SCOTUS Just Ordered New York City to Defend Its Stun-Gun Ban

The Supreme Court docket in Nunzio Calce, et al. v. City of New York, No. 26-46, is short and ugly. Petitioners filed for certiorari on July 7, 2026. The case was docketed July 10. Counsel of record is David H. Thompson of Cooper & Kirk. The City of New York waived its right to respond on August 6. On September 8 the Court requested a response anyway. It is due October 8.

That is not a grant. It is not a merits ruling. It is the Court refusing to dump a stun-gun ban on a waiver. The petition comes up from an unpublished Second Circuit summary order in Calce v. Tisch, No. 25-861-cv, issued April 13, 2026. The Southern District of New York had granted the City summary judgment on March 24, 2025. Petitioners are Nunzio Calce, Shaya Greenfield, Raymond Pezzoli, Allen Chan, Amanda Kennedy, the Second Amendment Foundation, and Firearms Policy Coalition. Respondents are NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch and the City.

Question one in the petition is the whole case: whether a challenger to a ban on a type of arm must prove the arm is “in common use” just to get past the Second Amendment’s plain text. The Second Circuit, following United States v. Gomez, treated that as the plaintiffs’ job and then said their record was “bits and pieces insufficient to establish that stun guns and tasers are in common use for lawful purposes.” The City never had to put a historical analogue on the table.

Caetano v. Massachusetts already vacated a state ruling that stun guns sit outside the Second Amendment. The petition quotes Heller: the Amendment covers “all instruments that constitute bearable arms.” New York still treats a less-lethal electronic arm as contraband. A requested response is a clock, not a trophy. The City will argue for denial. The point of September 8 is simpler: the justices declined to let a waiver bury the petition.