Inside one man’s long fight to legally carry a firearm in New York City and he won

On Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co, host Cam Edwards introduced the topic with a blunt reality: New York City may technically allow some residents to carry a concealed firearm now, but “practically speaking,” it often doesn’t feel that way.

Edwards brought on James Panero, the executive editor of The New Criterion and a New York Post columnist, to talk through Panero’s firsthand experience applying for a NYC carry permit and what it looks like after you finally get approved.

Panero’s story wasn’t a quick “filled out a form and moved on” situation. The way he described it, it felt like a long fight made of paperwork, training requirements, fees, interviews, and rules that can trip you up even after you’re officially licensed.

And that’s what makes this worth reading. This isn’t a debate in the abstract. It’s one guy explaining what it takes, step by step, to be legally armed in the biggest city in the country.

Why Panero Even Started This Process

Panero told Edwards his story started with his father.

He said he grew up in New York City, and his dad had what Panero called a premise permit – the kind of license that lets you keep a firearm in your home, not carry it around the city.

Panero said his father was an architect and got back into firearms in the 1990s, mostly for target practice. Panero described it as a hobby his father wanted to share with him when he was a teenager.

He remembered going to a range with his dad, practicing with a .22 bolt-action rifle while his father practiced with pistols. Panero didn’t talk about it like a political statement. He talked about it like a memory.

Then Panero said his father passed away in 2019. Panero wanted to take possession of his dad’s handgun – an old service revolver, blued, a .357 from the late 1960s.

That’s where the wall hit. Panero told Edwards the first question for a New York City resident is almost shocking in its simplicity: Is it even possible?

He said he had “many false starts” trying to figure out how to register and legally take ownership, and he emphasized that this wasn’t even about carrying the gun on the street at first.

As Panero explained it, it was about simply being allowed to possess it legally at all.

The Bruen Shift, And The New “Yes, But…” Reality

Panero brought up the Bruen decision and credited Justice Clarence Thomas with writing the majority opinion.

He described the old system as a “show cause” regime, where you basically had to justify why you needed a carry permit. Panero said the practical result was that regular people couldn’t get one unless they had special connections or jobs involving diamonds or cash.

Panero said the court rejected that idea. In his view, self-defense shouldn’t require special permission or an exceptional story.

He made a point Edwards clearly agreed with: rights are written down precisely because they’re not always popular, and they need protection anyway.

That decision, Panero said, opened the door for any New Yorker to apply for a concealed carry permit.

Edwards put numbers to it. He told viewers there are about 17,000 New Yorkers with concealed carry permits, up from around 4,000 when Bruen came down.

Panero acknowledged the increase, but he said it’s still far below what you’d expect for a city the size of New York.

And when you listen to his description of the process, it’s not hard to see why. Even after Bruen, the “right” exists in law, but the path to it is still steep.

The Application Gauntlet, Step By Step

Panero told Edwards he went through the process the hard way – training, documents, online forms, and multiple steps that felt more like a serious financial application than a basic civil right.

He said the NYPD now has an online system, which he described as an improvement over earlier decades when applicants needed paper forms, postal money orders, and in-person drop-offs just to get started.

But even with the online portal, Panero made it clear this isn’t “easy.” It’s just “modern.”

He said applicants need an 18-hour class, and he described taking the course and actually enjoying parts of it. He talked about camaraderie and meeting a cross-section of New Yorkers – different ages, backgrounds, and motivations.

Panero said some people in his class already had premise permits and were “upgrading” to concealed carry. Others had never touched a firearm before but wanted to start the process now rather than wait until they felt desperate.

He even mentioned that for some people, events like October 7 made them feel newly vulnerable, like in a synagogue or temple.

Edwards noted the application isn’t just time-consuming. It’s also expensive.

Edwards asked Panero about fees, and Panero said the costs are substantial. Edwards said it’s nearly $500 just to apply, and both of them agreed the training can be around another $500.

So, before you’ve even carried anything anywhere, you’re potentially a thousand dollars in, plus time, plus hassle.

Panero described the required steps as including character references, certified documents, fingerprinting, and at least one in-person interview.

He said the whole thing felt “on par” with applying for something like a mortgage, except arguably worse because it’s layered with “trip hazards” that you only learn by stumbling into them.

Panero said it took him six months from submission to approval, which Edwards called fast by New York standards – but Edwards also said six months is still too long.

Panero agreed, and he added an important clarification: it was six months from when he hit submit, not from when he first began poking around and starting and stopping the application.

That detail matters, because Panero also said he heard from people who simply gave up. They couldn’t finish. The paperwork and requirements wore them down.

And Panero delivered a harsh conclusion: part of the point of the process, in his view, is to dissuade people from doing it legally.

Westside Range, Old NYC Gun Culture, And A “Hidden” Community

Panero credited a specific place for making the process possible: the Westside Rifle and Pistol Range.

He described it as a lifeline for New Yorkers trying to do things by the book. He said Westside offers training, can help with transfers as an FFL, and provides a range that becomes usable once you’re properly permitted.

Edwards chimed in with his own familiarity, calling Westside tucked away and low-profile—no giant neon signs, more like a hidden holdout.

Panero said that’s part of what makes New York “great,” in his view: the city still has these surviving institutions that don’t feel like a faceless condo development.

He also talked about a now-closed gun store he remembered fondly: John Jovino Gun Shop in Little Italy, complete with a famous oversized pistol sign. He said that was where he and his father bought his first .22 rifle.

Edwards later remarked that COVID closures likely contributed to Jovino’s closure, and he called Westside a “beacon” for the city’s small but growing gun-owning community.

Panero also gave a small but telling detail: he tries to go to the range about once a week, treating it as a mental reset, the same way his father did.

He described the range as friendly, with coffee and donuts, TVs playing local news, and a mix of people including retired detectives and NYPD personnel.

That picture is wildly different from the stereotype many people have of NYC gun ownership. And it’s probably why Panero said he felt a responsibility to write about it publicly.

Carrying After You Get The Permit: The “Sensitive Places” Trap

Here’s where the story turns from “hard but doable” into “what’s the point?”

Panero told Edwards the biggest issue after Bruen isn’t just getting the permit. It’s where you can legally go once you have it.

Panero argued the legislature responded to Bruen by creating a system designed to keep the decision from having “teeth.”

He described New York’s sensitive place laws as draconian, saying they effectively make carry rights more diminished in practice than before Bruen.

Panero listed restrictions as he understood them: no carry on public transportation, no carry in parks, and rules that make large areas – like Times Square and essentially much of Midtown – function like a carry dead zone.

He mentioned gun-free zone signs that are often covered in graffiti and stickers, making them hard to even read. The idea that a law-abiding person is supposed to notice and obey a messy, half-visible sign struck him as absurd.

He also made a point that lands like a punch: criminals aren’t checking signage. They’re not reading boundaries. They don’t care.

So the restrictions, in Panero’s telling, function like traps for the lawful, while the unlawful keep doing what they do.

Edwards agreed the irony is brutal. He said that before, when very few people could get a NYC carry permit, those who had one could carry in more places. Now that regular people can apply, the city responds with rules that make lawful carry nearly impossible.

Panero also raised a practical question that sounds ridiculous but matters if you live there: what if you live inside one of those zones? How do you even transport a firearm to a range or anywhere else without accidentally breaking the law?

It starts to feel like you’re paying money and jumping through hoops for a right you’re not allowed to meaningfully exercise.

The Little Details That Can Ruin You

Panero said feedback from readers showed him how many “trip hazards” he couldn’t even fit into one column or one conversation.

One example he gave Edwards was magazine capacity.

Panero said New York City’s capacity limit is 10 rounds, and he described a situation where someone had a firearm with a magazine holding 13 rounds that couldn’t be reduced. That person, he said, couldn’t register it and effectively had to give it up.

That kind of detail is exactly what scares off normal people. It’s not that they want to break rules. It’s that the rules are so specific and punishing that you can end up stuck with an expensive mistake.

Edwards also pointed to another pressure point: illegal guns.

He said NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced the department seized 25,000 guns over the last four years. Edwards compared that to what he estimated as roughly 20,000 permits issued during the same period.

His implication was clear: the system isn’t simply encouraging legal ownership. It may be doing the opposite by making it so hard that illegal possession becomes the path of least resistance for some.

Panero basically echoed that idea, saying the system discourages legal firearms and encourages illegal ones.

That’s a grim incentive structure. And it’s the kind of structure that breeds cynicism fast.

What This Really Says About NYC, Rights, And Reality

Edwards repeatedly framed this as a “fundamental civil right,” and Panero treated it the same way – something you shouldn’t need to beg for or navigate like a high-end financial application.

At the same time, Panero was careful to say the NYPD licensing staff themselves weren’t his main problem. He described them as professional and pleasant when he interacted with them.

In his view, the real issue is the legal framework built around them.

That’s an important distinction, because it keeps the conversation anchored in policy design, not personal attacks.

And it leads to the uncomfortable takeaway: New York City can comply with a Supreme Court ruling on paper while building a maze around it in practice.

If you wanted a system that looks legal, sounds legal, and still blocks most people from exercising a right, you’d probably build something like this: expensive, slow, paperwork-heavy, loaded with restrictions, and full of ways to accidentally fail.

Panero’s story also highlights something that doesn’t get enough attention. Even after you win the permit fight, you still have to keep training, keep learning, and stay disciplined because the consequences for one wrong step can be severe.

In the end, Panero told Edwards he hopes his writing encourages more people to apply, and Edwards said he hopes even gun-skeptical New Yorkers understand the “gauntlet” involved.

That might be the real power of the story. Not the politics. Not the slogans. Just the raw reality of what it takes to be legal in a city where the law seems designed to make legal behavior exhausting.