Given its harried approach to rewriting its gun laws earlier this year, it’s no surprise a U.S. District Court Judge has rules parts of New York’s handgun laws are unconstitutional.

Judge Glenn Suddaby had already said in a prior case he was likely to find parts of the law unconstitutional. Suddaby ruled Thursday the state can’t ban people from carrying gns in New York City’s subway or Times Square, though the state does have the right to exclude guns from certain other locations, including schools. He also ruled that licensing rules requiring an applicant to be of “good moral character” and another that required applicants to turn over information about their social media accounts were unconstitutional. Rules prohibiting most people from carrying guns into schools, government buildings, polling places and places of worship were OK, the judge wrote. But the state couldn’t put new bans on people from carrying handguns on public transportation systems, in summer camps or places where alcohol is consumed.

Suddaby also dealt a blow to a provision prohibiting people from bringing guns onto someone else’s property unless the owners give permission — by posting a sign in a shop window, for instance.

“Simply stated, instead of moving toward becoming a shall-issue jurisdiction, New York State has further entrenched itself as a shall-not-issue jurisdiction. And, by doing so, it has further reduced a first-class constitutional right to bear arms in public for self defense … into a mere request,” wrote Suddaby, who sits in Syracuse.

The state has appealed the ruling, so the court battle over this flawed law will continue for some time. In our view Suddaby has made the right decision — the law, as written, is more restrictive than the law the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional earlier this year. It would have been better if Gov. Kathy Hochul and legislative Democrats had wrtiten a law aimed at meeting the needs of legal gun owners and public safety rather than using special session shenanigans to thumb its nose at the U.S. Supreme Court. Of course, that would require governing rather than playing politics — and New York has proven time and again to be really good at politics and pretty bad at governing.