142 S.Ct. 2111

Supreme Court of the United States.

NEW YORK STATE RIFLE & PISTOL ASSOCIATION, INC., et al., Petitioners

v.

Kevin P. BRUEN, in his official capacity as Superintendent of New York State Police, et al.

No. 20-843

|

Argued November 3, 2021

|

Decided June 23, 2022

Opinion

Justice THOMAS delivered the opinion of the Court.

*2122 In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 128 S.Ct. 2783, 171 L.Ed.2d 637 (2008), and McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 130 S.Ct. 3020, 177 L.Ed.2d 894 (2010), we recognized that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect the right of an ordinary, law-abiding citizen to possess a handgun in the home for self-defense. In this case, petitioners and respondents agree that ordinary, law-abiding citizens have a similar right to carry handguns publicly for their self-defense. We too agree, and now hold, consistent with Heller and McDonald, that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.

The parties nevertheless dispute whether New York’s licensing regime respects the constitutional right to carry handguns publicly for self-defense. In 43 States, the government issues licenses to carry based on objective criteria. But in six States, including New York, the government further conditions issuance of a license to carry on a citizen’s showing of some additional special need. Because the State of New York issues public-carry licenses only when an applicant demonstrates a special need for self-defense, we conclude that the State’s licensing regime violates the Constitution.

I

A

*** 

It is a crime in New York to possess “any firearm” without a license, whether inside or outside the home, punishable by up to four years in prison or a $5,000 fine for a felony offense, and one year in prison or a $1,000 fine for a misdemeanor. [citations omitted] Meanwhile, possessing a loaded firearm outside one’s home or place of business without a license is a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison. [citations omitted]

A license applicant who wants to possess a firearm at home (or in his place of business) must convince a “licensing officer”—usually *2123 a judge or law enforcement officer—that, among other things, he is of good moral character, has no history of crime or mental illness, and that “no good cause exists for the denial of the license.” [citation omitted] If he wants to carry a firearm outside his home or place of business for self-defense, the applicant must obtain an unrestricted license to “have and carry” a concealed “pistol or revolver.” [citation omitted] To secure that license, the applicant must prove that “proper cause exists” to issue it…If an applicant cannot make that showing, he can receive only a “restricted” license for public carry, which allows him to carry a firearm for a limited purpose, such as hunting, target shooting, or employment. [citations omitted]

No New York statute defines “proper cause.” But New York courts have held that an applicant shows proper cause only if he can “demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community.” [citation omitted] This “special need” standard is demanding…New York courts generally require evidence “of particular threats, attacks or other extraordinary danger to personal safety.” [citations omitted]

When a licensing officer denies an application, judicial review is limited. New York courts defer to an officer’s application of the proper-cause standard unless it is “arbitrary and capricious.” [citations omitted] In other words, the decision “must be upheld if the record shows a rational basis for it.” [citation omitted] The rule leaves applicants little recourse if their local licensing officer denies a permit.

New York is not alone in requiring a permit to carry a handgun in public. But the vast majority of States—43 by our count—are “shall issue” jurisdictions, where authorities must issue concealed-carry licenses whenever applicants satisfy certain threshold requirements, without granting licensing officials discretion to deny licenses based on a perceived lack of need or suitability.¹ Meanwhile, only six States and the District of Columbia have *2124 “may issue” licensing laws, under which authorities have discretion to deny concealed-carry licenses even when the applicant satisfies the statutory criteria, usually because the applicant has not demonstrated cause or suitability for the relevant license. Aside from New York, then, only California, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey have analogues to the “proper cause” standard.² All of these “proper cause” analogues have been upheld by the Courts of Appeals, save for the District of Columbia’s, which has been permanently enjoined since 2017. [citations omitted]

B

As set forth in the pleadings below, petitioners Brandon Koch and Robert Nash *2125 are law-abiding, adult citizens of Rensselaer County, New York…Petitioner New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., is a public-interest group organized to defend the Second Amendment rights of New Yorkers. Both Koch and Nash are members.

In 2014, Nash applied for an unrestricted license to carry a handgun in public. Nash did not claim any unique danger to his personal safety; he simply wanted to carry a handgun for self-defense. In early 2015, the State denied Nash’s application for an unrestricted license but granted him a restricted license for hunting and target shooting only. In late 2016, Nash asked a licensing officer to remove the restrictions, citing a string of recent robberies in his neighborhood. After an informal hearing, the licensing officer denied the request. The officer reiterated that Nash’s existing license permitted him “to carry concealed for purposes of off road back country, outdoor activities similar to hunting,” such as “fishing, hiking & camping etc.” [citation omitted] But, at the same time, the officer emphasized that the restrictions were “intended to prohibit [Nash] from carrying concealed in ANY LOCATION typically open to and frequented by the general public.” [citation omitted]

Between 2008 and 2017, Koch was in the same position as Nash: He faced no special dangers, wanted a handgun for general self-defense, and had only a restricted license permitting him to carry a handgun outside the home for hunting and target shooting. In late 2017, Koch applied to a licensing officer to remove the restrictions on his license, citing his extensive experience in safely handling firearms. Like Nash’s application, Koch’s was denied, except that the officer permitted Koch to “carry to and from work.” [citation omitted]

C

Respondents are the superintendent of the New York State Police, who oversees the enforcement of the State’s licensing laws, and a New York Supreme Court justice, who oversees the processing of licensing applications in Rensselaer County. Petitioners sued respondents for declaratory and injunctive relief under…42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that respondents violated their Second and Fourteenth Amendment rights by denying their unrestricted-license applications on the basis that they had failed to show “proper cause,” i.e., had failed to demonstrate a unique need for self-defense.

The District Court dismissed petitioners’ complaint and the Court of Appeals affirmed. [citation omitted] Both courts relied on [a] Court of Appeals’ prior decision…which had sustained New York’s proper-cause standard, holding that the requirement was “substantially related to the achievement of an important governmental interest.” [citation omitted]

We granted certiorari to decide whether New York’s denial of petitioners’ license applications violated the Constitution. [citation omitted]

II

In Heller and McDonald, we held that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. In doing so, we held unconstitutional two laws that prohibited the possession and use of handguns in the home. In the years since, the Courts of Appeals have coalesced around a “two-step” framework for analyzing Second Amendment challenges that combines history with means-end scrutiny.

*2126 Today, we decline to adopt that two-part approach. In keeping with Heller, we hold that when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. To justify its regulation, the government may not simply posit that the regulation promotes an important interest. Rather, the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only if a firearm regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s “unqualified command.” [citation omitted]

A

Since Heller and McDonald, the two-step test that Courts of Appeals have developed to assess Second Amendment claims proceeds as follows. At the first step, the government may justify its regulation by “establish[ing] that the challenged law regulates activity falling outside the scope of the right as originally understood.” [citations omitted] The Courts of Appeals then ascertain the original scope of the right based on its historical meaning. [citation omitted] If the government can prove that the regulated conduct falls beyond the Amendment’s original scope, “then the analysis can stop there; the regulated activity is categorically unprotected.” [citation omitted] But if the historical evidence at this step is “inconclusive or suggests that the regulated activity is not categorically unprotected,” the courts generally proceed to step two. [citation omitted]

At the second step, courts often analyze “how close the law comes to the core of the Second Amendment right and the severity of the law’s burden on that right.” [citation omitted] The Courts of Appeals generally maintain “that the core Second Amendment right is limited to self-defense in the home.” [citations omitted] If a “core” Second Amendment right is burdened, courts apply “strict scrutiny” and ask whether the Government can prove that the law is “narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling governmental interest.” [citation omitted] Otherwise, they apply intermediate scrutiny and consider whether the Government can show that the regulation is “substantially related to the achievement of an important governmental interest.” [citation omitted] Both respondents and the United States largely agree with this consensus, arguing that intermediate scrutiny is appropriate when text and history are unclear in attempting to delineate the scope of the right. [citations omitted]

B

Despite the popularity of this two-step approach, it is one step too many. Step one of the predominant framework is broadly consistent with Heller, which demands a test rooted in the Second Amendment’s text, as informed by history. But Heller and McDonald do not support applying means-end scrutiny in the Second Amendment context. Instead, the government must 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.

1

To show why Heller does not support applying means-end scrutiny, we first summarize Heller’s methodological approach to the Second Amendment.

In Heller, we began with a “textual analysis” focused on the “ ‘normal and ordinary’ ” meaning of the Second Amendment’s language. [citation omitted] That analysis suggested that the Amendment’s operative clause—“the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed”—“guarantee[s] the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation” that does not depend on service in the militia. [citation omitted]

From there, we assessed whether our initial conclusion was “confirmed by the historical background of the Second Amendment.” [citation omitted] We looked to history because “it has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment ... codified a pre-existing right.” [citation omitted] The Amendment “was not intended to lay down a novel principle but rather codified a right inherited from our English ancestors.” [citation omitted] After surveying English history dating from the late 1600s, along with American colonial views leading up to the founding, we found “no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms.” [citation omitted]

We then canvassed the historical record and found yet further confirmation. That history included the “analogous arms-bearing rights in state constitutions that preceded and immediately followed adoption of the Second Amendment,”…and “how the Second Amendment was interpreted from immediately after its ratification through the end of the 19th century.” [citation omitted] When the principal dissent charged that the latter category of sources was illegitimate “postenactment legislative history,”…we clarified that “examination of a variety of legal and other *2128 sources to determine the public understanding of a legal text in the period after its enactment or ratification” was “a critical tool of constitutional interpretation.” [citation omitted]

In assessing the postratification history, we looked to four different types of sources. First, we reviewed “[t]hree important founding-era legal scholars [who] interpreted the Second Amendment in published writings.”…Second, we looked to “19th-century cases that interpreted the Second Amendment” and found that they “universally support an individual right” to keep and bear arms…Third, we examined the “discussion of the Second Amendment in Congress and in public discourse” after the Civil War, “as people debated whether and how to secure constitutional rights for newly freed slaves.” … Fourth, we considered how post-Civil War commentators understood the right. [citations omitted]

After holding that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to armed self-defense, we also relied on the historical understanding of the Amendment to demark the limits on the exercise of that right. We noted that, “[l]ike most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” [citation omitted] “From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”…For example, we found it “fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons’ ” that the Second Amendment protects the possession and use of weapons that are “ ‘in common use at the time.’ ” [citations omitted]That said, we cautioned that we were not “undertak[ing] an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment” and moved on to considering the constitutionality of the District of Columbia’s handgun ban. [citation omitted]

We assessed the lawfulness of that handgun ban by scrutinizing whether it comported with history and tradition. Although we noted that the ban “would fail constitutional muster” “[u]nder any of the standards of scrutiny that we have applied to enumerated constitutional rights,”…we did not engage in means-end scrutiny when resolving the constitutional question. Instead, we focused on the historically unprecedented nature of the District’s ban, observing that “[f]ew laws in the history of our Nation have come close to [that] severe restriction.” [citation omitted] Likewise, when one of the dissents attempted to justify the District’s prohibition with “founding-era historical precedent,” including “various restrictive laws in the colonial period,” we addressed each purported analogue and concluded that they were either irrelevant or “d[id] not remotely burden the right of self-defense as much as an absolute ban on handguns.” [citations omitted] Thus, our earlier historical analysis sufficed to show that the Second Amendment did not countenance a “complete prohibition” on the use of “the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home.” [citation omitted]

2

As the foregoing shows, Heller’s methodology centered on constitutional text and *2129 history. Whether it came to defining the character of the right (individual or militia dependent), suggesting the outer limits of the right, or assessing the constitutionality of a particular regulation, Heller relied on text and history. It did not invoke any means-end test such as strict or intermediate scrutiny.

Moreover, Heller and McDonald expressly rejected the application of any “judge-empowering ‘interest-balancing inquiry’ that ‘asks 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.’ ” [citations omitted] We declined to engage in means-end scrutiny because “[t]he very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government—even the Third Branch of Government—the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon.” [citation omitted] We then concluded: “A constitutional guarantee subject to future judges’ assessments of its usefulness is no constitutional guarantee at all.” [citation omitted]

Not only did Heller decline to engage in means-end scrutiny generally, but it also specifically ruled out the intermediate-scrutiny test that respondents and the United States now urge us to adopt. Dissenting in Heller, Justice BREYER’s proposed standard—“ask[ing] whether [a] 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,” …—simply expressed a classic formulation of intermediate scrutiny in a slightly different way. [ci8tations omitted] In fact, Justice BREYER all but admitted that his Heller dissent advocated for intermediate scrutiny by repeatedly invoking a quintessential intermediate-scrutiny precedent. [citations omitted]Thus, when Heller expressly rejected that dissent’s “interest-balancing inquiry,” [citation omitted] it necessarily rejected intermediate scrutiny.⁵

In sum, the Courts of Appeals’ second step is inconsistent with Heller’s historical approach and its rejection of means-end scrutiny. We reiterate that the standard for applying the Second Amendment is as follows: When the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s *2130 conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. The government must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only then may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s “unqualified command.” [citation omitted]

C

This Second Amendment standard accords with how we protect other constitutional rights. [One example is] the freedom of speech in the First Amendment, to which Heller repeatedly compared the right to keep and bear arms. [citation omitted] In that context, “[w]hen the Government restricts speech, the Government bears the burden of proving the constitutionality of its actions.” [citations omitted] In some cases, that burden includes showing whether the expressive conduct falls outside of the category of protected speech. [citation omitted] And to carry that burden, the government must generally point to historical evidence about the reach of the First Amendment’s protections. [citations omitted]

And beyond the freedom of speech, our focus on history also comports with how we assess many other constitutional claims…

***

To be sure, “[h]istorical analysis can be difficult; it sometimes requires resolving threshold questions, and making nuanced judgments about which evidence to consult and how to interpret it.” [citation omitted] But reliance on history to inform the meaning of constitutional text—especially text meant to codify a pre-existing right—is, in our view, more legitimate, and more administrable, than asking judges to “make difficult empirical judgments” about “the costs and benefits of firearms restrictions,” especially given their “lack [of] expertise” in the field. [citation omitted]

*2131 If the last decade of Second Amendment litigation has taught this Court anything, it is that federal courts tasked with making such difficult empirical judgments regarding firearm regulations under the banner of “intermediate scrutiny” often defer to the determinations of legislatures. But while that judicial deference to legislative interest balancing is understandable—and, elsewhere, appropriate—it is not deference that the Constitution demands here. The Second Amendment “is the very product of an interest balancing by the people” and it “surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms” for self-defense. Heller, 554 U.S. at 635, 128 S.Ct. 2783. It is this balance—struck by the traditions of the American people—that demands our unqualified deference.

D

The test that we set forth in Heller and apply today requires courts to assess whether modern firearms regulations are consistent with the Second Amendment’s text and historical understanding…

***

New York’s proper-cause requirement concerns the same alleged societal problem addressed in Heller: “handgun violence,” primarily in “urban area[s].”…Following the course charted by Heller, we will consider whether “historical precedent” from before, during, and even after the *2132 founding evinces a comparable tradition of regulation. [citation omitted] And, as we explain below, we find no such tradition in the historical materials that respondents and their amici have brought to bear on that question. [citation omitted]

While the historical analogies here and in Heller are relatively simple to draw, other cases implicating unprecedented societal concerns or dramatic technological changes may require a more nuanced approach…Although its meaning is fixed according to the understandings of those who ratified it, the Constitution can, and must, apply to circumstances beyond those the Founders specifically anticipated. [citation omitted]

We have already recognized in Heller at least one way in which the Second Amendment’s historically fixed meaning applies to new circumstances: Its reference to “arms” does not apply “only [to] those arms in existence in the 18th century.” [citation omitted] “Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.” [citation omitted] Thus, even though the Second Amendment’s definition of “arms” is fixed according to its historical understanding, that general definition covers modern instruments that facilitate armed self-defense. [citation omitted]

Much like we use history to determine which modern “arms” are protected by the Second Amendment, so too does history guide our consideration of modern regulations that were unimaginable at the founding. When confronting such present-day firearm regulations, this historical inquiry that courts must conduct will often involve reasoning by analogy…[D]etermining whether a historical regulation is a proper analogue for a distinctly modern firearm regulation requires a determination of whether the two regulations are “relevantly similar.” [citation omitted] And because “[e]verything is similar in infinite ways to everything else,”…one needs “some metric enabling the analogizer to assess which similarities are important and which are not.” [citation omitted] For instance, a green truck and a green hat are relevantly similar if one’s metric is “things that are green.” [citation omitted] They are not relevantly similar if the applicable metric is “things you can wear.”

While we do not now provide an exhaustive survey of the features that render regulations relevantly similar under the Second Amendment, we do think *2133 that Heller and McDonald point toward at least two metrics: how and why the regulations burden a law-abiding citizen’s right to armed self-defense…Therefore, whether modern and historical regulations impose a comparable burden on the right of armed self-defense and whether that burden is comparably justified are “ ‘central’ ” considerations when engaging in an analogical inquiry. [citations omitted]

To be clear, analogical reasoning under the Second Amendment is neither a regulatory straightjacket nor a regulatory blank check. On the one hand, courts should not “uphold every modern law that remotely resembles a historical analogue,” because doing so “risk[s] endorsing outliers that our ancestors would never have accepted.” [citation omitted] On the other hand, analogical reasoning requires only that the government identify a well-established and representative historical analogue, not a historical twin. So even if a modern-day regulation is not a dead ringer for historical precursors, it still may be analogous enough to pass constitutional muster.

***

“But that is hardly unique to the Second Amendment. It is an essential component of judicial decisionmaking under our enduring Constitution.” [citation omitted] We see no reason why judges frequently tasked with answering these kinds of historical, analogical questions cannot do the same for Second Amendment claims.

III

Having made the constitutional standard endorsed in Heller more explicit, we now apply that standard to New York’s proper-cause requirement.

A

It is undisputed that petitioners Koch and Nash—two ordinary, law-abiding, adult citizens—are part of “the people” whom the Second Amendment protects. [citation omitted] Nor does any party dispute that handguns are weapons “in common use” today for self-defense. [citations omitted] We therefore turn to whether the plain text of the Second Amendment protects Koch’s and Nash’s proposed course of conduct—carrying handguns publicly for self-defense.

We have little difficulty concluding that it does. Respondents do not dispute this. [citation omitted] Nor could they. Nothing in the Second Amendment’s text draws a home/public distinction with respect to the right to keep and bear arms. As we explained in Heller, the “textual elements” of the Second Amendment’s operative clause— “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”—“guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.” [citation omitted] Heller further confirmed that the right to “bear arms” refers to the right to “wear, bear, or carry ... upon the person or in the clothing or in a pocket, for the purpose ... of being armed and ready for offensive or defensive action in a case of conflict with another person.” [citations omitted]

This definition of “bear” naturally encompasses public carry. Most gun owners do not wear a holstered pistol at their hip in their bedroom or while sitting at the dinner table. Although individuals often “keep” firearms in their home, at the ready for self-defense, most do not “bear” (i.e., carry) them in the home beyond moments of actual confrontation. To confine *2135 the right to “bear” arms to the home would nullify half of the Second Amendment’s operative protections.

Moreover, confining the right to “bear” arms to the home would make little sense given that self-defense is “the central component of the [Second Amendment] right itself.” [citations omitted] After all, the Second Amendment guarantees an “individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation,” [citation omitted] and confrontation can surely take place outside the home.

Although we remarked in Heller that the need for armed self-defense is perhaps “most acute” in the home, …we did not suggest that the need was insignificant elsewhere. Many Americans hazard greater danger outside the home than in it. [citations omitted] The text of the Second Amendment reflects that reality.

The Second Amendment’s plain text thus presumptively guarantees petitioners Koch and Nash a right to “bear” arms in public for self-defense.

B

Conceding that the Second Amendment guarantees a general right to public carry…respondents instead claim that the Amendment “permits a State to condition handgun carrying in areas ‘frequented by the general public’ on a showing of a nonspeculative need for armed self-defense in those areas,”…[citation omitted] To support that claim, the burden falls on respondents to show that New York’s proper-cause requirement is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only if respondents carry that burden can they show that the pre-existing right codified in the Second Amendment, and made applicable to the States through the Fourteenth, does not protect petitioners’ proposed course of conduct.

Respondents appeal to a variety of historical sources from the late 1200s to the early 1900s. We categorize these periods as follows: (1) medieval to early modern England; (2) the American Colonies and the early Republic; (3) antebellum America; *2136 (4) Reconstruction; and (5) the late-19th and early-20th centuries.

We categorize these historical sources because, when it comes to interpreting the Constitution, not all history is created equal. “Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them.” [citation omitted] The Second Amendment was adopted in 1791; the Fourteenth in 1868. Historical evidence that long predates either date may not illuminate the scope of the right if linguistic or legal conventions changed in the intervening years. It is one thing for courts to “reac[h] back to the 14th century” for English practices that “prevailed up to the ‘period immediately before and after the framing of the Constitution.’ ” [citation omitted] It is quite another to rely on an “ancient” practice that had become “obsolete in England at the time of the adoption of the Constitution” and never “was acted upon or accepted in the colonies.” [citation omitted]

As with historical evidence generally, courts must be careful when assessing evidence concerning English common-law rights. The common law, of course, developed over time. [citations omitted] And English common-law practices and understandings at any given time in history cannot be indiscriminately attributed to the Framers of our own Constitution. Even “the words of Magna Charta”—foundational as they were to the rights of America’s forefathers—“stood for very different things at the time of the separation of the American Colonies from what they represented originally” in 1215. [citation omitted] Sometimes, in interpreting our own Constitution, “it [is] better not to go too far back into antiquity for the best securities of our liberties,” [citation omitted] unless evidence shows that medieval law survived to become our Founders’ law. A long, unbroken line of common-law precedent stretching from Bracton to Blackstone is far more likely to be part of our law than a short-lived, 14th-century English practice.

Similarly, we must also guard against giving postenactment history more weight than it can rightly bear… [W]e recognize that “where a governmental practice has been open, widespread, and unchallenged since the early days of the Republic, the practice should guide our interpretation of an ambiguous constitutional provision.” [citations omitted]

But to the extent later history contradicts what the text says, the text controls…Thus, “post-ratification adoption or acceptance of laws that are inconsistent with the original meaning of the constitutional text obviously cannot overcome or alter that text.” [citations omitted]

As we recognized in Heller itself, because post-Civil War discussions of the right to keep and bear arms “took place 75 years after the ratification of the Second Amendment, they do not provide as much insight into its original meaning as earlier sources.” [citations omitted] And we made clear in [prior cases]interest in mid- to late-19th-century commentary was secondary. Heller considered this evidence “only after surveying what it regarded as a wealth of authority for its reading—including the text of the Second Amendment and state constitutions.” [citation omitted] In other words, this 19th-century evidence was “treated as mere confirmation of what the Court thought had already been established.” [citation omitted]

A final word on historical method: Strictly speaking, [incorporation means that] New York is bound to respect the right to keep and bear arms because of the Fourteenth Amendment, not the Second. [citation omitted] Nonetheless, we have made clear that individual rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights and made applicable against the States through the Fourteenth Amendment have the same scope as against the Federal Government. [citations omitted] And we have generally assumed that the scope of the protection applicable to the Federal Government and States is pegged to the public understanding of the right when the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791. [citations omitted]

We also acknowledge that there is an ongoing scholarly debate on whether courts should primarily rely on the prevailing understanding of an individual right when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868 when defining its scope (as well as the scope of the right against the Federal Government). [citations omitted] We need not address this issue today because, as we explain below, the public understanding of the right to keep and bear arms in both 1791 and 1868 was, for all relevant purposes, the same with respect to public carry.

* * *

With these principles in mind, we turn to respondents’ historical evidence [which] does not demonstrate a tradition of broadly prohibiting the public carry of commonly used firearms for self-defense. Nor is there any such historical tradition limiting public carry only to those law-abiding citizens who demonstrate a special need for self-defense. We conclude that respondents have failed to meet their burden to identify an American tradition justifying New York’s proper-cause requirement. Under Heller’s text-and-history standard, the proper-cause requirement is therefore unconstitutional.

***

[Although] historical evidence from antebellum America…demonstrate[s] that the manner of public carry was subject to reasonable regulation,…None of [the] historical limitations on the right to bear arms approach New York’s proper-cause requirement because none operated to prevent law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from carrying arms in public for that purpose.

4

Evidence from around the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment also fails to support respondents’ position… For the most part, respondents and the United States ignore the “outpouring of discussion of the [right to keep and bear arms] in Congress and in public discourse, as people debated whether and how to secure constitutional rights for newly free slaves” after the Civil War. [citation omitted] Of course, we are not obliged to sift the historical materials for evidence to sustain New York’s statute. That is respondents’ burden. Nevertheless,…the public discourse surrounding Reconstruction is useful in demonstrating how public carry for self-defense remained a central component of the protection that the Fourteenth Amendment secured for all citizens.

A short prologue is in order. Even before the Civil War commenced in 1861, this Court indirectly affirmed the importance of the right to keep and bear arms in public. Writing for the Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393, 15 L.Ed. 691 (1857), Chief Justice Taney offered what he thought was a parade of horribles that would result from recognizing that free blacks were citizens of the United States. If blacks were citizens, Taney fretted, they would be entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens, including the right *2151 “to keep and carry arms wherever they went.” Id., at 417 (emphasis added). Thus, even Chief Justice Taney recognized (albeit unenthusiastically in the case of blacks) that public carry was a component of the right to keep and bear arms—a right free blacks were often denied in antebellum America.

After the Civil War, of course, the exercise of this fundamental right by freed slaves was systematically thwarted. This Court has already recounted some of the Southern abuses violating blacks’ right to keep and bear arms. [citations omitted]

In the years before the 39th Congress proposed the Fourteenth Amendment, the Freedmen’s Bureau regularly kept it abreast of the dangers to blacks and Union men in the postbellum South. The reports described how blacks used publicly carried weapons to defend themselves and their communities. For example, the Bureau reported that a teacher from a Freedmen’s school in Maryland had written to say that, because of attacks on the school, “[b]oth the mayor and sheriff have warned the colored people to go armed to school, (which they do,)” and that the “[t]he superintendent of schools came down and brought [the teacher] a revolver” for his protection. [citation omitted]

Witnesses before the Joint Committee on Reconstruction also described the depredations visited on Southern blacks, and the efforts they made to defend themselves. One Virginia music professor related that when “[t]wo Union men were attacked ... they drew their revolvers and held their assailants at bay.” [citation omitted] An assistant commissioner to the Bureau from Alabama similarly reported that men were “robbing and disarming negroes upon the highway,”…indicating that blacks indeed carried arms publicly for their self-protection, even if not always with success. [citations omitted]

Blacks had “procured great numbers of old army muskets and revolvers, particularly in Texas,” and “employed them to protect themselves” with “vigor and audacity.” [citation omitted] Seeing that government was inadequately protecting them, “there [was] the strongest desire on the part of the freedmen to secure arms, revolvers particularly.” [citation omitted]

On July 6, 1868, Congress extended the 1866 Freedmen’s Bureau Act, see 15 Stat. 83, and reaffirmed that freedmen were entitled to the “full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings concerning personal liberty [and] personal security ... including the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.” [citation omitted] That same day, a Bureau *2152 official reported that freedmen in Kentucky and Tennessee were still constantly under threat: “No Union man or negro who attempts to take any active part in politics, or the improvement of his race, is safe a single day; and nearly all sleep upon their arms at night, and carry concealed weapons during the day.” [citation omitted]

Of course, even during Reconstruction the right to keep and bear arms had limits. But those limits were consistent with a right of the public to peaceably carry handguns for self-defense… For instance, when General D. E. Sickles issued a decree in 1866 pre-empting South Carolina’s Black Codes—which prohibited firearm possession by blacks—he stated: “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.... And no disorderly person, vagrant, or disturber of the peace, shall be allowed to bear arms.” [citations omitted] Around the same time, the editors of The Loyal Georgian, a prominent black-owned newspaper, were asked by “A Colored Citizen” whether “colored persons [have] a right to own and carry fire arms.” The editors responded that blacks had “the same right to own and carry fire arms that other citizens have.” [citation omitted] And, borrowing language from a Freedmen’s Bureau circular, the editors maintained that “[a]ny person, white or black, may be disarmed if convicted of making an improper or dangerous use of weapons,” even though “no military or civil officer has the right or authority to disarm any class of people, thereby placing them at the mercy of others.” [citations omitted]

As for Reconstruction-era state regulations, there was little innovation over the kinds of public-carry restrictions that had been commonplace in the early 19th century…

5

Finally, respondents point to the slight uptick in gun regulation during the late-19th *2154 century—principally in the Western Territories…[L]ate-19th-century evidence cannot provide much insight into the meaning of the Second Amendment when it contradicts earlier evidence. [citation omitted] Here, moreover, respondents’ reliance on late-19th-century laws has several serious flaws even beyond their temporal distance from the founding.

***

* * *

At the end of this long journey through the Anglo-American history of public carry, we conclude that respondents have not met their burden to identify an American tradition justifying the State’s proper-cause requirement. The Second Amendment guaranteed to “all Americans” the right to bear commonly used arms in public subject to certain reasonable, well-defined restrictions. [citation omitted] Those restrictions, for example, limited the intent for which one could carry arms, the manner by which one carried arms, or the exceptional circumstances under which one could not carry arms, such as before justices of the peace and other government officials. Apart from a few late-19th-century outlier jurisdictions, American governments simply have not broadly prohibited the public carry of commonly used firearms for personal defense. Nor, subject to a few late-in-time outliers, have American governments required law-abiding, responsible citizens to “demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community” in order to carry arms in public. Klenosky, 75 App.Div., at 793, 428 N.Y.S.2d at 257.

IV

The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not “a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.” [citation omitted] We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need. That is not how the First Amendment works when it comes to unpopular speech or the free exercise of religion. It is not how the Sixth Amendment works when it comes to a defendant’s right to confront the witnesses against him. And it is not how the Second Amendment works when it comes to public carry for self-defense.

New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment in that it prevents law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms. We therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

Justice ALITO, concurring. [omitted]

Justice Kavannaugh joined by Chief Justice Roberts, concurring [omitted]

Justice BARRETT, concurring. [omitted]

Justice BREYER, with whom Justice SOTOMAYOR and Justice KAGAN join, dissenting. [omitted]