Supreme Court of the United States

JUSTICE BREYER, with whom JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR and JUSTICE KAGAN join, dissenting.

In 2020, 45,222 Americans were killed by firearms. See Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Fast Facts: Firearm Violence Prevention (last updated May 4, 2022) (CDC, Fast Facts), https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/firearms/fastfact.html . Since the start of this year (2022), there have been 277 reported mass shootings---an average of more than one per day. See Gun Violence Archive, https://www.gunviolence archive.org. Gun violence has now surpassed motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of death among children and adolescents. J. Goldstick, R. Cunningham, & P. Carter, Current Causes of Death in Children and Adolescents in the United States, 386 New England J. Med. 1955 (May 19, 2022) (Goldstick).

Many States have tried to address some of the dangers of gun violence just described by passing laws that limit, in various ways, who may purchase, carry, or use firearms of different kinds. The Court today severely burdens States’ efforts to do so. It invokes the Second Amendment to strike down a New York law regulating the public carriage of concealed handguns. In my view, that decision rests upon several serious mistakes.

First, the Court decides this case on the basis of the pleadings, without the benefit of discovery or an evidentiary record. As a result, it may well rest its decision on a mistaken understanding of how New York’s law operates in practice. Second, the Court wrongly limits its analysis to focus nearly exclusively on history. It refuses to consider the government interests that justify a challenged gun regulation, regardless of how compelling those interests may be. The Constitution contains no such limitation, and neither do our precedents. Third, the Court itself demonstrates the practical problems with its history-only approach. In applying that approach to New York’s law, the Court fails to correctly identify and analyze the relevant historical facts. Only by ignoring an abundance of historical evidence supporting regulations restricting the public carriage of firearms can the Court conclude that New York’s law is not "consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation." See ante, at 15.

In my view, when courts interpret the Second Amendment, it is constitutionally proper, indeed often necessary, for them to consider the serious dangers and consequences of gun violence that lead States to regulate firearms. The Second Circuit has done so and has held that New York’s law does not violate the Second Amendment. See Kachalsky v. County of Westchester, 701 F. 3d 81, 97-99, 101 (2012). I would affirm that holding. At a minimum, I would not strike down the law based only on the pleadings, as the Court does today---without first allowing for the development of an evidentiary record and without considering the State’s compelling interest in preventing gun violence. I respectfully dissent.

I

The question before us concerns the extent to which the Second Amendment prevents democratically elected offi- cials from enacting laws to address the serious problem of gun violence. And yet the Court today purports to answer that question without discussing the nature or severity of that problem.

In 2017, there were an estimated 393.3 million civilian held firearms in the United States, or about 120 firearms per 100 people. A. Karp, Estimating Global Civilian Held Firearms Numbers, Small Arms Survey 4 (June 2018), https://www.smallarmssurvey.org/sites/default/files/resources/SAS-BP-Civilian-Firearms-Numbers.pdf. That is more guns per capita than in any other country in the world. Ibid. (By comparison, Yemen is second with about 52.8 firearms per 100 people---less than half the per capita rate in the United States---and some countries, like Indonesia and Japan, have fewer than one firearm per 100 people. Id., at 3-4.)

Unsurprisingly, the United States also suffers a disproportionately high rate of firearm-related deaths and injuries. Cf. Brief for Educational Fund To Stop Gun Violence et al. as Amici Curiae 17-18 (Brief for Educational Fund) (citing studies showing that, within the United States, "states that rank among the highest in gun ownership also rank among the highest in gun deaths" while "states with lower rates of gun ownership have lower rates of gun deaths"). In 2015, approximately 36,000 people were killed by firearms nationwide. M. Siegel et al., Easiness of Legal Access to Concealed Firearm Permits and Homicide Rates in the United States, 107 Am. J. Pub. Health 1923 (2017). Of those deaths, 22,018 (or about 61%) were suicides, 13,463 (37%) were homicides, and 489 (1%) were unintentional injuries. Ibid. On top of that, firearms caused an average of 85,694 emergency room visits for nonfatal injuries each year between 2009 and 2017. E. Kaufman et al., Epidemiological Trends in Fatal and Nonfatal Firearm Injuries in the US, 2009-2017, 181 JAMA Internal Medicine 237 (2021) (Kaufman)

Worse yet, gun violence appears to be on the rise. By 2020, the number of firearm-related deaths had risen to 45,222, CDC, Fast Facts, or by about 25% since 2015. That means that, in 2020, an average of about 124 people died from gun violence every day. Ibid. As I mentioned above, gun violence has now become the leading cause of death in children and adolescents, surpassing car crashes, which had previously been the leading cause of death in that age group for over 60 years. Goldstick 1955; J. Bates, Guns Became the Leading Cause of Death for American Children and Teens in 2020, Time, Apr. 27, 2022, https://www.time.com/6170864/cause-of-death-children-guns/. And the consequences of gun violence are borne disproportionately by communities of color, and Black communities in particular. See CDC, Age-Adjusted Rates of Firearm-Related Homicide, by Race, Hispanic Origin, and Sex---National Vital Statistics System, United States, 2019, at 1491 (Oct. 22, 2021), https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/pdfs/mm7042a6-H.pdf (documenting 34.9 firearm-related homicides per 100,000 population for non-Hispanic Black men in 2019, compared to 7.7 such homicides per 100,000 population for men of all races); S. Kegler et al., CDC, Vital Signs: Changes in Firearm Homicide and Suicide Rates---United States, 2019-2020, at 656-658 (May 13, 2022), https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/pdfs/mm7119e1-H.pdf.

The dangers posed by firearms can take many forms. Newspapers report mass shootings occurring at an entertainment district in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (3 dead and 11 injured); an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas (21 dead); a supermarket in Buffalo, New York (10 dead and 3 injured); a series of spas in Atlanta, Georgia (8 dead); a busy street in an entertainment district of Dayton, Ohio (9 dead and 17 injured); a nightclub in Orlando, Florida (50 dead and 53 injured); a church in Charleston, South Carolina (9 dead); a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado (12 dead and 50 injured); an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut (26 dead); and many, many more. See, e.g., R. Todt, 3 Dead, 11 Wounded in Philadelphia Shooting on Busy Street, Washington Post, June 5, 2022; A. Hernández, J. Slater, D. Barrett, & S. Foster-Frau, At Least 19 Children, 2 Teachers Killed at Texas Elementary School, Washington Post, May 25, 2022; A. Joly, J. Slater, D. Barrett, & A. Hernandez, 10 Killed in Racially Motivated Shooting at Buffalo Grocery Store, Washington Post, May 14, 2022; C. McWhirter & V. Bauerlein, Atlanta-Area Shootings at Spas Leave Eight Dead, Wall Street Journal, Mar. 17, 2021; A. Hassan, Dayton Gunman Shot 26 People in 32 Seconds, Police Timeline Reveals, N. Y. Times, Aug. 13, 2019; L. Alvarez & R. Pérez-Peña, Orlando Gunman Attacks Gay Nightclub, Leaving 50 Dead, N. Y. Times, June 12, 2016; J. Horowitz, N. Corasaniti, & A. Southall, Nine Killed in Shooting at Black Church in Charleston, N. Y. Times, June 17, 2015; R. Lin, Gunman Kills 12 at ‘Dark Knight Rises’ Screening in Colorado, L. A. Times, July 20, 2012; J. Barron, Nation Reels After Gunman Massacres 20 Children at School in Connecticut, N. Y. Times, Dec. 14, 2012. Since the start of this year alone (2022), there have already been 277 reported mass shootings---an average of more than one per day. Gun Violence Archive; see also Gun Violence Archive, General Methodology, https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/methodology (defining mass shootings to include incidents in which at least four victims are shot, not including the shooter).

And mass shootings are just one part of the problem. Easy access to firearms can also make many other aspects of American life more dangerous. Consider, for example, the effect of guns on road rage. In 2021, an average of 44 people each month were shot and either killed or wounded in road rage incidents, double the annual average between 2016 and 2019. S. Burd-Sharps & K. Bistline, Everytown for Gun Safety, Reports of Road Rage Shootings Are on the Rise (Apr. 4, 2022), https://www.everytownresearch.org/reports-of-road-rage-shootings-are-on-the-rise/ ; see also J. Donohue, A. Aneja, & K. Weber, Right-to-Carry Laws and Violent Crime: A Comprehensive Assessment Using Panel Data and a State-Level Synthetic Control Analysis, 16 J. Empirical Legal Studies 198, 204 (2019). Some of those deaths might have been avoided if there had not been a loaded gun in the car. See ibid.; Brief for American Bar Association as Amicus Curiae 17-18; Brief for Educational Fund 20-23 (citing studies showing that the presence of a firearm is likely to increase aggression in both the person carrying the gun and others who see it).

The same could be said of protests: A study of 30,000 protests between January 2020 and June 2021 found that armed protests were nearly six times more likely to become violent or destructive than unarmed protests. Everytown for Gun Safety, Armed Assembly: Guns, Demonstrations, and Political Violence in America (Aug. 23, 2021), https://www.everytownresearch.org/report/armed-assembly-guns-demonstrations-and-political-violence-in-america/ (finding that 16% of armed protests turned violent, compared to less than 3% of unarmed protests). Or domestic disputes: Another study found that a woman is five times more likely to be killed by an abusive partner if that partner has access to a gun. Brief for Educational Fund 8 (citing A. Zeoli, R. Malinski, & B. Turchan, Risks and Targeted Interventions: Firearms in Intimate Partner Violence, 38 Epidemiologic Revs. 125 (2016); J. Campbell et al., Risk Factors for Femicide in Abusive Relationships: Results From a Multisite Case Control Study, 93 Am. J. Pub. Health 1089, 1092 (2003)). Or suicides: A study found that men who own handguns are three times as likely to commit suicide than men who do not and women who own handguns are seven times as likely to commit suicide than women who do not. D. Studdert et al., Handgun Ownership and Suicide in California, 382 New England J. Med. 2220, 2224 (June 4, 2020).

Consider, too, interactions with police officers. The presence of a gun in the hands of a civilian poses a risk to both officers and civilians. Amici prosecutors and police chiefs tell us that most officers who are killed in the line of duty are killed by firearms; they explain that officers in States with high rates of gun ownership are three times as likely to be killed in the line of duty as officers in States with low rates of gun ownership. Brief for Prosecutors Against Gun Violence as Amicus Curiae 23-24; Brief for Former Major City Police Chiefs as Amici Curiae 13-14, and n. 21, (citing D. Swedler, M. Simmons, F. Dominici, & D. Hemenway, Firearm Prevalence and Homicides of Law Enforcement Officers in the United States, 105 Am. J. Pub. Health 2042, 2045 (2015)). They also say that States with the highest rates of gun ownership report four times as many fatal shootings of civilians by police officers compared to States with the lowest rates of gun ownership. Brief for Former Major City Police Chiefs as Amici Curiae 16 (citing D. Hemenway, D. Azrael, A. Connor, & M. Miller, Variation in Rates of Fatal Police Shootings Across US States: The Role of Firearm Availability, 96 J. Urb. Health 63, 67 (2018)).

These are just some examples of the dangers that firearms pose. There is, of course, another side to the story. I am not simply saying that "guns are bad." See ante, at 8 (ALITO, J., concurring). Some Americans use guns for legitimate purposes, such as sport (e.g., hunting or target shooting), certain types of employment (e.g., as a private security guard), or self-defense. Cf. ante, at 4-6 (ALITO, J., concurring). Balancing these lawful uses against the dangers of firearms is primarily the responsibility of elected bodies, such as legislatures. It requires consideration of facts, statistics, expert opinions, predictive judgments, relevant values, and a host of other circumstances, which together make decisions about how, when, and where to regulate guns more appropriately legislative work. That consideration counsels modesty and restraint on the part of judges when they interpret and apply the Second Amendment.

Consider, for one thing, that different types of firearms may pose different risks and serve different purposes. The Court has previously observed that handguns, the type of firearm at issue here, "are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home." District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, 629 (2008). But handguns are also the most popular weapon chosen by perpetrators of violent crimes. In 2018, 64.4% of firearm homicides and 91.8% of nonfatal firearm assaults were committed with a handgun. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, G. Kena & J. Truman, Trends and Patterns in Firearm Violence, 1993-2018, pp. 5-6 (Apr. 2022). Handguns are also the most commonly stolen type of firearm---63% of burglaries resulting in gun theft between 2005 and 2010 involved the theft of at least one handgun. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, L. Langton, Firearms Stolen During Household Burglaries and Other Property Crimes, 2005-2010, p. 3 (Nov. 2012).

Or consider, for another thing, that the dangers and benefits posed by firearms may differ between urban and rural areas. See generally Brief for City of Chicago et al. as Amici Curiae (detailing particular concerns about gun violence in large cities). Firearm-related homicides and assaults are significantly more common in urban areas than rural ones. For example, from 1999 to 2016, 89.8% of the 213,175 firearm-related homicides in the United States occurred in "metropolitan" areas. M. Siegel et al., The Impact of State Firearm Laws on Homicide Rates in Suburban and Rural Areas Compared to Large Cities in the United States, 1991-2016, 36 J. Rural Health 255 (2020); see also Brief for Partnership for New York City as Amicus Curiae 10; Kaufman 237 (finding higher rates of fatal assault injuries from firearms in urban areas compared to rural areas); C. Branas, M. Nance, M. Elliott, T. Richmond, & C. Schwab, Urban-Rural Shifts in Intentional Firearm Death: Different Causes, Same Results, 94 Am. J. Pub. Health 1750, 1752 (2004) (finding higher rates of firearm homicide in urban counties compared to rural counties).

JUSTICE ALITO asks why I have begun my opinion by reviewing some of the dangers and challenges posed by gun violence and what relevance that has to today’s case. Ante, at 2-4 (concurring opinion). All of the above considerations illustrate that the question of firearm regulation presents a complex problem---one that should be solved by legislatures rather than courts. What kinds of firearm regulations should a State adopt? Different States might choose to answer that question differently. They may face different challenges because of their different geographic and demographic compositions. A State like New York, which must account for the roughly 8.5 million people living in the 303 square miles of New York City, might choose to adopt different (and stricter) firearms regulations than States like Montana or Wyoming, which do not contain any city remotely comparable in terms of population or density. See U. S. Census Bureau, Quick Facts: New York City (last updated July 1, 2021) (Quick Facts: New York City), https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/newyorkcitynewyork/; Brief for City of New York as Amicus Curiae 8, 22. For a variety of reasons, States may also be willing to tolerate different degrees of risk and therefore choose to balance the competing benefits and dangers of firearms differently.

The question presented in this case concerns the extent to which the Second Amendment restricts different States (and the Federal Government) from working out solutions to these problems through democratic processes. The primary difference between the Court’s view and mine is that I believe the Amendment allows States to take account of the serious problems posed by gun violence that I have just described. I fear that the Court’s interpretation ignores these significant dangers and leaves States without the ability to address them.

II

A

New York State requires individuals to obtain a license in order to carry a concealed handgun in public. N. Y. Penal Law Ann. §400.00(2) (West Cum. Supp. 2022). I address the specifics of that licensing regime in greater detail in Part II-B below. Because, at this stage in the proceedings, the parties have not had an opportunity to develop the evidentiary record, I refer to facts and representations made in petitioners’ complaint and in amicus briefs filed before us.

Under New York’s regime, petitioners Brandon Koch and Robert Nash have obtained restricted licenses that permit them to carry a concealed handgun for certain purposes and at certain times and places. They wish to expand the scope of their licenses so that they can carry a concealed handgun without restriction.

Koch and Nash are residents of Rensselaer County, New York. Koch lives in Troy, a town of about 50,000, located eight miles from New York’s capital city of Albany, which has a population of about 98,000. See App. 100; U. S. Census Bureau, Quick Facts: Troy City, New York (last updated July 1, 2021), https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/troycitynewyork; id., Albany City, New York, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/albanycitynewyork. Nash lives in Averill Park, a small town 12.5 miles from Albany. App. 100.

Koch and Nash each applied for a license to carry a concealed handgun. Both were issued restricted licenses that allowed them to carry handguns only for purposes of hunting and target shooting. Id., at 104, 106. But they wanted "unrestricted" licenses that would allow them to carry concealed handguns "for personal protection and all lawful purposes." Id., at 112; see also id., at 40. They wrote to the licensing officer in Rensselaer County---Justice Richard McNally, a justice of the New York Supreme Court---requesting that the hunting and target shooting restrictions on their licenses be removed. Id., at 40, 111-113. After holding individual hearings for each petitioner, Justice McNally denied their requests. Id., at 31, 41, 105, 107, 114. He clarified that, in addition to hunting and target shooting, Koch and Nash could "carry concealed for purposes of off road back country, outdoor activities similar to hunting, for example fishing, hiking & camping." Id., at 41, 114. He also permitted Koch, who was employed by the New York Court System’s Division of Technology, to "carry to and from work." Id., at 111, 114. But he reaffirmed that Nash was prohibited from carrying a concealed handgun in locations "typically open to and frequented by the general public." Id., at 41. Neither Koch nor Nash alleges that he appealed Justice McNally’s decision. Brief for Respondents 13; see App. 122-126.

Instead, petitioners Koch and Nash, along with the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., brought this lawsuit in federal court against Justice McNally and other State representatives responsible for enforcing New York’s firearms laws. Petitioners claimed that the State’s refusal to modify Koch’s and Nash’s licenses violated the Second Amendment. The District Court dismissed their complaint. It followed Second Circuit precedent holding that New York’s licensing regime was constitutional. See Kachalsky, 701 F. 3d, at 101. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed. We granted certiorari to review the constitutionality of "New York’s denial of petitioners’ license applications." Ante, at 8 (majority opinion).

B

As the Court recognizes, New York’s licensing regime traces its origins to 1911, when New York enacted the "Sullivan Law," which prohibited public carriage of handguns without a license. See 1911 N. Y. Laws ch. 195, §1, p. 443. Two years later in 1913, New York amended the law to establish substantive standards for the issuance of a license. See 1913 N. Y. Laws ch. 608, §1, pp. 1627-1629. Those standards have remained the foundation of New York’s licensing regime ever since---a regime that the Court now, more than a century later, strikes down as unconstitutional.

As it did over 100 years ago, New York’s law today continues to require individuals to obtain a license before carrying a concealed handgun in public. N. Y. Penal Law Ann. §400.00(2); Kachalsky, 701 F. 3d, at 85-86. Because the State does not allow the open carriage of handguns at all, a concealed-carry license is the only way to legally carry a handgun in public. Id., at 86. This licensing requirement applies only to handguns (i.e., "pistols and revolvers") and short-barreled rifles and shotguns, not to all types of firearms. Id., at 85. For instance, the State does not require a license to carry a long gun (i.e., a rifle or a shotgun over a certain length) in public. Ibid.; §265.00(3) (West 2022).

To obtain a concealed-carry license for a handgun, an applicant must satisfy certain eligibility criteria. Among other things, he must generally be at least 21 years old and of "good moral character." §400.00(1). And he cannot have been convicted of a felony, dishonorably discharged from the military, or involuntarily committed to a mental hygiene facility. Ibid. If these and other eligibility criteria are satisfied, New York law provides that a concealed-carry license "shall be issued" to individuals working in certain professions, such as judges, corrections officers, or messengers of a "banking institution or express company." §400.00(2). Individuals who satisfy the eligibility criteria but do not work in one of these professions may still obtain a concealed-carry license, but they must additionally show that "proper cause exists for the issuance thereof." §400.00(2)(f ).

The words "proper cause" may appear on their face to be broad, but there is "a substantial body of law instructing licensing officials on the application of this standard." Id., at 86. New York courts have interpreted proper cause "to include carrying a handgun for target practice, hunting, or self-defense." Ibid. When an applicant seeks a license for target practice or hunting, he must show " ‘a sincere desire to participate in target shooting and hunting.’ " Ibid. (quoting In re O’Connor, 154 Misc. 2d 694, 697, 585 N. Y. S. 2d 1000, 1003 (Westchester Cty. 1992)). When an applicant seeks a license for self-defense, he must show " ‘a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community.’ " 701 F. 3d, at 86 (quoting In re Klenosky, 75 App. Div. 2d 793, 793, 428 N. Y. S. 2d 256, 257 (1980)). Whether an applicant meets these proper cause standards is determined in the first instance by a "licensing officer in the city or county . . . where the applicant resides." §400.00(3). In most counties, the licensing officer is a local judge. Kachalsky, 701 F. 3d, at 87, n. 6. For example, in Rensselaer County, the licensing officer who denied petitioners’ requests to remove the restrictions on their licenses was a justice of the New York Supreme Court. App. 31. If the officer denies an application, the applicant can obtain judicial review under Article 78 of New York’s Civil Practice Law and Rules. Kachalsky, 701 F. 3d, at 87. New York courts will then review whether the denial was arbitrary and capricious. Ibid.

In describing New York’s law, the Court recites the above facts but adds its own gloss. It suggests that New York’s licensing regime gives licensing officers too much discretion and provides too "limited" judicial review of their decisions, ante, at 4; that the proper cause standard is too "demanding," ante, at 3; and that these features make New York an outlier compared to the "vast majority of States," ante, at 4. But on what evidence does the Court base these characterizations? Recall that this case comes to us at the pleading stage. The parties have not had an opportunity to conduct discovery, and no evidentiary hearings have been held to develop the record. See App. 15-26. Thus, at this point, there is no record to support the Court’s negative characterizations, as we know very little about how the law has actually been applied on the ground.

Consider each of the Court’s criticisms in turn. First, the Court says that New York gives licensing officers too much discretion and "leaves applicants little recourse if their local licensing officer denies a permit." Ante, at 4. But there is nothing unusual about broad statutory language that can be given more specific content by judicial interpretation. Nor is there anything unusual or inadequate about subjecting licensing officers’ decisions to arbitrary-and-capricious review. Judges routinely apply that standard, for example, to determine whether an agency action is lawful under both New York law and the Administrative Procedure Act. See, e.g., N. Y. Civ. Prac. Law Ann. §7803(3) (2021); 5 U. S. C. §706(2)(A). The arbitrary-and-capricious standard has thus been used to review important policies concerning health, safety, and immigration, to name just a few examples. See, e.g., Biden v. Missouri, 595 U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (per curiam) (slip op., at 8); Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of Univ. of Cal., 591 U. S. ___, ___, ___ (2020) (slip op., at 9, 17); Department of Commerce v. New York, 588 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (slip op., at 16); Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Assn. of United States, Inc. v. State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co., 463 U. S. 29, 41, 46 (1983).

Without an evidentiary record, there is no reason to assume that New York courts applying this standard fail to provide license applicants with meaningful review. And there is no evidentiary record to support the Court’s assumption here. Based on the pleadings alone, we cannot know how often New York courts find the denial of a concealed-carry license to be arbitrary and capricious or on what basis. We do not even know how a court would have reviewed the licensing officer’s decisions in Koch’s and Nash’s cases because they do not appear to have sought judicial review at all. See Brief for Respondents 13; App. 122-126.

Second, the Court characterizes New York’s proper cause standard as substantively "demanding." Ante, at 3. But, again, the Court has before it no evidentiary record to demonstrate how the standard has actually been applied. How "demanding" is the proper cause standard in practice? Does that answer differ from county to county? How many license applications are granted and denied each year? At the pleading stage, we do not know the answers to these and other important questions, so the Court’s characterization of New York’s law may very well be wrong.

In support of its assertion that the law is "demanding," the Court cites only to cases originating in New York City. Ibid. (citing In re Martinek, 294 App. Div. 2d 221, 743 N. Y. S. 2d 80 (2002) (New York County, i.e., Manhattan); In re Kaplan, 249 App. Div. 2d 199, 673 N. Y. S. 2d 66 (1998) (same); In re Klenosky, 75 App. Div. 2d 793, 428 N. Y. S. 2d 256 (same); In re Bernstein, 85 App. Div. 2d 574, 445 N. Y. S. 2d 716 (1981) (Bronx County)). But cases from New York City may not accurately represent how the proper cause standard is applied in other parts of the State, including in Rensselaer County where petitioners reside.

To the contrary, amici tell us that New York’s licensing regime is purposefully flexible: It allows counties and cities to respond to the particular needs and challenges of each area. See Brief for American Bar Association as Amicus Curiae 12; Brief for City of New York as Amicus Curiae 20-29. Amici suggest that some areas may interpret words such as "proper cause" or "special need" more or less strictly, depending upon each area’s unique circumstances. See ibid. New York City, for example, reports that it "has applied the [proper cause] requirement relatively rigorously" because its densely populated urban areas pose a heightened risk of gun violence. Brief for City of New York as Amicus Curiae 20. In comparison, other (perhaps more rural) counties "have tailored the requirement to their own circumstances, often issuing concealed-carry licenses more freely than the City." Ibid.; see also In re O’Connor, 154 Misc. 2d, at 698, 585 N. Y. S. 2d, at 1004 ("The circumstances which exist in New York City are significantly different than those which exist in Oswego or Putnam Counties. . . . The licensing officers in each county are in the best position to determine whether any interest of the population of their county is furthered by the use of restrictions on pistol licenses"); Brief for Citizens Crime Commission of New York City as Amicus Curiae 18-19. Given the geographic variation across the State, it is too sweeping for the Court to suggest, without an evidentiary record, that the proper cause standard is "demanding" in Rensselaer County merely because it may be so in New York City.

Finally, the Court compares New York’s licensing regime to that of other States. Ante, at 4-6. It says that New York’s law is a "may issue" licensing regime, which the Court describes as a law that provides licensing officers greater discretion to grant or deny licenses than a "shall issue" licensing regime. Ante, at 4-5. Because the Court counts 43 "shall issue" jurisdictions and only 7 "may issue" jurisdictions, it suggests that New York’s law is an outlier. Ibid.; see also ante, at 1-2 (KAVANAUGH, J., concurring). Implicitly, the Court appears to ask, if so many other States have adopted the more generous "shall issue" approach, why can New York not be required to do the same?

But the Court’s tabulation, and its implicit question, overlook important context. In drawing a line between "may issue" and "shall issue" licensing regimes, the Court ignores the degree of variation within and across these categories. Not all "may issue" regimes are necessarily alike, nor are all "shall issue" regimes. Conversely, not all "may issue" regimes are as different from the "shall issue" regimes as the Court assumes. For instance, the Court recognizes in a footnote that three States (Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island) have statutes with discretionary criteria, like so-called "may issue" regimes do. Ante, at 5, n. 1. But the Court nonetheless counts them among the 43 "shall issue" jurisdictions because, it says, these three States’ laws operate in practice more like "shall issue" regimes. Ibid.; see also Brief for American Bar Association as Amicus Curiae 10 (recognizing, conversely, that some "shall issue" States, e.g., Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Oregon, and Virginia, still grant some degree of discretion to licensing authorities).

As these three States demonstrate, the line between "may issue" and "shall issue" regimes is not as clear cut as the Court suggests, and that line depends at least in part on how statutory discretion is applied in practice. Here, because the Court strikes down New York’s law without affording the State an opportunity to develop an evidentiary record, we do not know how much discretion licensing officers in New York have in practice or how that discretion is exercised, let alone how the licensing regimes in the other six "may issue" jurisdictions operate.

Even accepting the Court’s line between "may issue" and "shall issue" regimes and assuming that its tally (7 "may issue" and 43 "shall issue" jurisdictions) is correct, that count does not support the Court’s implicit suggestion that the seven "may issue" jurisdictions are somehow outliers or anomalies. The Court’s count captures only a snapshot in time. It forgets that "shall issue" licensing regimes are a relatively recent development. Until the 1980s, "may issue" regimes predominated. See id., at 9; R. Grossman & S. Lee, May Issue Versus Shall Issue: Explaining the Pattern of Concealed-Carry Handgun Laws, 1960-2001, 26 Contemp. Econ. Pol’y 198, 200 (2008) (Grossman). As of 1987, 16 States and the District of Columbia prohibited concealed Even accepting the Court’s line between "may issue" and "shall issue" regimes and assuming that its tally (7 "may issue" and 43 "shall issue" jurisdictions) is correct, that count does not support the Court’s implicit suggestion that the seven "may issue" jurisdictions are somehow outliers or anomalies. The Court’s count captures only a snapshot in time. It forgets that "shall issue" licensing regimes are a relatively recent development. Until the 1980s, "may issue" regimes predominated. See id., at 9; R. Grossman & S. Lee, May Issue Versus Shall Issue: Explaining the Pattern of Concealed-Carry Handgun Laws, 1960-2001, 26 Contemp. Econ. Pol’y 198, 200 (2008) (Grossman). As of 1987, 16 States and the District of Columbia prohibited concealed

Moreover, even considering, as the Court does, only the present state of play, its tally provides an incomplete picture because it accounts for only the number of States with "may issue" regimes, not the number of people governed by those regimes. By the Court’s count, the seven "may issue" jurisdictions are New York, California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia. Ante, at 5-6. Together, these seven jurisdictions comprise about 84.4 million people and account for over a quarter of the country’s population. U. S. Census Bureau, 2020 Population and Housing State Data (Aug. 12, 2021) (2020 Population), https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/2020-population-and-housing-state-data.html. Thus, "may issue" laws can hardly be described as a marginal or outdated regime.

And there are good reasons why these seven jurisdictions may have chosen not to follow other States in shifting toward "shall issue" regimes. The seven remaining "may issue" jurisdictions are among the most densely populated in the United States: the District of Columbia (with an average of 11,280.0 people/square mile in 2020), New Jersey (1,263.0), Massachusetts (901.2), Maryland (636.1), New York (428.7), California (253.7), and Hawaii (226.6). U. S. Census Bureau, Historical Population Density (1910-2020) (Apr. 26, 2001), https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/density-data-text.html. In comparison, the average population density of the United States as a whole is 93.8 people/square mile, and some States have population densities as low as 1.3 (Alaska), 5.9 (Wyoming), and 7.4 (Montana) people/square mile. Ibid. These numbers reflect in part the fact that these "may issue" jurisdictions contain some of the country’s densest and most populous urban areas, e.g., New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, the District of Columbia, Honolulu, and Boston. U. S. Census Bureau, Urban Area Facts (Oct. 8, 2021), https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/geo-areas/urban-rural/ua-facts.html. New York City, for example, has a population of about 8.5 million people, making it more populous than 38 States, and it squeezes that population into just over 300 square miles. Quick Facts: New York City; 2020 Population; Brief for City of New York as Amicus Curiae 8, 22.

As I explained above, supra, at 8-9, densely populatedurban areas face different kinds and degrees of dangers from gun violence than rural areas. It is thus easy to see why the seven "may issue" jurisdictions might choose to regulate firearm carriage more strictly than other States. See Grossman 199 ("We find strong evidence that more urban states are less likely to shift to ‘shall issue’ than rural states").

New York and its amici present substantial data justifying the State’s decision to retain a "may issue" licensing regime. The data show that stricter gun regulations are associated with lower rates of firearm-related death and injury. See, e.g., Brief for Citizens Crime Commission of New York City as Amicus Curiae 9-11; Brief for Former Major City Police Chiefs as Amici Curiae 9-12; Brief for Educational Fund 25-28; Brief for Social Scientists et al. as Amici Curiae 9-19. In particular, studies have shown that "may issue" licensing regimes, like New York’s, are associated with lower homicide rates and lower violent crime rates than "shall issue" licensing regimes. For example, one study compared homicide rates across all 50 States during the 25-year period from 1991 to 2015 and found that "shall issue" laws were associated with 6.5% higher total homicide rates, 8.6% higher firearm homicide rates, and 10.6% higher handgun homicide rates. Siegel, 107 Am. J. Pub. Health, at 1924-1925, 1927. Another study longitudinally followed 33 States that had adopted "shall-issue" laws between 1981 and 2007 and found that the adoption of those laws was associated with a 13%-15% increase in rates of violent crime after 10 years. Donohue, 16 J. Empirical Legal Studies, at 200, 240. Numerous other studies show similar results. See, e.g., Siegel, 36 J. Rural Health, at 261 (finding that "may issue" laws are associated with 17% lower firearm homicide rates in large cities); C. Crifasi et al., Association Between Firearm Laws and Homicide in Urban Counties, 95 J. Urb. Health 383, 387 (2018) (finding that "shall issue" laws are associated with a 4% increase in firearm homicide rates in urban counties); M. Doucette, C. Crifasi, & S. Frattaroli, Right-to-Carry Laws and Firearm Workplace Homicides: A Longitudinal Analysis (1992-2017), 109 Am. J. Pub. Health 1747, 1751 (Dec. 2019) (finding that States with "shall issue" laws between 1992 and 2017 experienced 29% higher rates of firearm-related workplace homicides); Brief for Social Scientists et al. as Amici Curiae 15-16, and nn. 17-20 (citing "thirteen . . . empirical papers from just the last few years linking ["shall issue"] laws to higher violent crime").

JUSTICE ALITO points to competing empirical evidence that arrives at a different conclusion. Ante, at 3, n. 1 (concurring opinion). But these types of disagreements are exactly the sort that are better addressed by legislatures than courts. The Court today restricts the ability of legislatures to fulfill that role. It does so without knowing how New York’s law is administered in practice, how much discretion licensing officers in New York possess, or whether the proper cause standard differs across counties. And it does so without giving the State an opportunity to develop the evidentiary record to answer those questions. Yet it strikes down New York’s licensing regime as a violation of the Second Amendment.

III

A

How does the Court justify striking down New York’s law without first considering how it actually works on the ground and what purposes it serves? The Court does so by purporting to rely nearly exclusively on history. It requires "the government [to] affirmatively prove that its firearms regulation is part of the historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of ‘the right to keep and bear arms.’ " Ante, at 10. Beyond this historical inquiry, the Court refuses to employ what it calls "means-end scrutiny." Ibid. That is, it refuses to consider whether New York has a compelling interest in regulating the concealed carriage of handguns or whether New York’s law is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest. Although I agree that history can often be a useful tool in determining the meaning and scope of constitutional provisions, I believe the Court’s near-exclusive reliance on that single tool today goes much too far.

The Court concedes that no Court of Appeals has adopted its rigid history-only approach. See ante, at 8. To the contrary, every Court of Appeals to have addressed the question has agreed on a two-step framework for evaluating whether a firearm regulation is consistent with the Second Amendment. Ibid.; ante, at 10, n. 4 (majority opinion) (listing cases from the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, and D. C. Circuits). At the first step, the Courts of Appeals use text and history to determine "whether the regulated activity falls within the scope of the Second Amendment." Ezell v. Chicago, 846 F. 3d 888, 892 (CA7 2017). If it does, they go on to the second step and consider " ‘the strength of the government’s justification for restricting or regulating’ " the Second Amendment right. Ibid. In doing so, they apply a level of "means-ends" scrutiny "that is proportionate to the severity of the burden that the law imposes on the right": strict scrutiny if the burden is severe, and intermediate scrutiny if it is not. National Rifle Assn. of Am., Inc. v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, 700 F. 3d 185, 195, 198, 205 (CA5 2012).

The Court today replaces the Courts of Appeals’ consensus framework with its own history-only approach. That is unusual. We do not normally disrupt settled consensus among the Courts of Appeals, especially not when that consensus approach has been applied without issue for over a decade. See Brief for Second Amendment Law Professors as Amici Curiae 4, 13-15; see also this Court’s Rule 10. The Court attempts to justify its deviation from our normal practice by claiming that the Courts of Appeals’ approach is inconsistent with Heller. See ante, at 10. In doing so, the Court implies that all 11 Courts of Appeals that have considered this question misread Heller.

To the contrary, it is this Court that misreads Heller. The opinion in Heller did focus primarily on "constitutional text and history," ante, at 13 (majority opinion), but it did not "rejec[t] . . . means-end scrutiny," as the Court claims, ante, at 15. Consider what the Heller Court actually said. True, the Court spent many pages in Heller discussing the text and historical context of the Second Amendment. 554 U. S., at 579-619. But that is not surprising because the Heller Court was asked to answer the preliminary question whether the Second Amendment right to "bear Arms" encompasses an individual right to possess a firearm in the home for self-defense. Id., at 577. The Heller Court concluded that the Second Amendment’s text and history were sufficiently clear to resolve that question: The Second Amendment, it said, does include such an individual right. Id., at 579-619. There was thus no need for the Court to go further---to look beyond text and history, or to suggest what analysis would be appropriate in other cases where the text and history are not clear.

But the Heller Court did not end its opinion with that preliminary question. After concluding that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm for self-defense, the Heller Court added that that right is "not unlimited." Id., at 626. It thus had to determine whether the District of Columbia’s law, which banned handgun possession in the home, was a permissible regulation of the right. Id., at 628-630. In answering that second question, it said: "Under any of the standards of scrutiny that we have applied to enumerated constitutional rights, banning from the home ‘the most preferred firearm in the nation to "keep" and use for protection of one’s home and family’ would fail constitutional muster." Id., at 628-629 (emphasis added; footnote and citation omitted). That language makes clear that the Heller Court understood some form of means-end scrutiny to apply. It did not need to specify whether that scrutiny should be intermediate or strict because, in its view, the District’s handgun ban was so "severe" that it would have failed either level of scrutiny. Id., at 628-629; see also id., at 628, n. 27 (clarifying that rational-basis review was not the proper level of scrutiny).

Despite Heller’s express invocation of means-end scrutiny, the Court today claims that the majority in Heller rejected means-end scrutiny because it rejected my dissent in that case. But that argument misreads both my dissent and the majority opinion. My dissent in Heller proposed directly weighing "the interests protected by the Second Amendment on one side and the governmental public-safety concerns on the other." Id., at 689. I would have asked "whether the statute burdens a protected interest in a way or to an extent that is out of proportion to the statute’s salutary effects upon other important governmental interests." Id., at 689-690. The majority rejected my dissent, not because I proposed using means-end scrutiny, but because, in its view, I had done the opposite. In its own words, the majority faulted my dissent for proposing "a freestanding ‘interest-balancing’ approach" that accorded with "none of the traditionally expressed levels [of scrutiny] (strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, rational basis)." Id., at 634 (emphasis added).

The majority further made clear that its rejection of freestanding interest balancing did not extend to traditional forms of means-end scrutiny. It said: "We know of no other enumerated constitutional right whose core protection has been subjected to a freestanding ‘interest-balancing’ approach." Ibid. To illustrate this point, it cited as an example the First Amendment right to free speech. Id., at 635. Judges, of course, regularly use means-end scrutiny, including both strict and intermediate scrutiny, when they interpret or apply the First Amendment. See, e.g., United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group, Inc., 529 U. S. 803, 813 (2000) (applying strict scrutiny); Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 520 U. S. 180, 186, 189-190 (1997) (applying intermediate scrutiny). The majority therefore cannot have intended its opinion, consistent with our First Amendment jurisprudence, to be read as rejecting all traditional forms of means-end scrutiny.

As Heller’s First Amendment example illustrates, the Court today is wrong when it says that its rejection of means-end scrutiny and near-exclusive focus on history "accords with how we protect other constitutional rights." Ante, at 15. As the Court points out, we do look to history in the First Amendment context to determine "whether the expressive conduct falls outside of the category of protected speech." Ibid. But, if conduct falls within a category of protected speech, we then use means-end scrutiny to determine whether a challenged regulation unconstitutionally burdens that speech. And the degree of scrutiny we apply often depends on the type of speech burdened and the severity of the burden. See, e.g., Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, 564 U. S. 721, 734 (2011) (applying strict scrutiny to laws that burden political speech); Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U. S. 781, 791 (1989) (applying intermediate scrutiny to time, place, and manner restrictions); Central Hudson Gas & Elec. Corp. v. Public Serv. Comm’n of N. Y., 447 U. S. 557, 564-566 (1980) (applying intermediate scrutiny to laws that burden commercial speech).

Additionally, beyond the right to freedom of speech, we regularly use means-end scrutiny in cases involving other constitutional provisions. See, e.g., Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah, 508 U. S. 520, 546 (1993) (applying strict scrutiny under the First Amendment to laws that restrict free exercise of religion in a way that is not neutral and generally applicable); Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, 515 U. S. 200, 227 (1995) (applying strict scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause to race-based classifications); Clark v. Jeter, 486 U. S. 456, 461 (1988) (applying intermediate scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause to sex-based classifications); see also Virginia v. Moore, 553 U. S. 164, 171 (2008) ("When history has not provided a conclusive answer, we have analyzed a search or seizure in light of traditional standards of reasonableness").

The upshot is that applying means-end scrutiny to laws that regulate the Second Amendment right to bear arms would not create a constitutional anomaly. Rather, it is the Court’s rejection of means-end scrutiny and adoption of a rigid history-only approach that is anomalous.

B

The Court’s near-exclusive reliance on history is not only unnecessary, it is deeply impractical. It imposes a task on the lower courts that judges cannot easily accomplish. Judges understand well how to weigh a law’s objectives (its "ends") against the methods used to achieve those objectives (its "means"). Judges are far less accustomed to resolving difficult historical questions. Courts are, after all, staffed by lawyers, not historians. Legal experts typically have little experience answering contested historical questions or applying those answers to resolve contemporary problems.

The Court’s insistence that judges and lawyers rely nearly exclusively on history to interpret the Second Amendment thus raises a host of troubling questions. Consider, for example, the following. Do lower courts have the research resources necessary to conduct exhaustive historical analyses in every Second Amendment case? What historical regulations and decisions qualify as representative analogues to modern laws? How will judges determine which historians have the better view of close historical questions? Will the meaning of the Second Amendment change if or when new historical evidence becomes available? And, most importantly, will the Court’s approach permit judges to reach the outcomes they prefer and then cloak those outcomes in the language of history? See S. Cornell, Heller, New Originalism, and Law Office History: "Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss," 56 UCLA L. Rev. 1095, 1098 (2009) (describing "law office history" as "a results oriented methodology in which evidence is selectively gathered and interpreted to produce a preordained conclusion").

Consider Heller itself. That case, fraught with difficulthistorical questions, illustrates the practical problems with expecting courts to decide important constitutional questions based solely on history. The majority in Heller undertook 40 pages of textual and historical analysis and concluded that the Second Amendment’s protection of the right to "keep and bear Arms" historically encompassed an "individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation"---that is, for self-defense. 554 U. S., at 592; see also id., at 579-619. Justice Stevens’ dissent conducted an equally searching textual and historical inquiry and concluded, to the contrary, that the term "bear Arms" was an idiom that protected only the right "to use and possess arms in conjunction with service in a well-regulated militia." Id., at 651. I do not intend to relitigate Heller here. I accept its holding as a matter of stare decisis. I refer to its historical analysis only to show the difficulties inherent in answering historical questions and to suggest that judges do not have the expertise needed to answer those questions accurately.

For example, the Heller majority relied heavily on its interpretation of the English Bill of Rights. Citing Blackstone, the majority claimed that the English Bill of Rights protected a " ‘right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defence.’ " Id., at 594 (quoting 1 Commentaries on the Laws of England 140 (1765)). The majority interpreted that language to mean a private right to bear arms for self-defense, "having nothing whatever to do with service in a militia." 554 U. S., at 593. Two years later, however, 21 English and early American historians (including experts at top universities) told us in McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742 (2010), that the Heller Court had gotten the history wrong: The English Bill of Rights "did not . . . protect an individual’s right to possess, own, or use arms for private purposes such as to defend a home against burglars." Brief for English/Early American Historians as Amici Curiae in McDonald v. Chicago, O. T. 2009, No. 08-1521, p. 2. Rather, these amici historians explained, the English right to "have arms" ensured that the Crown could not deny Parliament (which represented the people) the power to arm the landed gentry and raise a militia---or the right of the people to possess arms to take part in that militia---"should the sovereign usurp the laws, liberties, estates, and Protestant religion of the nation." Id., at 2-3. Thus, the English right did protect a right of "self-preservation and defence," as Blackstone said, but that right "was to be exercised not by individuals acting privately or independently, but as a militia organized by their elected representatives," i.e., Parliament. Id., at 7-8. The Court, not an expert in history, had misread Blackstone and other sources explaining the English Bill of Rights.

And that was not the Heller Court’s only questionable judgment. The majority rejected Justice Stevens’ argument that the Second Amendment’s use of the words "bear Arms" drew on an idiomatic meaning that, at the time of the founding, commonly referred to military service. 554 U. S., at 586. Linguistics experts now tell us that the majority was wrong to do so. See, e.g., Brief for Corpus Linguistics Professors and Experts as Amici Curiae (Brief for Linguistics Professors); Brief for Neal Goldfarb as Amicus Curiae; Brief for Americans Against Gun Violence as Amicus Curiae 13-15. Since Heller was decided, experts have searched over 120,000 founding-era texts from between 1760 and 1799, as well as 40,000 texts from sources dating as far back as 1475, for historical uses of the phrase "bear arms," and they concluded that the phrase was overwhelmingly used to refer to " ‘war, soldiering, or other forms of armed action by a group rather than an individual.’ " Brief for Linguistics Professors 11, 14; see also D. Baron, Corpus Evidence Illuminates the Meaning of Bear Arms, 46 Hastings Const. L. Q. 509, 510 (2019) ("Non-military uses of bear arms in reference to hunting or personal self-defense are not just rare, they are almost nonexistent"); id., at 510-511 (reporting 900 instances in which "bear arms" was used to refer to military or collective use of firearms and only 7 instances that were either ambiguous or without a military connotation).

These are just two examples. Other scholars have continued to write books and articles arguing that the Court’s decision in Heller misread the text and history of the Second Amendment. See generally, e.g., M. Waldman, The Second Amendment (2014); S. Cornell, The Changing Meaning of the Right To Keep and Bear Arms: 1688-1788, in Guns in Law 20-27 (A. Sarat, L. Douglas, & M. Umphrey eds. 2019); P. Finkelman, The Living Constitution and the Second Amendment: Poor History, False Originalism, and a Very Confused Court, 37 Cardozo L. Rev. 623 (2015); D. Walker, Necessary to the Security of Free States: The Second Amendment as the Auxiliary Right of Federalism, 56 Am. J. Legal Hist. 365 (2016); W. Merkel, Heller as Hubris, and How McDonald v. City of Chicago May Well Change the Constitutional World as We Know It, 50 Santa Clara L. Rev. 1221 (2010).

I repeat that I do not cite these arguments in order to relitigate Heller. I wish only to illustrate the difficulties that may befall lawyers and judges when they attempt to rely solely on history to interpret the Constitution. In Heller, we attempted to determine the scope of the Second Amendment right to bear arms by conducting a historical analysis, and some of us arrived at very different conclusions based on the same historical sources. Many experts now tell us that the Court got it wrong in a number of ways. That is understandable given the difficulty of the inquiry that the Court attempted to undertake. The Court’s past experience with historical analysis should serve as a warning against relying exclusively, or nearly exclusively, on this mode of analysis in the future.

Failing to heed that warning, the Court today does just that. Its near-exclusive reliance on history will pose a number of practical problems. First, the difficulties attendant to extensive historical analysis will be especially acute in the lower courts. The Court’s historical analysis in this case is over 30 pages long and reviews numerous original sources from over 600 years of English and American history. Ante, at 30-62. Lower courts---especially district courts---typically have fewer research resources, less assistance from amici historians, and higher caseloads than we do. They are therefore ill equipped to conduct the type of searching historical surveys that the Court’s approach requires. Tellingly, even the Courts of Appeals that have addressed the question presented here (namely, the constitutionality of public carriage restrictions like New York’s) "have, in large part, avoided extensive historical analysis." Young v. Hawaii, 992 F. 3d 765, 784-785 (CA9 2021) (collecting cases). In contrast, lawyers and courts are well equipped to administer means-end scrutiny, which is regularly applied in a variety of constitutional contexts, see supra, at 24-25.

Second, the Court’s opinion today compounds these problems, for it gives the lower courts precious little guidance regarding how to resolve modern constitutional questions based almost solely on history. See, e.g., ante, at 1 (BARRETT, J., concurring) ("highlight[ing] two methodological points that the Court does not resolve"). The Court declines to "provide an exhaustive survey of the features that render regulations relevantly similar under the Second Amendment." Ante, at 20. Other than noting that its history-only analysis is "neither a . . . straightjacket nor a . . . blank check," the Court offers little explanation of how stringently its test should be applied. Ante, at 21. Ironically, the only two "relevan[t]" metrics that the Court does identify are "how and why" a gun control regulation "burden[s the] right to armed self-defense." Ante, at 20. In other words, the Court believes that the most relevant metrics of comparison are a regulation’s means (how) and ends (why)---even as it rejects the utility of means-end scrutiny.

What the Court offers instead is a laundry list of reasons to discount seemingly relevant historical evidence. The Court believes that some historical laws and decisions cannot justify upholding modern regulations because, it says, they were outliers. It explains that just two court decisions or three colonial laws are not enough to satisfy its test. Ante, at 37, 57. But the Court does not say how many cases or laws would suffice "to show a tradition of public-carry regulation." Ante, at 37. Other laws are irrelevant, the Court claims, because they are too dissimilar from New York’s concealed-carry licensing regime. See, e.g., ante, at 48-49. But the Court does not say what "representative historical analogue," short of a "twin" or a "dead ringer," would suffice. See ante, at 21 (emphasis deleted). Indeed, the Court offers many and varied reasons to reject potential representative analogues, but very few reasons to accept them. At best, the numerous justifications that the Court finds for rejecting historical evidence give judges ample tools to pick their friends out of history’s crowd. At worst, they create a one-way ratchet that will disqualify virtually any "representative historical analogue" and make it nearly impossible to sustain common-sense regulations necessary to our Nation’s safety and security.

Third, even under ideal conditions, historical evidence will often fail to provide clear answers to difficult questions. As an initial matter, many aspects of the history of firearms and their regulation are ambiguous, contradictory, or disputed. Unsurprisingly, the extent to which colonial statutes enacted over 200 years ago were actually enforced, the basis for an acquittal in a 17th-century decision, and the interpretation of English laws from the Middle Ages (to name just a few examples) are often less than clear. And even historical experts may reach conflicting conclusions based on the same sources. Compare, e.g., P. Charles, The Faces of the Second Amendment Outside the Home: History Versus Ahistorical Standards of Review, 60 Clev. St. L. Rev. 1, 14 (2012), with J. Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right 104 (1994). As a result, history, as much as any other interpretive method, leaves ample discretion to "loo[k] over the heads of the [crowd] for one’s friends." A. Scalia & B. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 377 (2012).

Fourth, I fear that history will be an especially inadequate tool when it comes to modern cases presenting modern problems. Consider the Court’s apparent preference for founding-era regulation. See ante, at 25-28. Our country confronted profoundly different problems during that time period than it does today. Society at the founding was "predominantly rural." C. McKirdy, Misreading the Past: The Faulty Historical Basis Behind the Supreme Court’s Decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, 45 Capital U. L. Rev. 107, 151 (2017). In 1790, most of America’s relatively small population of just four million people lived on farms or in small towns. Ibid. Even New York City, the largest American city then, as it is now, had a population of just 33,000 people. Ibid. Small founding-era towns are unlikely to have faced the same degrees and types of risks from gun violence as major metropolitan areas do today, so the types of regulations they adopted are unlikely to address modern needs. Id., at 152 ("For the most part, a population living on farms and in very small towns did not create conditions in which firearms created a significant danger to the public welfare"); see also supra, at 8-9.

This problem is all the more acute when it comes to "modern-day circumstances that [the Framers] could not have anticipated." Heller, 554 U. S., at 721-722 (BREYER, J., dissenting). How can we expect laws and cases that are over a century old to dictate the legality of regulations targeting "ghost guns" constructed with the aid of a three-dimensional printer? See, e.g., White House Briefing Room, FACT SHEET: The Biden Administration Cracks Down on Ghost Guns, Ensures That ATF Has the Leadership It Needs To Enforce Our Gun Laws (Apr. 11, 2022), https://whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/04/11/fact-sheet-the-biden-administration-cracks-down-on-ghost-guns-ensures-that-atf-has-the-leadership-it-needs-to-enforce-our-gun-laws/ . Or modern laws requiring all gun shops to offer smart guns, which can only be fired by authorized users? See, e.g., N. J. Stat. Ann. §2C:58-2.10(a) (West Cum. Supp. 2022). Or laws imposing additional criminal penalties for the use of bullets capable of piercing body armor? See, e.g., 18 U. S. C. §§921(a)(17)(B), 929(a).

The Court’s answer is that judges will simply have to employ "analogical reasoning." Ante, at 19-20. But, as I explained above, the Court does not provide clear guidance on how to apply such reasoning. Even seemingly straightforward historical restrictions on firearm use may prove surprisingly difficult to apply to modern circumstances. The Court affirms Heller’s recognition that States may forbid public carriage in "sensitive places." Ante, at 21-22. But what, in 21st-century New York City, may properly be considered a sensitive place? Presumably "legislative assemblies, polling places, and courthouses," which the Court tells us were among the "relatively few" places "where weapons were altogether prohibited" in the 18th and 19th centuries. Ante, at 21. On the other hand, the Court also tells us that "expanding the category of ‘sensitive places’ simply to all places of public congregation that are not isolated from law enforcement defines th[at] category . . . far too broadly." Ante, at 22. So where does that leave the many locations in a modern city with no obvious 18th- or 19th-century analogue? What about subways, nightclubs, movie theaters, and sports stadiums? The Court does not say.

Although I hope---fervently---that future courts will be able to identify historical analogues supporting the validity of regulations that address new technologies, I fear that it will often prove difficult to identify analogous technological and social problems from Medieval England, the founding era, or the time period in which the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. Laws addressing repeating crossbows, launcegays, dirks, dagges, skeines, stilladers, and other ancient weapons will be of little help to courts confronting modern problems. And as technological progress pushes our society ever further beyond the bounds of the Framers’ imaginations, attempts at "analogical reasoning" will become increasingly tortured. In short, a standard that relies solely on history is unjustifiable and unworkable.

IV

Indeed, the Court’s application of its history-only test in this case demonstrates the very pitfalls described above. The historical evidence reveals a 700-year Anglo-American tradition of regulating the public carriage of firearms in general, and concealed or concealable firearms in particular. The Court spends more than half of its opinion trying to discredit this tradition. But, in my view, the robust evidence of such a tradition cannot be so easily explained away. Laws regulating the public carriage of weapons existed in England as early as the 13th century and on this Continent since before the founding. Similar laws remained on the books through the ratifications of the Second and Fourteenth Amendments through to the present day. Many of those historical regulations imposed significantly stricter restrictions on public carriage than New York’s licensing requirements do today. Thus, even applying the Court’s history-only analysis, New York’s law must be upheld because "historical precedent from before, during, and . . . after the founding evinces a comparable tradition of regulation." Ante, at 18 (majority opinion) (internal quotation marks omitted).

A. England.

The right codified by the Second Amendment was " ‘inherited from our English ancestors.’ " Heller, 554 U. S., at 599 (quoting Robertson v. Baldwin, 165 U. S. 275, 281 (1897)); see also ante, at 30 (majority opinion). And some of England’s earliest laws regulating the public carriage of weapons were precursors of similar American laws enacted roughly contemporaneously with the ratification of the Second Amendment. See infra, at 40-42. I therefore begin, as the Court does, ante, at 30-31, with the English ancestors of New York’s laws regulating public carriage of firearms.

The relevant English history begins in the late-13th and early-14th centuries, when Edward I and Edward II issued a series of orders to local sheriffs that prohibited any person from "going armed." See 4 Calendar of the Close Rolls, Edward I, 1296-1302, p. 318 (Sept. 15, 1299) (1906); id., at 588 (July 16, 1302); 5 id., Edward I, 1302-1307, at 210 (June 10, 1304) (1908); id., Edward II, 1307-1313, at 52 (Feb. 9, 1308) (1892); id., at 257 (Apr. 9, 1310); id., at 553 (Oct. 12, 1312); id., Edward II, 1323-1327, at 560 (Apr. 28, 1326) (1898); 1 Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls of the City of London, 1323-1364, p. 15 (Nov. 1326) (A. Thomas ed. 1926). Violators were subject to punishment, including "forfeiture of life and limb." See, e.g., 4 Calendar of the Close Rolls, Edward I, 1296-1302, at 318 (Sept. 15, 1299) (1906). Many of these royal edicts contained exemptions for persons who had obtained "the king’s special licence." See ibid.; 5 id., Edward I, 1302-1307, at 210 (June 10, 1304); id., Edward II, 1307-1313, at 553 (Oct. 12, 1312); id., Edward II, 1323-1327, at 560 (Apr. 28, 1326). Like New York’s law, these early edicts prohibited public carriage absent special governmental permission and enforced that prohibition on pain of punishment.

The Court seems to suggest that these early regulations are irrelevant because they were enacted during a time of "turmoil" when "malefactors . . . harried the country, committing assaults and murders." Ante, at 31 (internal quotation marks omitted). But it would seem to me that what the Court characterizes as a "right of armed self-defense" would be more, rather than less, necessary during a time of "turmoil." Ante, at 20. The Court also suggests that laws that were enacted before firearms arrived in England, like these early edicts and the subsequent Statute of Northampton, are irrelevant. Ante, at 32. But why should that be? Pregun regulations prohibiting "going armed" in public illustrate an entrenched tradition of restricting public carriage of weapons. That tradition seems as likely to apply to firearms as to any other lethal weapons---particularly if we follow the Court’s instruction to use analogical reasoning. See ante, at 19-20. And indeed, as we shall shortly see, the most significant prefirearm regulation of public carriage---the Statute of Northampton---was in fact applied to guns once they appeared in England. See Sir John Knight’s Case, 3 Mod. 117, 87 Eng. Rep. 75, 76 (K. B. 1686)

The Statute of Northampton was enacted in 1328. 2 Edw. 3, 258, c. 3. By its terms, the statute made it a criminal offense to carry arms without the King’s authorization. It provided that, without such authorization, "no Man great nor small, of what Condition soever he be," could "go nor ride armed by night nor by day, in Fairs, Markets, nor in the presence of the Justices or other Ministers, nor in no part elsewhere, upon pain to forfeit their Armour to the King, and their Bodies to Prison at the King’s pleasure." Ibid. For more than a century following its enactment, England’s sheriffs were routinely reminded to strictly enforce the Statute of Northampton against those going armed without the King’s permission. See Calendar of the Close Rolls, Edward III, 1330-1333, at 131 (Apr. 3, 1330) (1898); 1 Calendar of the Close Rolls, Richard II, 1377-1381, at 34 (Dec. 1, 1377) (1914); 2 id., Richard II, 1381-1385, at 3 (Aug. 7, 1381) (1920); 3 id., Richard II, 1385-1389, at 128 (Feb. 6, 1386) (1921); id., at 399-400 (May 16, 1388); 4 id., Henry VI, 1441-1447, at 224 (May 12, 1444) (1937); see also 11 Tudor Royal Proclamations, The Later Tudors: 1553-1587, pp. 442-445 (Proclamation 641, 21 Elizabeth I, July 26, 1579) (P. Hughes & J. Larkin eds. 1969).

The Court thinks that the Statute of Northampton "has little bearing on the Second Amendment," in part because it was "enacted . . . more than 450 years before the ratification of the Constitution." Ante, at 32. The statute, however, remained in force for hundreds of years, well into the 18th century. See 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries 148-149 (1769) ("The offence of riding or going armed, with dangerous or unusual weapons, is a crime against the public peace, by terrifying the good people of the land; and is particularly prohibited by the Statute of Northampton" (first emphasis in original, second emphasis added)). It was discussed in the writings of Blackstone, Coke, and others. See ibid.; W. Hawkins, 1 Pleas of the Crown 135 (1716) (Hawkins); E. Coke, The Third Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England 160 (1797). And several American Colonies and States enacted restrictions modeled on the statute. See infra, at 40-42. There is thus every reason to believe that the Framers of the Second Amendment would have considered the Statute of Northampton a significant chapter in the Anglo-American tradition of firearms regulation.

The Court also believes that, by the end of the 17th century, the Statute of Northampton was understood to contain an extratextual intent element: the intent to cause terror in others. Ante, at 34-38, 41. The Court relies on two sources that arguably suggest that view: a 1686 decision, Sir John Knight’s Case, and a 1716 treatise written by Serjeant William Hawkins. Ante, at 34-37. But other sources suggest that carrying arms in public was prohibited because it naturally tended to terrify the people. See, e.g., M. Dalton, The Country Justice 282-283 (1690) ("[T]o wear Armor, or Weapons not usually worn, . . . seems also be a breach, or means of breach of the Peace . . . ; for they strike a fear and terror in the People" (emphasis added)). According to these sources, terror was the natural consequence---not an additional element---of the crime.

I find this view more persuasive in large part because it is not entirely clear that the two sources the Court relies on actually support the existence of an intent-to-terrify requirement. Start with Sir John Knight’s Case, which, according to the Court, considered Knight’s arrest for walking " ‘about the streets’ " and into a church " ‘armed with guns.’ "Ante, at 34 (quoting Sir John Knight’s Case, 3 Mod. 117, 87 Eng. Rep., at 76). The Court thinks that Knight’s acquittal by a jury demonstrates that the Statute of Northampton only prohibited public carriage of firearms with an intent to terrify. Ante, at 34-35. But by now the legal significance of Knight’s acquittal is impossible to reconstruct. Brief for Patrick J. Charles as Amicus Curiae 23, n. 9. The primary source describing the case (the English Reports) was notoriously incomplete at the time Sir John Knight’s Case was decided. Id., at 24-25. And the facts that historians can reconstruct do not uniformly support the Court’s interpretation. The King’s Bench required Knight to pay a surety to guarantee his future good behavior, so it may be more accurate to think of the case as having ended in "a conditional pardon" than acquittal. Young, 992 F. 3d, at 791; see also Rex v. Sir John Knight, 1 Comb. 40, 90 Eng. Rep. 331 (K. B. 1686). And, notably, it appears that Knight based his defense on his loyalty to the Crown, not a lack of intent to terrify. 3 The Entring Book of Roger Morrice 1677-1691: The Reign of James II, 1685-1687, pp. 307-308 (T. Harris ed. 2007).

Similarly, the passage from the Hawkins treatise on which the Court relies states that the Statute of Northampton’s prohibition on the public carriage of weapons did not apply to the "wearing of Arms . . . unless it be accompanied with such Circumstances as are apt to terrify the People." Hawkins 136. But Hawkins goes on to enumerate relatively narrow circumstances where this exception applied when "Persons of Quality . . . wea[r] common Weapons, or hav[e] their usual Number of Attendants with them, for their Ornament or Defence, in such Places, and upon such Occasions, in which it is the common Fashion to make use of them," or to persons merely wearing "privy Coats of Mail." Ibid. It would make little sense if a narrow exception for nobility, see Oxford English Dictionary (3d ed., Dec. 2012), https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/155878 (defining "quality," A.I.5.a), and "privy coats of mail" were allowed to swallow the broad rule that Hawkins (and other commentators of his time) described elsewhere. That rule provided that "there may be an Affray where there is no actual Violence; as where a Man arms himself with dangerous and unusual Weapons, in such a Manner as will naturally cause a Terror to the People, which is . . . strictly prohibited by [the Statute of Northampton]." Hawkins 135. And it provided no exception for those who attempted to "excuse the wearing such Armour in Publick, by alleging that . . . he wears it for the Safety of his Person from . . . Assault." Id., at 136. In my view, that rule announces the better reading of the Statute of Northampton---as a broad prohibition on the public carriage of firearms and other weapons, without an intent-to-terrify requirement or exception for self-defense.

Although the Statute of Northampton is particularly significant because of its breadth, longevity, and impact on American law, it was far from the only English restriction on firearms or their carriage. See, e.g., 6 Hen. 8 c. 13, §1 (1514) (restricting the use and ownership of handguns); 25 Hen. 8 c. 17, §1 (1533) (same); 33 Hen. 8 c. 6, §§1-2 (1541) (same); 25 Edw. 3, st. 5, c. 2 (1350) (making it a "Felony or Trespass" to "ride armed covertly or secretly with Men of Arms against any other, to slay him, or rob him, or take him, or retain him till he hath made Fine or Ransom for to have his Deliverance") (brackets and footnote omitted). Whatever right to bear arms we inherited from our English forebears, it was qualified by a robust tradition of public carriage regulations.

As I have made clear, I am not a historian. But if the foregoing facts, which historians and other scholars have presented to us, are even roughly correct, it is difficult to see how the Court can believe that English history fails to support legal restrictions on the public carriage of firearms.

B. The Colonies.

The American Colonies continued the English tradition of regulating public carriage on this side of the Atlantic. In 1686, the colony of East New Jersey passed a law providing that "no person or persons . . . shall presume privately to wear any pocket pistol, skeines, stilladers, daggers or dirks, or other unusual or unlawful weapons within this Province." An Act Against Wearing Swords, &c., ch. 9, in Grants, Concessions, and Original Constitutions of the Province of New Jersey 290 (2d ed. 1881). East New Jersey also specifically prohibited "planter[s]" from "rid[ing] or go[ing] armed with sword, pistol, or dagger." Ibid. Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire followed suit in 1692 and 1771, respectively, enacting laws that, like the Statute of Northampton, provided that those who went "armed Offensively" could be punished. An Act for the Punishing of Criminal Offenders, 1692 Mass. Acts and Laws no. 6, pp. 11-12; An Act for the Punishing of Criminal Offenders, 1771 N. H. Acts and Laws ch. 6, §5, p. 17.

It is true, as the Court points out, that these laws were only enacted in three colonies. Ante, at 37. But that does not mean that they may be dismissed as outliers. They were successors to several centuries of comparable laws in England, see supra, at 34-40, and predecessors to numerous similar (in some cases, materially identical) laws enacted by the States after the founding, see infra, at 41-42. And while it may be true that these laws applied only to "dangerous and unusual weapons," see ante, at 38 (majority opinion), that category almost certainly included guns, see Charles, 60 Clev. St. L. Rev., at 34, n. 181 (listing 18th century sources defining " ‘offensive weapons’ " to include " ‘Fire Arms’ " and " ‘Guns’ "); State v. Huntly, 25 N. C. 418, 422 (1843) (per curiam) ("A gun is an ‘unusual weapon,’ wherewith to be armed and clad"). Finally, the Court points out that New Jersey’s ban on public carriage applied only to certain people or to the concealed carriage of certain smaller firearms. Ante, at 39-40. But the Court’s refusal to credit the relevance of East New Jersey’s law on this basis raises a serious question about what, short of a "twin" or a "dead ringer," qualifies as a relevant historical analogue. See ante, at 21 (majority opinion) (emphasis deleted).

C. The Founding Era.

The tradition of regulations restricting public carriage of firearms, inherited from England and adopted by the Colonies, continued into the founding era. Virginia, for example, enacted a law in 1786 that, like the Statute of Northampton, prohibited any person from "go[ing] nor rid[ing] armed by night nor by day, in fairs or markets, or in other places, in terror of the Country." 1786 Va. Acts, ch. 21. And, as the Court acknowledges, "public-carry restrictions proliferate[d]" after the Second Amendment’s ratification five years later in 1791. Ante, at 42. Just a year after that, North Carolina enacted a law whose language was lifted from the Statute of Northampton virtually verbatim (vestigial references to the King included). Collection of Statutes, pp. 60-61, ch. 3 (F. Martin ed. 1792). Other States passed similar laws in the late-18th and 19th centuries. See, e.g., 1795 Mass. Acts and Laws ch. 2, p. 436; 1801 Tenn. Acts pp. 260-261; 1821 Me. Laws p. 285; see also Charles, 60 Clev. St. L. Rev., at 40, n. 213 (collecting sources).

The Court discounts these laws primarily because they were modeled on the Statute of Northampton, which it believes prohibited only public carriage with the intent to terrify. Ante, at 41. I have previously explained why I believe that preventing public terror was one reason that the Statute of Northampton prohibited public carriage, but not an element of the crime. See supra, at 37-39. And, consistent with that understanding, American regulations modeled on the Statute of Northampton appear to have been understood to set forth a broad prohibition on public carriage of firearms without any intent-to-terrify requirement. See Charles, 60 Clev. St. L. Rev., at 35, 37-41; J. Haywood, A Manual of the Laws of North-Carolina, pt. 2, p. 40 (3d ed.1814); J. Ewing, The Office and Duty of a Justice of the Peace 546 (1805).

The Court cites three cases considering common-law offenses, ante, at 42-44, but those cases do not support the view that only public carriage in a manner likely to terrify violated American successors to the Statute of Northampton. If anything, they suggest that public carriage of firearms was not common practice. At least one of the cases the Court cites, State v. Huntly, wrote that the Statute of Northampton codified a pre-existing common-law offense, which provided that "riding or going armed with dangerous or unusual weapons, is a crime against the public peace, by terrifying the good people of the land." 25 N. C., at 420-421 (quoting 4 Blackstone, Commentaries, at 149; emphasis added). Huntly added that "[a] gun is an ‘unusual weapon’ " and that "[n]o man amongst us carries it about with him, as one of his every-day accoutrements---as a part of his dress- and never, we trust, will the day come when any deadly weapon will be worn or wielded in our peace-loving and law abiding State, as an appendage of manly equipment." 25 N. C., at 422. True, Huntly recognized that citizens were nonetheless "at perfect liberty" to carry for "lawful purpose[s]"---but it specified that those purposes were "business or amusement." Id., at 422-423. New York’s law similarly recognizes that hunting, target shooting, and certain professional activities are proper causes justifying lawful carriage of a firearm. See supra, at 12-13. The other two cases the Court cites for this point similarly offer it only limited support---either because the atextual intent element the Court advocates was irrelevant to the decision’s result, see O’Neill v. State, 16 Ala. 65 (1849), or because the decision adopted an outlier position not reflected in the other cases cited by the Court, see Simpson v. State, 13 Tenn. 356, 360 (1833); see also ante, at 42-43, 57 (majority opinion) (refusing to give "a pair of state-court decisions" "disproportionate weight"). The founding-era regulations-like the colonial and English laws on which they were modeled---thus demonstrate a longstanding tradition of broad restrictions on public carriage of firearms.

D. The 19th Century.

Beginning in the 19th century, States began to innovate on the Statute of Northampton in at least two ways. First, many States and Territories passed bans on concealed carriage or on any carriage, concealed or otherwise, of certain concealable weapons. For example, Georgia made it unlawful to carry, "unless in an open manner and fully exposed to view, any pistol, (except horseman’s pistols,) dirk, sword in a cane, spear, bowie-knife, or any other kind of knives, manufactured and sold for the purpose of offence and defence." Ga. Code §4413 (1861). Other States and Territories enacted similar prohibitions. See, e.g., Ala. Code §3274 (1852) (banning, with limited exceptions, concealed carriage of "a pistol, or any other description of fire arms"); see also ante, at 44, n. 16 (majority opinion) (collecting sources). And the Territory of New Mexico appears to have banned all carriage whatsoever of "any class of pistols whatever," as well as "bowie kni[ves,] . . . Arkansas toothpick[s], Spanish dagger[s], slung-shot[s], or any other deadly weapon." 1860 Terr. of N. M. Laws §§1-2, p. 94. These 19th-century bans on concealed carriage were stricter than New York’s law, for they prohibited concealed carriage with at most limited exceptions, while New York permits concealed carriage with a lawfully obtained license. See supra, at 12. Moreover, as Heller recognized, and the Court acknowledges, "the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that [these types of] prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues." 554 U. S., at 626 (emphasis added); see also ante, at 44.

The Court discounts this history because, it says, courts in four Southern States suggested or held that a ban on concealed carriage was only lawful if open carriage or carriage of military pistols was allowed. Ante, at 44-46. (The Court also cites Bliss v. Commonwealth, 12 Ky. 90 (1822), which invalidated Kentucky’s concealed-carry prohibition as contrary to that State’s Second Amendment analogue. Id., at 90-93. Bliss was later overturned by constitutional amendment and was, as the Court appears to concede, an outlier. See Peruta v. County of San Diego, 824 F. 3d 919, 935-936 (CA9 2016); ante, at 45.) Several of these decisions, however, emphasized States’ leeway to regulate firearms carriage as necessary "to protect the orderly and well disposed citizens from the treacherous use of weapons not even designed for any purpose of public defence." State v. Smith, 11 La. 633 (1856); see also Andrews v. State, 50 Tenn. 165, 179-180 (1871) (stating that "the right to keep" rifles, shot-guns, muskets, and repeaters could not be "infringed or forbidden," but "[t]heir use [may] be subordinated to such regulations and limitations as are or may be authorized by the law of the land, passed to subserve the general good, so as not to infringe the right secured and the necessary incidents to the exercise of such right"); State v. Reid, 1 Ala. 612, 616 (1840) (recognizing that the constitutional right to bear arms "necessarily . . . leave[s] with the Legislature the authority to adopt such regulations of police, as may be dictated by the safety of the people and the advancement of public morals"). And other courts upheld concealed-carry restrictions without any reference to an exception allowing open carriage, so it is far from clear that the cases the Court cites represent a consensus view. See State v. Mitchell, 3 Blackf. 229 (Ind. 1833); State v. Buzzard, 4 Ark. 18 (1842). And, of course, the Court does not say whether the result in this case would be different if New York allowed open carriage by law-abiding citizens as a matter of course.

The second 19th-century innovation, adopted in a number of States, was surety laws. Massachusetts’ surety law, which served as a model for laws adopted by many other States, provided that any person who went "armed with a dirk, dagger, sword, pistol, or other offensive and dangerous weapon," and who lacked "reasonable cause to fear an assualt [sic]," could be made to pay a surety upon the "complaint of any person having reasonable cause to fear an injury, or breach of the peace." Mass. Rev. Stat., ch. 134, §16 (1836). Other States and Territories enacted identical or substantially similar laws. See, e.g., Me. Rev. Stat., ch. 169, §16 (1840); Mich. Rev. Stat., ch. 162, §16 (1846); Terr. of Minn. Rev. Stat., ch. 112, §18 (1851); 1854 Ore. Stat., ch. 16, §17; W. Va. Code, ch. 153, §8 (1868); 1862 Pa. Laws p. 250, §6. These laws resemble New York’s licensing regime in many, though admittedly not all, relevant respects. Most notably, like New York’s proper cause requirement, the surety laws conditioned public carriage in at least some circumstances on a special showing of need. Compare supra, at 13, with Mass. Rev. Stat., ch. 134, §16.

The Court believes that the absence of recorded cases involving surety laws means that they were rarely enforced. Ante, at 49-50. Of course, this may just as well show that these laws were normally followed. In any case, scholars cited by the Court tell us that "traditional case law research is not especially probative of the application of these restrictions" because "in many cases those records did not survive the passage of time" or "are not well indexed or digitally searchable." E. Ruben & S. Cornell, Firearms Regionalism and Public Carry: Placing Southern Antebellum Case Law in Context, 125 Yale L. J. Forum 121, 130-131, n. 53 (2015). On the contrary, "the fact that restrictions on public carry were well accepted in places like Massachusetts and were included in the relevant manuals for justices of the peace" suggests "that violations were enforced at the justice of peace level, but did not result in expensive appeals that would have produced searchable case law." Id., at 131, n. 53 (citation omitted). The surety laws and broader bans on concealed carriage enacted in the 19th century demonstrate that even relatively stringent restrictions on public carriage have long been understood to be consistent with the Second Amendment and its state equivalents.

E. Postbellum Regulation.

After the Civil War, public carriage of firearms remained subject to extensive regulation. See, e.g., Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 908 (1866) ("The constitutional rights of all loyal and well-disposed inhabitants to bear arms will not be infringed; nevertheless this shall not be construed to sanction the unlawful practice of carrying concealed weapons"). Of course, during this period, Congress provided (and commentators recognized) that firearm regulations could not be designed or enforced in a discriminatory manner. See ibid.; Act of July 16, 1866, §14, 14 Stat. 176-177 (ensuring that all citizens were entitled to the "full and equal benefit of all laws . . . including the constitutional right to keep and bear arms . . . without respect to race or color, or previous condition of slavery"); see also The Loyal Georgian, Feb. 3, 1866, p. 3, col. 4. But that by-now uncontroversial proposition says little about the validity of nondiscriminatory restrictions on public carriage, like New York’s.

What is more relevant for our purposes is the fact that, in the postbellum period, States continued to enact generally applicable restrictions on public carriage, many of which were even more restrictive than their predecessors. See S. Cornell & J. Florence, The Right to Bear Arms in the Era of the Fourteenth Amendment: Gun Rights or Gun Regulation? 50 Santa Clara L. Rev. 1043, 1066 (2010). Most notably, many States and Western Territories enacted stringent regulations that prohibited any public carriage of firearms, with only limited exceptions. For example, Texas made it a misdemeanor to carry in public "any pistol, dirk, dagger, slung-shot, sword-cane, spear, brass-knuckles, bowie-knife, or any other kind of knife manufactured or sold for the purpose of offense or defense" absent "reasonable grounds for fearing an [immediate and pressing] unlawful attack." 1871 Tex. Gen. Laws ch. 34, §1. Similarly, New Mexico made it "unlawful for any person to carry deadly weapons, either concealed or otherwise, on or about their persons within any of the settlements of this Territory." 1869 Terr. of N. M. Laws ch. 32, §1. New Mexico’s prohibition contained only narrow exceptions for carriage on a person’s own property, for self-defense in the face of immediate danger, or with official authorization. Ibid. Other States and Territories adopted similar laws. See, e.g., 1875 Wyo. Terr. Sess. Laws ch. 52, §1; 1889 Idaho Terr. Gen. Laws §1, p. 23; 1881 Kan. Sess. Laws §23, p. 92; 1889 Ariz. Terr. Sess. Laws no. 13, §1, p. 16.

When they were challenged, these laws were generally upheld. P. Charles, The Faces of the Second Amendment Outside the Home, Take Two: How We Got Here and Why It Matters, 64 Clev. St. L. Rev. 373, 414 (2016); see also ante, at 56-57 (majority opinion) (recognizing that postbellum Texas law and court decisions support the validity of New York’s licensing regime); Andrews, 50 Tenn., at 182 (recognizing that "a man may well be prohibited from carrying his arms to church, or other public assemblage," and that the carriage of arms other than rifles, shot guns, muskets, and repeaters "may be prohibited if the Legislature deems proper, absolutely, at all times, and under all circumstances").

The Court’s principal answer to these broad prohibitions on public carriage is to discount gun control laws passed in the American West. Ante, at 58-61. It notes that laws enacted in the Western Territories were "rarely subject to judicial scrutiny." Ante, at 60. But, of course, that may well mean that "[w]e . . . can assume it settled that these" regulations were "consistent with the Second Amendment." See ante, at 21 (majority opinion). The Court also reasons that laws enacted in the Western Territories applied to a relatively small portion of the population and were comparatively short lived. See ante, 59-61. But even assuming that is true, it does not mean that these laws were historical aberrations. To the contrary, bans on public carriage in the American West and elsewhere constitute just one chapter of the centuries-old tradition of comparable firearms regulations described above.

F. The 20th Century.

The Court disregards "20th-century historical evidence." Ante, at 58, n. 28. But it is worth noting that the law the Court strikes down today is well over 100 years old, having been enacted in 1911 and amended to substantially its present form in 1913. See supra, at 12. That alone gives it a longer historical pedigree than at least three of the four types of firearms regulations that Heller identified as "presumptively lawful." 554 U. S., at 626-627, and n. 26; see C. Larson, Four Exceptions in Search of a Theory: District of Columbia v. Heller and Judicial Ipse Dixit, 60 Hastings L. J. 1371, 1374-1379 (2009) (concluding that " ‘prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill [and] laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms’ " have their origins in the 20th century); Kanter v. Barr, 919 F. 3d 437, 451 (CA7 2019) (Barrett, J., dissenting) ("Founding-era legislatures did not strip felons of the right to bear arms simply because of their status as felons"). Like JUSTICE KAVANAUGH, I understand the Court’s opinion today to cast no doubt on that aspect of Heller’s holding. Ante, at 3 (concurring opinion). But unlike JUSTICE KAVANAUGH, I find the disconnect between Heller’s treatment of laws prohibiting, for example, firearms possession by felons or the mentally ill, and the Court’s treatment of New York’s licensing regime, hard to square. The inconsistency suggests that the Court today takes either an unnecessarily cramped view of the relevant historical record or a needlessly rigid approach to analogical reasoning.

* * *

The historical examples of regulations similar to New York’s licensing regime are legion. Closely analogous English laws were enacted beginning in the 13th century, and similar American regulations were passed during the colonial period, the founding era, the 19th century, and the 20th century. Not all of these laws were identical to New York’s, but that is inevitable in an analysis that demands examination of seven centuries of history. At a minimum, the laws I have recounted resembled New York’s law, similarly restricting the right to publicly carry weapons and serving roughly similar purposes. That is all that the Court’s test, which allows and even encourages "analogical reasoning," purports to require. See ante, at 21 (disclaiming the necessity of a "historical twin").

In each instance, the Court finds a reason to discount the historical evidence’s persuasive force. Some of the laws New York has identified are too old. But others are too recent. Still others did not last long enough. Some applied to too few people. Some were enacted for the wrong reasons. Some may have been based on a constitutional rationale that is now impossible to identify. Some arose in historically unique circumstances. And some are not sufficiently analogous to the licensing regime at issue here. But if the examples discussed above, taken together, do not show a tradition and history of regulation that supports the validity of New York’s law, what could? Sadly, I do not know the answer to that question. What is worse, the Court appears to have no answer either.

V

We are bound by Heller insofar as Heller interpreted the Second Amendment to protect an individual right to possess a firearm for self-defense. But Heller recognized that that right was not without limits and could appropriately be subject to government regulation. 554 U. S., at 626-627. Heller therefore does not require holding that New York’s law violates the Second Amendment. In so holding, the Court goes beyond Heller.

It bases its decision to strike down New York’s law almost exclusively on its application of what it calls historical "analogical reasoning." Ante, at 19-20. As I have admitted above, I am not a historian, and neither is the Court. But the history, as it appears to me, seems to establish a robust tradition of regulations restricting the public carriage of concealed firearms. To the extent that any uncertainty remains between the Court’s view of the history and mine, that uncertainty counsels against relying on history alone. In my view, it is appropriate in such circumstances to look beyond the history and engage in what the Court calls means-end scrutiny. Courts must be permitted to consider the State’s interest in preventing gun violence, the effectiveness of the contested law in achieving that interest, the degree to which the law burdens the Second Amendment right, and, if appropriate, any less restrictive alternatives.

The Second Circuit has previously done just that, and it held that New York’s law does not violate the Second Amendment. See Kachalsky, 701 F. 3d, at 101. It first evaluated the degree to which the law burdens the Second Amendment right to bear arms. Id., at 93-94. It concluded that the law "places substantial limits on the ability of law-abiding citizens to possess firearms for self-defense in public," but does not burden the right to possess a firearm in the home, where Heller said " ‘the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute.’ " Kachalsky, 701 F. 3d, at 93-94 (quoting Heller, 554 U. S., at 628). The Second Circuit therefore determined that the law should be subject to heightened scrutiny, but not to strict scrutiny and its attendant presumption of unconstitutionality. 701 F. 3d, at 93-94. In applying such heightened scrutiny, the Second Circuit recognized that "New York has substantial, indeed compelling, governmental interests in public safety and crime prevention." Id., at 97. I agree. As I have demonstrated above, see supra, at 3-9, firearms in public present a number of dangers, ranging from mass shootings to road rage killings, and are responsible for many deaths and injuries in the United States. The Second Circuit then evaluated New York’s law and concluded that it is "substantially related" to New York’s compelling interests. Kachalsky, 701 F. 3d, at 98-99. To support that conclusion, the Second Circuit pointed to "studies and data demonstrating that widespread access to handguns in public increases the likelihood that felonies will result in death and fundamentally alters the safety and character of public spaces." Id., at 99. We have before us additional studies confirming that conclusion. See, e.g., supra, at 19-20 (summarizing studies finding that "may issue" licensing regimes are associated with lower rates of violent crime than "shall issue" regimes). And we have been made aware of no less restrictive, but equally effective, alternative. After considering all of these factors, the Second Circuit held that New York’s law does not unconstitutionally burden the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment. I would affirm that holding.

New York’s Legislature considered the empirical evidence about gun violence and adopted a reasonable licensing law to regulate the concealed carriage of handguns in order to keep the people of New York safe. The Court today strikes down that law based only on the pleadings. It gives the State no opportunity to present evidence justifying its reasons for adopting the law or showing how the law actually operates in practice, and it does not so much as acknowledge these important considerations. Because I cannot agree with the Court’s decision to strike New York’s law down without allowing for discovery or the development of any evidentiary record, without considering the State’s compelling interest in preventing gun violence and protecting the safety of its citizens, and without considering the potentially deadly consequences of its decision, I respectfully dissent.