NYC hot dog vendor - the next Heller?

According to the NY Sun, a hot dog vendor arrested back in 2006 for having an unregistered (and hence illegal under NYC law) revolver is using the Supreme Court's landmark D.C. v. Heller decision to challenge his prosecution.

If New York's strict antigun laws are overturned in the near future, it may be the work of a hot dog vendor.

The vendor, Daniel Vargas, is due next month in court to fight misdemeanor charges that he kept an unlicensed revolver loaded on a basement shelf in his apartment. The case, which has generated 23 hearings and been heard by no fewer than 10 different judges as it winds through Brooklyn's lowest criminal court, would be of little general interest, except for the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that the Second Amendment protects a right to keep a handgun at home for self-defense.

Now, suddenly, Mr. Vargas's case, as well as a handful of other cases, are testing the authority of district attorneys to prosecute people for gun possession, a strategy that Mayor Bloomberg has emphasized in his criminal justice policies.

Read the article here. The article doesn't appear to mention the incorporation issue, that is, the legal issue of whether the Second Amendment applies to the states as well as the federal government. The courts will likely need to decide that issue if Mr. Vargas is to prevail on a Second Amendment defense.

We're starting to see defense attorneys across the country raise the Second Amendment issue with renewed vigor in light of the Supreme Court's Heller decision. Unfortunately, many of the defendants raising the Second Amendment defense are likely to be unsavory characters, with long criminal records. With regard to Mr. Vargas' case, we don't know whether or not he has a prior criminal record, at least not that I could tell from the article. Mr. Vargas is reportedly charged solely with gun possession in his home, however, with no allegation that he used the gun to commit a crime.