-day training class for a concealed-carry license. The last gun range in Manhattan, located in an unassuming basement below 20th Street since 1964, Westside is New York’s full-service federal firearms license (FFL) dealer. Under the leadership of Darren Leung, the range has also become a lifeline for those looking to exercise their Second Amendment rights in New York City. It offers regular training and licensing classes, not to mention a welcoming oasis in the heart of the Big Apple, for anyone interested.
Following the landmark 2022 Supreme Court case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, those rights are finally becoming a little more attainable in Gotham. Since the ruling, New York State can no longer compel residents to prove what it called “proper cause” before they could be issued a firearms license, which had effectively restricted concealed carry to those working with cash or jewelry. “We know of no other constitutional right,” wrote Justice Clarence Thomas in his majority ruling, “that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need.”
New York’s progressive governing class was quick to respond, however, by putting up new requirements and restrictions to grind down applicants with ever more bureaucracy. Among these hurdles is an 18-hour mandate for training, testing and target practice—one of the many boxes that must be checked before a personal firearm may be put in your name or even handled, including at a range like Westside.
These new challenges have not stopped New Yorkers from applying for concealed-carry licenses in record numbers since the ruling. We were the next two dozen in that process as we were led down to the basement classroom. We took our seats in this frigid room of broken-down desk chairs (building heat gets turned off on weekends) and a clutter of flags lining the walls—“Don’t Tread on Me,” “An Appeal to Heaven.”
It gets said that New York gun culture is notably diverse. The evidence was right there around me. A young woman in a designer coat took a seat next to a man speaking English as a second language. A gentleman beside me was the son of a police officer and an experienced marksman who was upgrading from what’s known as a “premises permit,” which only allows him to bring an unloaded and locked firearm to the range and back home, and which many say may soon be phased out. Others in the class had never taken a shot in their lives. Young and old, men and women, all had come for their own reasons, perhaps informed by the riots of 2020, or the threats to American Jews following the terror attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, or the rise in violent crime due to the city’s radically progressive criminal justice reforms. Maybe they were there simply to embrace their constitutional rights and obligations.
What brought us all together over the following two days was our seasoned instructor, Glenn Herman. Born in New York’s Greenwich Village, wiry and dressed head to toe in black, Herman is a New Yorker’s New Yorker (the address of his website, appropriately enough, is newyorkcityguns.com). Over the 18-hour class, Herman sprinkled in stories of his bar mitzvah with the bad old days of the 1970s (“the Warriors without the funny clothes”). In one moment he talked about the history of rifling. In the next he was onto the applicability of Platonic idealism to our understanding of an armed encounter. By the end, he made what might be a daunting obligation into an enjoyable and fascinating weekend.
For the first day, we covered the basics: the difference between a revolver and a semi-automatic; the distinction between full-metal-jacket and hollow-point rounds; open versus optical sights; what to do with misfires, hangfires and squib loads; the isosceles over the Weaver stance; the different types of shoulder, hip and ankle holsters; and the essentials of gun safety.
Herman also started in on some of the numerous restrictions around New York gun ownership: that even New York state residents with permits to carry cannot carry in New York City without a permit from the City; and that firearms cannot be passed down even among family members, but must be sold and rebought from an FFL. Herman finished the first day by showing us his own custom-made rig: a holstered Glock Velcroed in a black fanny pack. “I’m getting older and I don’t care what it looks like,” he said of his carry style.
For day two, Herman took the class into a discussion of the philosophy of concealed carry and the true challenges of following New York’s gun laws. The first was a fuller understanding of the state’s new “sensitive place” laws, a bundle of new restrictions most constitutional observers believe will not survive judicial scrutiny. “New York State is being forced to rejoin the United States when it comes to gun laws,” said Herman, “but when it comes to its Concealed Carry Improvement Act, the improvement is you can’t carry a gun anywhere.”
In other words, you may now have a firearm, just don’t take it into a government building, a place of worship, a library, a playground, a restaurant, a park, a zoo, a train station, any form of public transportation, where alcohol is served, a polling place, next to a protest (in fact, clear the street if you see one coming) or within the “Times Square Exclusion Zone.” The end result leaves New York gun owners with even more restrictions than what existed before Bruen, when you could at least take a secured and unloaded pistol to the gun range on the subway or through Times Square on a premises permit. Nevertheless, until these laws are successfully challenged and overturned, they must be observed or you risk losing your license.
The final component of the discussion concerned the ethics of concealed carry. These are deep considerations that apply to everyone invested with the power and responsibility both to defend and take life, something writers such as Massad Ayoob have been addressing for decades. The possession of a concealed firearm presents profound moral challenges that can be even harder to pinpoint than a bullseye at the far end of a 25-yard wire.
“The city will be different for you when you have a loaded firearm,” said Herman. “But you can’t have an anger-management issue. You must train your mind first to be nonviolent. Cultivate a mindset where your instincts are good and deadly force is used only after all other options have been exhausted, you have nowhere left to escape and life is on the line.”
Through Plato, he turned to the core of ancient Greek philosophy, “Socrates was talking about idealized forms. Our truth has to be measured against the truth. Today we call that the standard of ‘the reasonable man.’” Maintaining this reason in the face of a life-and-death situation, and its moral and legal aftermath, is the ultimate responsibility of carrying a concealed firearm.
Following our written test and some time on the range with Herman one on one, in which we were each required to hit a target five times, the weekend class was over. At the same time, it was clearer than ever that our test as New York gun owners had only just begun.
