The fight over New York’s body armor ban has now produced a clear picture of both sides.
On one side are gun owners, Firearms Policy Coalition, and Armored Republic, arguing that body armor is exactly the type of arms the Second Amendment has always protected: defensive equipment for free citizens.
On the other side are New York Attorney General Letitia James, Brady, Giffords Law Center, and Everytown for Gun Safety, arguing that ordinary Americans can be blocked from buying armor unless they are a special class of citizen.
Heeter v. James is a federal lawsuit challenging New York’s body armor ban in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York. AmmoLand previously covered the plaintiffs’ summary-judgment motion, where they argued New York criminalized the purchase and acquisition of defensive gear that falls within the plain text of the Second Amendment.
New York’s law does not simply punish violent criminals who wear armor during crimes. It blocks the sale, purchase, and acquisition of body armor by ordinary citizens unless they fit into one of the state’s “eligible professions.” Albany has decided that police, military personnel, security guards, and other approved categories may protect themselves from gunfire, while everyone else must remain exposed to gunfire.
Brady, Giffords, and Everytown: Armor Is Not Protected
On April 29, 2026, Brady, Giffords Law Center, and Everytown filed an amicus brief supporting New York’s defense of the ban. Their argument is exactly what gun owners should expect from the modern gun control lobby. First, they claim body armor is not a “bearable arm.” Then they claim it is not in common civilian use for lawful self-defense. Then they drag in mass shooters to justify stripping law-abiding Americans of protective equipment.
The brief argues that body armor is not protected by the Second Amendment because it is not a weapon used to injure or kill. That argument tries to rewrite Heller by pretending that “arms” means only offensive weapons, even though the historical understanding of “arms” includes defensive armor. AmmoLand has already covered that point in this case: the plaintiffs cited Heller’s discussion of “weapons of offence, or armour of defence.”
The gun control groups want the court to believe body armor becomes “dangerous” because a criminal might wear it while committing a violent act. By that logic, running shoes are dangerous if a bank robber uses them to flee, and a locked door is dangerous if a fugitive hides behind it.
Body armor does not shoot, stab, slash, or explode. It protects the person wearing it. Calling armor dangerous because it can stop a bullet is a confession that the anti-gun movement is not merely interested in disarming citizens. It wants citizens easier to hurt.
The Mass-Shooter Argument Is the Same Old Gun Control Play
The anti-gun brief leans hard on the 2022 Buffalo supermarket murders, where the killer wore body armor. No one should minimize that evil. The killer murdered innocent people, and retired Buffalo police officer Aaron Salter Jr. died heroically trying to stop him.
But constitutional rights do not disappear because a murderer misused a lawful item.
The Brady/Giffords/Everytown brief cites the Buffalo attack and claims that 28 mass shooters over the past 45 years wore body armor, including at least 17 after 2009. The brief also argues that the Buffalo murderer’s armor helped him survive Salter’s defensive gunfire and continue the attack.
That is emotional ammunition, not a limiting constitutional principle.
Criminals have used cars, phones, backpacks, computers, clothing, and cash to help commit crimes. The answer is to punish criminals, not ban peaceable citizens from owning ordinary defensive tools. New York could have targeted violent criminal misuse of body armor. Instead, it chose to ration protection by profession and create a ban for ordinary people.
The anti-gun side also argues that even assuming 55,000 civilian body armor units were sold in 2022, that would represent only a tiny share of the national population and therefore is not “commonplace.”
That is a rigged argument. Government buyers dominate the armor market; many companies have long favored government and law-enforcement sales, and states like New York are actively trying to suppress civilian access. The government should not be allowed to choke off access to defensive gear and then cite reduced access as proof that the gear is uncommon.
Armored Republic Fires Back
Armored Republic’s amicus brief, filed April 7, 2026, gives the court the sharper constitutional answer.
The brief argues that New York’s law is backward because the state requires many able-bodied male residents ages 17 to 45 to report for militia service if summoned by the governor in cases of invasion, disaster, insurrection, riot, breach of the peace, or imminent danger, while also forbidding most of those citizens from acquiring body armor that could protect them in those exact conditions.
New York wants the power to call ordinary citizens into danger, but not the humility to let those same citizens buy armor that may keep them alive. The state wants the obligation of citizenship without the rights of citizenship.
Armored Republic describes the result as a system where the favored organized militia receives state-furnished body armor, while the disfavored unorganized militia is legally compelled to serve, punished for not appearing, and forbidden from acquiring the same protection on its own.
That is the kind of two-tier system anti-gun politicians always seem to build. The government gets the guns. Government gets the armor. Government gets the exemptions. The citizen gets the jail cell.
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“The People” Does Not Mean “The Professionals”
Armored Republic’s brief hammers home another point at the center of this case: the Second Amendment protects the people, not merely police, soldiers, and state-approved professionals.
The brief argues New York is trying to replace “the people” with “the professionals,” noting that taxi drivers, janitors, farmers, fishermen, construction workers, and the unemployed are just as much part of “the people” as attorneys, physicians, and police officers.
The Second Amendment is not a government-employee privilege. It is not a benefit package for badge holders. It is not a safety program for politically favored job titles.
The right belongs to the people.
New York’s body armor ban treats ordinary citizens as a lower class: good enough to obey, good enough to be taxed, good enough to be summoned in an emergency, but not good enough to buy a plate carrier or armor panel without Albany’s permission.
Body Armor Belongs at the Center of the Second Amendment
Armored Republic also makes a strong Miller/Heller argument. Under United States v. Miller, the Second Amendment protects arms with a reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia, including ordinary military equipment. Armored Republic argues that body armor is not merely in common private use, but is standard modern equipment for citizen-soldiers responding to a call to duty.
The company also says its own sales of body armor products to American civilians exceed 2.5 million, which it argues is enough by itself to establish common use.
That undercuts the gun-control lobby’s attempt to portray civilian armor ownership as some fringe activity. Millions of Americans understand what New York refuses to admit: armor is defensive gear. It is useful precisely because government cannot guarantee your safety.
AmmoLand has covered this fight from the beginning. In 2024, we reported on Armored Republic’s challenge to New York’s ban, including the law’s carveouts for favored professions and its criminal penalties for unauthorized possession, sale, or transfer.
AmmoLand also covered the case after Judge John Sinatra allowed the challenge to proceed, making clear that New York’s law was not just a fight over body armor, but part of a broader attempt to decide which citizens may protect themselves.
Bigger Than Body Armor
Gun owners should pay close attention to this case. The anti-gun lobby’s theory is not limited to body armor. Their argument is that courts should narrow the word “arms,” exclude useful modern defensive tools, and then let the government decide which civilians have a “need” for protection.
That same logic can be used against magazines, optics, suppressors, braces, parts, accessories, ammunition, and anything else anti-gun states want to push outside the Second Amendment.
New York’s position is simple: trust the state, stay vulnerable, and let politicians decide who deserves protection.
The Second Amendment says something very different: “shall not be infringed.”
A free citizen does not need a permission slip to buy a rifle. He does not need a permission slip to buy a magazine. He should not need a permission slip to buy armor that may save his life when the government fails to protect him.
Body armor is not the problem. Criminals are the problem. Politicians who punish the law-abiding for the actions of criminals are the problem.
New York’s body armor ban should fall.
Heeter v. James Challenges New York Body Armor Ban Under the Second Amendment
