The decision in Heeter v. James is the first in the nation to say it plainly: equipment that only stops bullets and harms no one sits inside the constitutional right to keep and bear arms — and New York's experiment in rationing self-defense by profession is over unless a higher court revives it.
A federal judge in Buffalo struck down New York's ban on body armor on Wednesday, ruling that the first-of-its-kind law violates the Second Amendment because body armor is an "Arm" protected by the Constitution. U.S. District Judge John L. Sinatra Jr. of the Western District of New York granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs — Benjamin Heeter, Joseph Wurtenberg and the Firearms Policy Coalition — in a 47-page decision, and permanently enjoined the state from enforcing the ban. The ruling decides the case on the written record, with no trial, after both sides asked the court to rule.
New York wrote the ban in 2022, weeks after a gunman wearing body armor murdered 10 people at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo. As part of a ten-bill package signed by Governor Kathy Hochul that June, the state made it a crime for anyone outside an "eligible profession" — law enforcement and other jobs designated by the state — to buy body armor, and barred anyone from selling or giving armor to a person outside those professions. A first offense is a Class A misdemeanor and repeat offenses are a Class E felony. The Firearms Policy Coalition sued in July 2024, naming Attorney General Letitia James, State Police Superintendent Steven G. James and local prosecutors as defendants, arguing that the state had made it a crime to buy simple protective equipment.
Sinatra's reasoning follows the Supreme Court's framework in Heller and Bruen: first the text, then history. Quoting the founding-era dictionaries the Supreme Court relied on in Heller, the decision notes that Samuel Johnson's 1773 dictionary defined "arms" as "weapons of offence, or armour of defence," and that Timothy Cunningham's 1771 legal dictionary defined arms as "any thing that a man wears for his defence." Because the word "arms" included armor when the Second Amendment was ratified, the court held, body armor is covered by the amendment's plain text — and the burden shifted to New York to show its ban fits the nation's historical tradition of arms regulation. In the court's words, New York failed that test. The judge also brushed aside the state's argument that founding-era armor had become rare and ineffective, writing that the argument "runs headlong into the definitions adopted by Heller," and he rejected New York's claim that the Supreme Court's recent limits on universal injunctions prevented statewide relief.
"New York enacted a first-of-its-kind law prohibiting law-abiding residents — who are not engaged or employed in an eligible profession — from purchasing body armor for self-defense. New York's body armor legislation, however, violates the Second Amendment." — Judge John L. Sinatra Jr., Heeter v. James
The two sides leave the courtroom telling opposite stories about what the law was. The Firearms Policy Coalition has argued throughout the case that New York "criminalizes the purchase of simple personal protective equipment," and its president, Brandon Combs, said the right to keep and bear arms "includes the right to own defensive armor, period." The group called Wednesday's ruling a permanent injunction against New York's "unconstitutional restrictions on purchasing and selling protective armor." New York's position, pressed by James's office in court, was that armor had fallen out of common use by the founding era and that the 2022 law was a public-safety measure aimed at the kind of gear the Buffalo gunman used to survive a security guard's return fire; when the package was signed in 2022, James vowed to vigorously fight any challenges to it. Her office had not issued a public statement on Wednesday's ruling at the time of publication.
For New Yorkers, the practical effect arrives on a delay. Sinatra stayed his own injunction for 14 days to give the state time to appeal to the Second Circuit, so the ban remains enforceable during that window; if the state does not win a further stay, the injunction then takes effect statewide. An appeal is widely expected, and the case now becomes the leading national test of a question Bruen left open: how far "arms" extends beyond weapons themselves. If Sinatra's textual reading holds, restrictions on purely defensive equipment — and the logic of profession-based rationing of self-defense gear — will be difficult for any state to defend.