Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-23-07061/USCOURTS-caDC-23-07061-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued February 13, 2024 Decided October 29, 2024

No. 23-7061

ANDREW HANSON, ET AL.,

APPELLANTS

v.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA AND PAMELA A. SMITH,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:22-cv-02256)

Edward M. Wenger argued the cause for appellants. With 

him on the briefs were George L. Lyon, Jr. and Mateo ForeroNorena.

Ashwin P. Phatak, Principal Deputy Solicitor General, 

Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, 

argued the cause for appellees. With him on the brief were 

Brian L. Schwalb, Attorney General, Caroline S. Van Zile, 

Solicitor General, Thais-Lyn Trayer, Deputy Solicitor General, 

and Sonya L. Lebsack, Assistant Attorney General.

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Mary B. McCord was on the brief for amicus curiae United 

States Conference of Mayors in support of appellees.

Matthew J. Platkin, Attorney General, Office of the 

Attorney General for the State of New Jersey, Jeremy M. 

Feigenbaum, Solicitor General, Andrea Joy Campbell, 

Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General for the 

Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Robert Toone, Chief, 

Government Bureau, Rob Bonta, Attorney General, Office of 

the Attorney General for the State of California, Philip J. 

Weiser, Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General for 

the State of Colorado, William Tong, Attorney General, Office 

of the Attorney General for the State of Connecticut, Kathleen 

Jennings, Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General for 

the State of Delaware, Anne E. Lopez, Attorney General, Office 

of the Attorney General for the State of Hawai‘i, Kwame Raoul, 

Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General for the State 

of Illinois, Aaron M. Frey, Attorney General, Office of the 

Attorney General for the State of Maine, Anthony G. Brown, 

Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General for the State 

of Maryland, Dana Nessel, Attorney General, Office of the 

Attorney General for the State of Michigan, Keith Ellison, 

Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General for the State 

of Minnesota, Aaron D. Ford, Attorney General, Office of the 

Attorney General for the State of Nevada, Letitia James, 

Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General for the State 

of New York, Ellen F. Rosenblum, Attorney General, Office of 

the Attorney General for the State of Oregon, Michelle A. 

Henry, Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General for 

the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Peter F. Neronha, 

Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General for the State 

of Rhode Island, Charity R. Clark, Attorney General, Office of 

the Attorney General for the State of Vermont, and Robert W. 

Ferguson, Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General 

for the State of Washington, were on the brief for amici curiae

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Massachusetts, et al. in support of appellees. Turner H. Smith, 

Assistant Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General for 

the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, entered an appearance.

Priyanka Gupta Sen was on the brief for amicus curiae

Everytown for Gun Safety in support of appellees.

Douglas N. Letter, Timothy C. Hester, and Ciara Wren 

Malone were on the brief for amici curiae Brady Center to 

Prevent Gun Violence, et al. in support of appellees. 

Before: MILLETT and WALKER, Circuit Judges, and 

GINSBURG, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed PER CURIAM. 

Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge WALKER.

I. Factual and Procedural History....................................... 5

II. Standard of Review......................................................... 7

III. Likelihood of Success on the Merits............................... 7

A. Plain Text of the Second Amendment ........................ 8

B. Historical Tradition of Firearm Regulation .............. 12

1. Historical Analogues to the Magazine Cap .......... 14

a. Storage of Gunpowder...................................... 15

b. Time, Place, and Manner Restrictions.............. 16

c. Prohibition-Era Regulations.............................. 17

d. Restrictions on Weapons Particularly Capable of 

Unprecedented Lethality.................................. 18

2. The Nuanced Approach to History Under Bruen . 25

a. Unprecedented Societal Concern...................... 26

b. Dramatic Technological Change....................... 28

IV. Other Preliminary Injunction Factors ........................... 30

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A. Irreparable Harm....................................................... 32

B. Balance of the Equities ............................................. 36

V. Summary and Conclusion............................................. 40

Appendix: Historical Firearms.............................................. 41

PER CURIAM: After the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling 

in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), the 

District of Columbia revised its firearms laws to cap the 

capacity of firearm magazines at “10 rounds of ammunition.” 

D.C. Code § 7-2506.01(b). Over a decade ago, applying the 

then-prevailing intermediate scrutiny standard of review, we 

held the magazine cap did not violate the right to bear arms 

secured by the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the 

United States, which provides: “A well regulated Militia, 

being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the 

people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” See

Heller v. District of Columbia (Heller II), 670 F.3d 1244, 1264 

(D.C. Cir. 2011). Since then, the Supreme Court has rejected 

“means-end scrutiny in the Second Amendment context,” in 

favor of asking whether a challenged restriction is consistent 

with “the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” 

N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, 19, 24 

(2022). 

Seeing a new opening, the Appellants have charged once 

more unto the breach. They argue the District’s magazine cap 

is unconstitutional under the test set forth in Bruen and moved 

the district court for a preliminary injunction to prohibit enforcement of the magazine cap. The district court denied the 

motion. Because the Appellants have failed to make the “clear 

showing” required for a preliminary injunction on this early 

and undeveloped record, Winter v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, 555 

U.S. 7, 22 (2008), we affirm the denial of their motion.

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I. Factual and Procedural History

After its “prohibition on the possession of usable handguns 

in the home” was held to violate the Second Amendment in

Heller, 554 U.S. at 573, 635, the District of Columbia enacted

the Firearms Registration Amendment Act of 2008, D.C. Law 

17-372. The Act makes it a felony to possess a magazine 

capable of holding more than 10 rounds. Appellants wish to 

possess magazines containing up to 17 bullets, which for 

efficiency’s sake we will refer to as an extra-large capacity 

magazine (ELCM) to distinguish it from a permitted largecapacity ten-round magazine.

1

Each of the appellants, Andrew Hanson, Tyler Yzaguirre, 

Nathan Chaney, and Eric Klun, keeps one or more firearm 

magazines capable of holding more than ten rounds of ammunition outside the District of Columbia and each alleges he 

would use his magazines in the District for lawful purposes, 

including self-defense, were the magazine cap imposed by the 

Act not in effect. One appellant, Tyler Yzaguirre, attempted to 

1 In full, D.C. Code § 7-2506.01(b)-(c), provides:

No person in the District shall possess, sell, or transfer any 

large capacity ammunition feeding device regardless of 

whether the device is attached to a firearm. 

For the purposes of this subsection, the term ‘large capacity 

ammunition feeding device’ means a magazine, belt, drum, 

feed strip, or similar device that has a capacity of, or that can 

be readily restored or converted to accept, more than 10 

rounds of ammunition. The term ‘large capacity 

ammunition feeding device’ shall not include an attached 

tubular device designed to accept, and capable of operating 

only with, .22 caliber rimfire ammunition.

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register a firearm with a 12-round magazine in the District, but 

the Metropolitan Police Department denied his application because of the magazine cap. 

On August 1, 2022 — a little more than a month after 

Bruen had been decided — the four appellants (hereinafter 

Hanson) sued the District and the Chief of the D.C. 

Metropolitan Police Department, seeking a declaratory judgment that the magazine cap violates the Second Amendment. 

Hanson also moved for preliminary and permanent injunctions 

preventing the District and the MPD from enforcing the magazine cap. The district court denied Hanson’s motion for a preliminary injunction. Hanson v. District of Columbia, 671 F. 

Supp. 3d 1, 3 (D.D.C. 2023). 

Because Bruen had “rejected how the Courts of Appeals 

interpreted and applied Heller,” the district court undertook a 

“renewed analysis under the framework Bruen provides.” Id.

at 5. As applied to Hanson’s suit, the court distilled the Bruen 

test into two questions: First, “whether the Second 

Amendment covers [ELCM] possession”; and second, if so, 

“whether the District’s [magazine cap] is relevantly similar to 

an historical analogue” in the regulation of firearms. Id. at 8. 

The court then subdivided the first question into two further 

questions: “Whether ELCMs are ‘arms’ within the meaning of 

the Second Amendment,” and “whether ELCMs are typically 

possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” Id. at 

8–9 (cleaned up). 

The district court held ELCMs are “arms” within the 

meaning of the Second Amendment and possession of an 

ELCM is not within the scope of the Second Amendment right. 

In the alternative, the court held the District’s magazine cap 

would be “constitutional for the independent reason that the 

District has shown that it is consistent with this country’s hisUSCA Case #23-7061 Document #2082477 Filed: 10/29/2024 Page 6 of 99
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torical tradition of firearm regulation.” Id. at 16. The court 

reasoned the District’s justification for the magazine cap —

“mitigating the carnage of mass shootings in this country” —

matched that for Prohibition-era “laws restricting possession of 

high-capacity weapons” because both aimed to reduce 

violence, and each had a similarly modest burden on the 

Second Amendment right to bear arms. Id. at 22 (cleaned up). 

Accordingly, the court concluded Hanson had not shown a 

likelihood of success on the merits and the district court denied 

his motion for a preliminary injunction. Hanson timely 

appealed. We now affirm the order of the district court.

II. Standard of Review

A preliminary injunction is “an extraordinary remedy that 

may only be awarded upon a clear showing that the plaintiff is 

entitled to such relief.” Winter, 555 U.S. at 22. To get a 

preliminary injunction the movant must show: (1) “he is likely 

to succeed on the merits,” (2) “he is likely to suffer irreparable 

harm in the absence of preliminary relief,” (3) “the balance of 

equities tips in his favor,” and (4) issuing “an injunction is in 

the public interest.” Id. at 20. We review the district court’s 

decision whether “to grant the Plaintiffs’ request for a 

preliminary injunction for abuse of discretion, its legal conclusions de novo, and its findings of fact for clear error.” HuishaHuisha v. Mayorkas, 27 F.4th 718, 726 (D.C. Cir. 2022). 

III. Likelihood of Success on the Merits

To assess the merits of Hanson’s request for a preliminary 

injunction,2 we must determine whether the District’s maga2 Because the appellants conceded at oral argument that they had not 

made the requisite showing for a facial challenge to the District’s 

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zine cap allowing ten but not seventeen rounds likely violates 

Hanson’s Second Amendment rights. Bruen established a twostep test for making that determination. First, we consider 

whether “the Second Amendment’s plain text covers” 

possession of an ELCM. Bruen, 597 U.S. at 17. If it does, then 

we must determine whether the magazine cap is “consistent 

with this Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation” and 

therefore constitutional. Id. The plaintiff bears the burden of 

proof at the first step, whereas the Government bears the 

burden of proof at the second step. See id. at 24; see also 

Bianchi v. Brown, No. 21-1255, 111 F.4th 438, 445–46 (4th 

Cir. 2024).

A. Plain Text of the Second Amendment

Under governing precedent, Bruen step one encompasses 

two more precise questions: Do ELCMs “constitute bearable 

arms,” Heller, 554 U.S. at 582, and, if so, are ELCMs “in ‘common use’” for a lawful purpose, such as self-defense?3 Bruen, 

magazine cap, see Oral Arg. Tr. at 9–14, we address their challenge 

only as-applied and only to the type of weapons equipped with an 

ELCM that appellants actually own and want to register in the 

District, namely, handgun magazines holding between 12 and 17 

rounds. See id. at 11:20–12:22 (counsel for Hanson explaining that 

the largest magazine that Hanson “possess[es]” and “want[s] to carry 

in the District” holds 17 bullets).

3 “There is no consensus on whether the common-use issue belongs 

at Bruen step one or Bruen step two.” Bevis v. City of Naperville, 

Ill., 85 F.4th 1175, 1198 (7th Cir. 2023) (assuming common use is 

part of step two); see Teter v. Lopez, 76 F.4th 938, 949–50 (9th Cir. 

2023) (resolving common use at step two), reh’g en banc granted, 

opinion vacated, 93 F.4th 1150 (9th Cir. 2024); United States v. 

Rahimi, 61 F.4th 443, 454 (5th Cir. 2023) (resolving common use at 

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597 U.S. at 47 (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 627). On the current 

record, we think the answer to both questions is likely, as 

Hanson maintains, to be in the affirmative. 

As to the first question, Hanson is likely to succeed in 

showing that ELCMs are “Arms” within the meaning of the 

Second Amendment. “Constitutional rights . . . implicitly protect those closely related acts necessary to their exercise.” Luis 

v. United States, 578 U.S. 5, 26 (2016) (Thomas, J., concuring). A magazine is necessary to make meaningful an 

individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense. To hold 

otherwise would allow the government to sidestep the Second 

Amendment with a regulation prohibiting possession at the 

component level, “such as a firing pin.” Kolbe v. Hogan, 813 

F.3d 160, 175 (4th Cir. 2016), rev’d en banc, 849 F.3d 114 

(2017). We therefore agree with Hanson and the district court 

that ELCMs very likely are “Arms” within the meaning of the 

plain text of the Second Amendment. 

Next, Hanson is likely to succeed in showing that ELCMs 

are “in common use” for self-defense, see Heller, 554 U.S. at 

627, a deceptively simple question. To start, it demands we 

answer the antecedent question: What is the relevant 

step one), rev’d, 602 U.S. ---, 144 S. Ct. 1889 (2024). We assume, 

without deciding, this issue falls under Bruen step one because the 

Bruen Court determined that handguns are in common use before 

conducting its historical analysis. See 597 U.S. at 32 (“Nor does any 

party dispute that handguns are weapons in common use today for 

self-defense. We therefore turn to whether the plain text of the 

Second Amendment protects [the petitioners’] proposed course of 

conduct — carrying handguns publicly for self-defense.” (cleaned 

up)); see also Heller II, 670 F.3d at 1296 n.20 (Kavanaugh, J., 

dissenting) (“In order to apply Heller’s test to this prohibition, we 

must know whether magazines with more than 10 rounds have 

traditionally been banned and are not in common use”). 

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geographic area, the District of Columbia, the DistrictMaryland-Virginia Region, or the entire United States? We 

think the relevant area is the United States because the source 

of the right is the Constitution of the United States. It would 

be anomalous for the protection offered by the Second 

Amendment to vary from one state or place to another based 

upon the local popularity of a particular firearm. 

What, then, does “common use” mean? We agree with the 

District that the answer is not to be found solely by looking to 

the number of a certain weapon in private hands. Accord 

Bianchi, 111 F.4th at 460 (“the Court’s choice of the phrase 

common use instead of common possession suggests that only 

instances of ‘active employment’ of the weapon should 

count”). After all, there are more than 700,000 machine guns 

registered with the federal government, Bureau of Alcohol, 

Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, Firearms Commerce in the 

United States: Annual Statistical Update 2021, at 16 (2021), 

and only “approximately 200,000” stun guns owned by 

civilians. Caetano v. Massachusetts, 577 U.S. 411, 420 (2016) 

(Alito, J., concurring in the judgment) (cleaned up). Yet 

possession of a stun gun is protected by the Second 

Amendment, id. at 412, whereas possession of a machine gun 

has generally been banned, see 18 U.S.C. § 922(o). 

The district court erred, however, in reasoning (as the 

District now argues) that ELCMs are outside the scope of the 

Second Amendment because they are most useful in military 

service. Heller contrasted weapons “in common use at the 

time” of the Founding with “dangerous and unusual weapons,” 

which are “most useful in military service.” 554 U.S. at 627

(cleaned up). The latter type of weapon “may be banned” not 

because of its military use but because of the “historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual 

weapons.” Id. 

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The Supreme Court in Heller did not hold, however, that 

Second Amendment protection does not extend to weapons that 

are “most useful” in the military context. Rather, the Court 

acknowledged that the Second Amendment protects those 

weapons that are “in common use at the time,” but not “dangerous and unusual weapons.” That means that some “weapons that are most useful in military service” do not receive 

Second Amendment protection. Heller, 554 U.S. at 627. The 

Court conceded this differential treatment may mean that 

“modern developments have limited the degree of fit between 

the [Second Amendment’s] prefatory clause and the protected 

right,” but was untroubled by that outcome, reasoning that 

diminished fit could not “change [its] interpretation of the 

right.” Id. at 627–28. In other words, the Court was not saying 

“there is no Second Amendment protection for weapons that 

are ‘most useful in military service.’” Br. of Appellee 23. It 

was explaining that some “sophisticated” and “highly unusual” 

military weapons, Heller, 554 U.S. at 627, may not receive 

protection notwithstanding the Second Amendment predicate 

regarding the necessity of a “well-regulated Militia,” U.S. 

Const. amend. II. 

The District argues ELCMs are not in common use for 

self-defense because they are rarely used to fire more than a 

couple rounds in self-defense. Hanson replies that one need 

not fire every bullet in an ELCM in order to use it. Because 

ELCMs are in sufficiently wide circulation and given the 

disputed facts in the record about the role of ELCMs for selfdefense, we will presume for present purposes that ELCMs can 

be used for self-defense. Accordingly, because Hanson has 

shown it is likely that ELCMs are “arms” and are in common 

use for self-defense today, it appears on this record that “the 

Second Amendment's plain text covers” and therefore 

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presumptively protects the possession of ELCMs. See Bruen, 

597 U.S. at 17. 

Hanson would have us stop here, as would our dissenting 

colleague, arguing that, under Bruen, to find an arm is in 

common use renders any restriction of that arm 

unconstitutional. As the District points out, however, Bruen 

itself precludes this argument. Although no party there 

disputed that “handguns are weapons in common use today for 

self-defense,” id. at 32 (cleaned up), the bulk of what follows 

in the Court’s opinion is an extended analysis of the 

Government’s proposed historical analogues, hardly an obiter 

dictum, see id. part III, at 31–70.4

 We therefore conclude that, 

if an arm is “in common use for self-defense,” then it falls to 

the Government, at the second step of the Bruen analysis, to 

show its restriction on the right to keep and bear arms is 

“consistent with this Nation's historical tradition of firearm 

regulation.” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 17.

B. Historical Tradition of Firearm Regulation

Is the District’s magazine cap “relevantly similar” to a tradition of regulating firearms? Id. at 29 (quoting C. Sunstein, 

On Analogical Reasoning, 106 HARV. L. REV. 741, 773 

(1993)). Although the Supreme Court has not “provided an 

4 Indeed, Bruen itself explains that, even where an individual’s 

conduct is “presumptively protec[ed]” because the “Second 

Amendment’s plain text covers” it, the government can “justify its 

regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s 

historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Id. at 24. Our dissenting 

colleague says Bruen’s historical analysis is dicta; it is not, but even 

if it were, under this court’s practice, “carefully considered language 

of the Supreme Court, even if technically dictum, generally must be 

treated as authoritative.” See United States v. Dorcely, 454 F.3d 366, 

375 (D.C. Cir. 2006). 

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exhaustive survey of the features that render regulations 

relevantly similar under the Second Amendment, . . . 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.” Id. (emphases added) (cleaned up). As the 

Court has explained, 

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 an historical 

analogue, because doing so risks endorsing outliers that 

our ancestors would never have accepted. 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. 

Bruen, 597 U.S. at 30 (cleaned up); see also Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. 

at 1903 (emphasizing the error of requiring a “twin” instead of 

an “analogue”).

Even with this guidance from Bruen, there is considerable 

uncertainty as to the degree of generality at which a court might 

properly find a relevantly similar historical analogue. At the 

pinnacle of abstraction, an historical analogue could be representative of “an unbroken tradition of regulating weapons to 

[protect communities].” Bevis, 85 F.4th at 1200. Conversely, 

one could read the history to find “no American tradition of 

limiting ammunition capacity.” Duncan v. Bonta, 695 F. Supp. 

3d 1206, 1214 (S.D. Cal. 2023). We think these levels of 

generality and specificity exemplify, respectively, just the 

“regulatory blank check” and the “regulatory straightjacket” 

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against which Bruen warns. 597 U.S. at 30; see id. (at a high 

enough level of generality, “everything is similar in infinite 

ways to everything else” (cleaned up)). We think the 

appropriate level of generalization is one that aligns the 

regulation in question with the “how” and “why” of the 

historical analogue. Id.; see also Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1898

(“As we explained in Bruen, the appropriate analysis involves 

considering whether the challenged regulation is consistent 

with the principles that underpin our regulatory tradition”).

1. Historical Analogues to the Magazine Cap

With this understanding in mind, we turn now to whether, 

on this preliminary record, the District has identified a “relevantly similar” historical analogue for its magazine cap. 

Bruen, 597 U.S. at 8. To do so, the District must identify an 

historical tradition of regulation that burdens the right to armed 

self-defense in a manner similar to the burden imposed by the 

magazine cap (the “how”) and does so for a similar reason (the 

“why”). As explained in greater detail below, we apply the 

“nuanced approach” under Bruen to this inquiry.

Here, our inquiry turns upon whether the District can identify an historical regulation that restricts possession of an arm 

based on a justification similar to that for the magazine cap, 

namely, to respond to “the growing use of [ELCMs] to facilitate crime and, specifically, to perpetrate mass shootings.” Br. 

of Appellee 46.

The District and the amici States proffer several candidates 

for historical analogues of the magazine cap: laws regulating 

the storage of gunpowder and ammunition; time, place, and 

manner restrictions on when arms may be carried or firearms 

discharged; Prohibition-era regulations of removable magazines and their capacity; and restrictions on dangerous and unUSCA Case #23-7061 Document #2082477 Filed: 10/29/2024 Page 14 of 99
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usual weapons, including weapons considered particularly dangerous or susceptible to unprecedented lethality. 

a. Storage of Gunpowder

The District and the amici States advance various restrictions on the storage of gunpowder in the Founding era as a 

purportedly relevant historical tradition. A modern detachable 

magazine is similar to a colonial or Founding-era cache of 

gunpowder only insofar as it acts as a limit on the firepower 

available to a single household. Those regulations are not 

“relevantly similar” because they were purely fire prevention 

measures that affected firearm capacity only incidentally, if at 

all.5

 The suggestion that they limited the Second Amendment 

right to keep and bear arms is silly.

5 “As Massachusetts's 1780 gunpowder statute put it, its goal was to 

‘deter[] the Inhabitants thereof from keeping certain Quantities of 

Powder in Houses and Ware-Houses, &c. to the great Inconvenience, 

Discouragement and Danger of Persons assisting in Time of Fire.’” 

Saul Cornell & Nathan DeDino, A Well Regulated Right: The Early 

American Origins of Gun Control, 73 FORDHAM L. REV. 487, 512 

(2004) (quoting ch. V, 1780 Mass. Acts 326); see also, e.g., Act of 

June 26, 1792, ch. X, 1792 Mass. Acts 208 (requiring gunpowder in 

excess of the legal limit to be transported “in a waggon [sic] or 

carriage, closely covered with leather or canvas, and without iron on 

any part thereof, to be first approbated by the Firewards of said 

town”); Act of Apr. 13, 1784, ch. 28, 1784 N.Y. Laws 627 

(gunpowder in a home must be stored “into four stone jugs or tin 

cannisters, which shall not contain more than seven pounds each”);

§ XLII, 1781-1782 Pa. Laws 41 (gunpowder “in any house, shop, 

cellar, store or other place within the said borough” must be kept “in 

the highest story of the house . . . unless it be at least fifty yards from 

any dwelling house”). 

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b. Time, Place, and Manner Restrictions

We also agree with Hanson that the various time, place, 

and manner restrictions identified by the District and the amici

States fail to identify a “relevantly similar” analogue. They 

entail neither a justification nor a burden commensurate with 

those of the magazine cap. 

Take trap or spring guns: The District argues the tradition 

of banning the setting of guns as a trap indicates a tradition of 

regulating “unacceptable levels [of] risk of harm to innocent 

bystanders.” This analogy is too generalized and “comes too 

close to the means/end scrutiny that Bruen rejected.” Bevis, 85 

F.4th at 1200. In any event, the burden imposed by trap guns 

does not align with the burden imposed by the District’s 

magazine cap. “The liability for spring guns and mantraps 

arises from the fact that the defendant . . . expected the 

trespasser and prepared an injury that is no more justified than 

if he had held the gun and fired it.” United Zinc & Chem. Co. 

v. Britt, 258 U.S. 268, 275 (1922). In other words, restrictions 

on setting trap guns are justified because they target tortious 

activity that lies outside the realm of lawful self-defense. 

Nor do prohibitions on concealed carry constitute a “relevantly similar” tradition; they lack a justification like the one 

animating the District’s magazine cap. A prohibition on carrying a concealed weapon does nothing to limit the lethality of 

the weapon.

Laws that prohibit discharging a firearm within a city or 

after dark fare no better. See, e.g., Ga. Code § 16-11-103 

(2022) (prohibiting the discharge of firearms within 50 yards 

of a public highway). Unlike the burden the magazine cap 

imposes upon the right to bear arms, modest though it is, we 

doubt city and nighttime prohibitions burden the right to armed 

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self-defense at all; self-defense surely would be a complete 

defense to a charge under those statutes. Indeed, the purpose 

of these laws is akin to a prohibition on breach of the peace. 

See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Wing, 26 Mass. 1, 3–4 (1829) 

(noting “the discharging of guns unnecessarily . . . is an offense 

against the public peace and security” (cleaned up)). 

Delaware’s colonial-era prohibition on firing guns in urban 

areas, for example, had an exception for “days of public 

rejoicing.” Robert H. Churchill, Gun Regulation, the Police 

Power, and the Right to Keep Arms in Early America: The 

Legal Context of the Second Amendment, 25 LAW & HIST.REV.

139, 163 (2007). 

For these reasons, on the abbreviated record before us, we 

cannot say the District has carried its burden of demonstrating 

that time, place, and manner restrictions on the use of firearms 

are “relevantly similar” historical analogues to the District’s 

magazine cap.

c. Prohibition-Era Regulations

The district court held the magazine cap was consistent 

with an historical tradition of regulating magazine capacity 

based upon Prohibition-era bans and regulations. 671 F. Supp. 

3d at 21-25. The comparison is somewhat helpful in documenting a history of limiting magazine capacity, at least when 

combined with rapid-firing capabilities. The district court 

identified bans “adopted by nearly half of all states.” Id. at 21. 

Some of those states also limited magazine capacity to even 

fewer than 10 rounds — including two that limited capacity to 

a single round. See, e.g., 1927 Mass. Acts 413, 413–14. But, 

keeping in mind the preliminary nature of this decision, those 

regulations alone may not suffice as a relevant analogue. Many 

of those laws did not regulate magazine capacity itself; rather, 

they addressed the combination of ELCMs and automatic firUSCA Case #23-7061 Document #2082477 Filed: 10/29/2024 Page 17 of 99
18

ing — effectively, and often explicitly, directed at machine 

guns.6 

This is to be expected, as those laws were enacted largely 

in response to the then-novel Thompson submachine gun invented in 1918. The regulation of machine guns through 

restrictions on capacity and automatic firing together targets a 

combination that renders a weapon significantly more lethal 

than a weapon equipped with an ELCM alone. 

d. Restrictions on Weapons Particularly 

Capable of Unprecedented Lethality

Finally, the District and its amici argue that historical restrictions on particularly dangerous weapons and on the related 

category of weapons particularly capable of unprecedented 

lethality constitute a relevantly similar tradition. Those laws 

are commensurate with the District’s justification of its 

magazine cap to counter “the growing use of [ELCMs] to 

facilitate crime and, specifically, to perpetrate mass shootings.” 

Therefore, on the limited record before us, we agree with the 

District that it has identified a relevant historical analogue and 

Hanson is not likely to succeed on the merits of his claim.

6 See, e.g., 1933 Cal. Stat. 1169 §§ 2–3 (“[E]very person . . . who 

within the State of California sells, offers for sale, possesses or 

knowingly transports any . . . machine gun . . . is guilty of a public 

offense,” defining machine gun as “all firearms known as machine 

rifles, machine guns, or submachine guns capable of discharging 

automatically and continuously loaded ammunition . . . automatically fed after each discharge from or by means of clips, discs, 

drums, belts or other separable mechanical device having a capacity 

greater than ten cartridges” (emphases added)); 1932 La. Acts 337-

38 § 1 (defining machine gun in part as being “capable of 

automatically discharging more than eight cartridges successively 

without reloading”); 1934 S.C. Acts 1288 § 1 (same). 

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The District advances as an example the history of restrictions on Bowie knives or similar blades, and to a lesser extent pocket pistols. Together with the amici States, the District 

recounts that, in response to rising murder rates and an outpouring of public concern, “nearly every state in the Union restricted Bowie (or similar long-bladed) knives in some manner, 

whether by outlawing their possession, carry, sale, enhancing 

criminal penalties, or taxing their ownership.” Br. of Appellee 

38. 

Most of those laws merely list Bowie knives by name in 

the course of prohibiting the concealed carrying of dangerous 

weapons generally, and therefore are not indicative of a “relevantly similar” tradition. See, e.g., Acts of the General 

Assembly of Virginia, Passed at the Session of 1838, ch. 101, 

at 76 (“It is against the law to habitually or generally keep or 

carry about his person any pistol, dirk, bowie knife, or any 

other weapon of the like kind . . . hidden or concealed from 

common observation”). A handful, however, did ban the 

carrying, rather than only the concealment, of Bowie knives

with no or narrow exceptions. See 1881 Ark. Acts 191, An Act 

to Preserve the Public Peace and Prevent Crime, ch. xcvi, § 1 

(“That any person who shall wear or carry, in any manner 

whatever, as a weapon, any dirk or bowie knife, or a sword, or 

a spear in a cane, brass or metal knucks, razor, or any pistol of 

any kind whatever, except such pistols as are used in the army 

or navy of the United States, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor”); 1871 Tex. Laws 25 § 1(“[A]ny person carrying 

on or about his person, saddle, or in his saddle bags, any . . .

bowie-knife . . . unless he had reasonable grounds for fearing 

an unlawful attack on his person, and that such ground of attack 

shall be immediate and pressing . . . misdemeanor”); 1889 

Ariz. Sess. Laws 16, An Act Defining And Punishing Certain 

Offenses Against The Public Peace, §§ 1–2 (“If any person . . . 

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20

shall carry on or about his person . . . any bowie knife . . . he 

shall . . . forfeit to the County in which his is convicted, the 

weapon or weapons so carried,” but providing a limited 

exception for self-defense from an “imminent and threatening” 

danger).

Contemporaneous court decisions also upheld laws 

targeting Bowie knives against challenges based upon the 

Second Amendment or a state equivalent. In Aymette v. State, 

21 Tenn. 154, 158 (1840), for example, the Supreme Court of 

Tennessee concluded:

They need not, for such a purpose, the use of those weapons which are usually employed in private broils, and 

which are efficient only in the hands of the robber and the 

assassin. These weapons . . . could not be employed advantageously in the common defence of the citizens. The 

right to keep and bear them is not, therefore, secured by 

the constitution. 

As the Supreme Court of Texas put it in Cockrum v. State, 24 

Tex. 394, 402–03 (1859): 

The bowie-knife differs from [guns or swords] in its device 

and design; it is the instrument of almost certain death. He 

who carries such a weapon, for lawful defense, as he may, 

makes himself more dangerous to the rights of others, considering the frailties of human nature, than if he carried a 

less dangerous weapon. Now, is the legislature powerless 

to protect the rights of others thus the more endangered, by 

superinducing caution against yielding to such frailties? 

May the state not say, through its law, to the citizen, “this 

right which you exercise, is very liable to be dangerous to 

the rights of others, you must school your mind to forbear 

the abuse of your right, by yielding to sudden passion; to 

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secure this necessary schooling of your mind, an increased 

penalty must be affixed to the abuse of this right, so dangerous to others.

We emphasize that our identification of a relevant historical tradition is based upon the regulation of weapons that are 

particularly capable of unprecedented lethality and not, as the 

dissent would have it, upon the regulation of Bowie knives 

specifically. Nor is our conclusion based upon statutes the 

dissent characterizes as “not only too little [but also] too late.” 

Dissent at 46.

7

 

7 The dissent states that “the original meaning that controls [the 

District’s magazine cap] is undoubtedly the original meaning [of the 

Second Amendment] in 1791,” rather than its meaning in 1868,

taking no position on whether the same is true for state laws. Dissent

at 46 n.203. We see three reasons, however, to believe analogues 

after 1791 are still relevant. First, the limitations on the Second 

Amendment listed in Heller (involving a D.C. regulation) were based 

on examples that occurred throughout the 19th century. See Heller, 

554 U.S. at 626–27. Second, the Supreme Court has relied on early 

19th-century (and still earlier) history to overturn state laws that 

implicate the Second Amendment even though the Second 

Amendment had not yet been incorporated through the Due Process 

Clause, noting 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.” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 38; see also, e.g., Rahimi, 144 S. 

Ct. at 1899–902; Bruen, 597 U.S. at 33–59; id. at 38. Third, the 

Supreme Court has similarly emphasized that our inquiry is “not 

meant to suggest a law trapped in amber” and that “the Second 

Amendment permits more than just those regulations identical to the 

ones that could be found in 1791.” Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1897–98. 

On the limited record before us, we believe that this evidence 

demonstrates a relevant historical tradition, as required by Bruen and 

Rahimi.

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The broader regulation of weapons that are particularly 

capable of unprecedented lethality includes other prominent 

examples, such as the ban on sawed-off shotguns held constitutional by the Supreme Court in Miller and implicitly approved 

in Heller. See 554 U.S. at 627; see also Ocean State Tactical

v. Rhode Island, 95 F.4th 38, 47 (1st Cir. 2024) (The “Congress 

began regulating sawed-off shotguns in 1934, after they 

became popular with the mass shooters of their day —

notorious Prohibition-era gangsters like Bonnie Parker and 

Clyde Barrow.” (quotations omitted)). The examples above 

regarding Prohibition-era bans on machine guns, although 

insufficient to support a tradition of regulating magazines in 

and of themselves, fit nicely into the tradition of regulating 

weapons particularly capable of unprecedented lethality, as 

then-Attorney General Homer Cummings testified in 1934 durFinally, the dissent states that “the Supreme Court’s subsequent cases 

“confirm that ‘the relative dangerousness of a weapon is irrelevant

when the weapon belongs to a class of arms commonly used for 

lawful purposes.’” Dissent at 43 (quoting Caetano, 577 U.S. at 418 

(Alito, J., concurring) (emphasis added)). This statement of a single 

justice is obviously not controlling. We also think there is merit in 

the District’s argument that Heller’s reference to “dangerous and 

unusual weapons,” 554 U.S. at 627 means “uncommonly dangerous”

weapons. All arms are self-evidently “dangerous”; in this context, 

therefore, “dangerous” must mean something other than its standard 

definition or the word would do no work delineating the category. 

From the canonical example in the case law — the sawed-off 

shotguns at issue in United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939) —

we can infer that dangerous in the phrase “dangerous and unusual” 

means “uncommonly dangerous.” See Samuel L. Bray, “Necessary 

and Proper” and “Cruel and Unusual”: Hendiadys in the Constitution, 102 Va. L. Rev. 687, 695 (2016) (explaining a “hendiadys,” 

a figure of speech involving “two terms, separated by a conjunction, 

[that] are melded together to form a single complex expression”). 

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ing hearings regarding the bill that became the National 

Firearms Act:

There are more people in the underworld today armed with 

deadly weapons, in fact, twice as many, as there are in the 

Army and the Navy of the United States combined. In 

other words, roughly speaking, there are at least 500,000 

of these people who are warring against society and who 

are carrying about with them or have available at hand, 

weapons of the most deadly character.

National Firearms Act: Hearing(s) on H.R. 9066 Before the 

Comm. on Ways and Means, 73rd Cong. 45 (1934) (cleaned 

up); accord Andrews v. State, 50 Tenn. 165, 189 (1871) (“The 

law allows ample means of self-defense, without the use of the 

weapons which we have held may be rightfully proscribed by 

this statute. The object being to banish these weapons from the 

community by an absolute prohibition for the prevention of 

crime, no man's particular safety, if such case could exist, ought 

to be allowed to defeat this end.”); State v. Reid, 1 Ala. 612, 

617 (1840) (“[A] law which is intended merely to promote personal security, and to put down lawless aggression and violence, and to that end inhibits the wearing of certain weapons, 

in such a manner as is calculated to exert an unhappy influence 

upon the moral feelings of the wearer, by making him less regardful of the personal security of others, does not come in collision with the Constitution.”); see also Staples v. United 

States, 511 U.S. 600, 611–12 (1994) (“[W]e might surely 

classify certain categories of guns — no doubt including the 

machineguns, sawed-off shotguns, and artillery pieces that 

Congress has subjected to regulation — as items the ownership 

of which would have the same quasi-suspect character we 

attributed to owning hand grenades.”); Ocean State Tactical, 

95 F.4th at 49 (“[O]ur nation's historical tradition recognizes 

the need to protect against the greater dangers posed by some 

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weapons (as compared to, for example, handguns) as a 

sufficient justification for firearm regulation”).

Although these laws may target different crimes than does 

the magazine cap, they share the same basic purpose: To inhibit then unprecedentedly lethal criminal activity by 

restricting or banning weapons that are particularly susceptible 

to, and were widely used for, multiple homicides and mass 

injuries. Because many of the preceding examples are also 

outright bans on an entire class of weapons, they impose a 

burden on the right to armed self-defense comparable to (if nor 

greater than) the burden imposed by the District’s magazine 

cap.8

 

To summarize, we hold that, at this interlocutory juncture, 

the District has met its burden to show its magazine cap is “consistent with the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation,” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 24. Again, “the [magazine cap] must 

comport with the principles underlying the Second 

Amendment, but it need not be a dead ringer or a historical 

8 The dissent argues that the District’s law is different from 

permissible regulations because it is a “ban.” Dissent at, e.g., 1 n.4, 

31, 36-37, 45. But the dissent acknowledges that the only merits 

question on this preliminary motion is whether the District erred in 

capping magazine capacity at 10 rounds rather than 17. Dissent at 

36 n.169. Treating every line-drawing regulation, including in areas 

where appellants do not even dispute that a line can constitutionally 

be drawn at some point, gilds the lily, rather than undertakes a 

nuanced analysis. In any event, we view the dissent’s distinction 

between an “outright ban” and a “regulation” of arms to be of 

dubious utility. One could, for example, easily reframe the law at 

issue in Rahimi — which “prohibit[ed]” individuals shown to be a 

credible threat to the physical safety of an intimate partner from 

possessing a firearm, Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1894 — as an outright 

ban on the possession of firearms by this class of individuals.

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twin.” Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1898 (cleaned up). On a more 

developed record, evidence disputing the linkage between 

ELCMs and mass shootings may render inapposite the tradition 

of banning weapons capable of unprecedented lethality. On the 

present record, however, we think the District’s magazine cap 

sufficiently parallels a relevantly similar historical analogue to 

foreclose a finding that appellants are likely to succeed on the 

merits.

2. The Nuanced Approach to History Under Bruen

Nevertheless, Hanson claims no historical tradition, including this one, can be relevant because weapons capable of 

holding or shooting more than ten rounds without reloading 

have existed since the Founding (true) and there is no historical 

tradition either of prohibiting them or of regulating the number 

of rounds a gun could hold (true). Therefore, he argues, the 

District’s magazine cap is unconstitutional. We agree there is 

no narrowly described tradition of banning weapons capable of 

holding or shooting more than ten rounds without reloading or, 

more generally, of regulating the number of rounds a gun may 

hold. The lack of such a tradition is to be expected, however, 

because firearms did not have the capacity to occasion a societal concern with mass shootings or other widespread homicidal 

criminality until dramatic technological changes vastly increased their capacity and the rapidity of firing; there simply is 

no relevantly similar historical analogue to a modern, semiautomatic handgun equipped with an ELCM. Accord Friedman 

v. City of Highland Park, Ill., 784 F.3d 406, 410 (7th Cir. 2015) 

(“Most guns available [in 1791] could not fire more than one 

shot without being reloaded; revolvers with rotating cylinders 

weren’t widely available until the early 19th century. Semiautomatic guns and large-capacity magazines are more recent 

developments”).

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Again, Rahimi makes clear that “the Second Amendment 

permits more than just those regulations identical to ones that 

could be found in 1791.” 144 S. Ct. at 1897–98; see also id. at 

*30 (Barrett, J., concurring) (cautioning against “assum[ing] 

that founding-era legislatures maximally exercised their power 

to regulate”). Moreover, as Bruen explained, “cases implicating unprecedented societal concerns or dramatic technological 

changes may require a more nuanced approach.” 597 U.S. at 

27. Because these criteria are in the disjunctive, the government may demonstrate a constitutionally adequate historical 

analogue for a regulation or ban of an arm implicating either 

criterion. We agree with the District that ELCMs implicate 

both. 

a. Unprecedented Societal Concern

Large capacity magazines have given rise to an unprecedented societal concern: mass shootings. As the First Circuit 

has observed, there is “no direct precedent for the contemporary and growing societal concern that [ELCMs] have become 

the preferred tool for murderous individuals intent on killing as 

many people as possible, as quickly as possible.” Ocean State 

Tactical 95 F.4th at 44. This comes as no surprise, because 

mass shootings themselves are a relatively recent phenomenon: 

“The first known mass shooting resulting in ten or more deaths 

did not occur in this country until 1949.” Id. (cleaned up). 

Mass shootings have become ever more common since 

then.9

 A Congressional Research Service report notes the 

9 “The definition of mass shooting varies by source.” Office of the 

U.S. Surgeon General, The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on 

Firearm Violence: A Public Health Crisis in America 11 (2024). The 

Surgeon General’s Advisory defines a mass shooting as “four or 

more shot or killed, not including the shooter,” which it borrows 

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steady increase in the frequency of mass shootings, from an 

average of 1.1 per year during the 1970s, to an average of 4.5 

per year from 2010 through 2013, Krouse & Richardson,

above, at 14, and “more than 600 . . . each year between 2020 

and 2023,” according to data published by Gun Violence 

Archive and cited in the Surgeon General’s Advisory, above, 

at 11. “Despite accounting for a relatively small number of 

firearm deaths, mass shooting incidents cause outsized 

collective trauma on society and have a strong negative effect 

on the public’s perception of safety.” Id. “Mass shootings that 

involve a firearm with a large-capacity magazine result in 

significantly more injuries and deaths than shootings that do 

not involve such magazines.” Id. at 30 (citing Koper, 19 Crim. 

& Pub. Pol’y at 152–53). There can be little doubt that mass 

shootings are an unprecedented societal concern. 

from the Gun Violence Archive. Id. The Congressional Research 

Service defines it as “a multiple homicide incident in which four or 

more victims are murdered with firearms — not including the 

offender(s) — within one event, and in one or more locations 

relatively near one another.” William J. Krouse & Daniel J. 

Richardson, Congressional Research Service, Mass Murder with 

Firearms: Incidents and Victims, 1999–2013, at 2 (2015). Another 

study similarly defines mass shootings as “incidents in which at least 

four persons were killed, not including the shooter if applicable and 

irrespective of the number of additional victims shot but not killed.” 

Christopher S. Koper, Assessing the potential to reduce deaths and 

injuries from mass shootings through restrictions on assault 

weapons and other high-capacity semiautomatic firearms, 19 Crim. 

& Pub. Pol’y 147, 150 (2020). The Congress, meanwhile, has 

defined “mass killing” to mean “3 or more killings in a single 

incident.” 28 U.S.C. § 530C(b)(1)(M)(i)(I).

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b. Dramatic Technological Change

A nuanced approach is also appropriate for the analysis of 

historical analogues to the District’s magazine cap because 

large-capacity, detachable magazines for semiautomatic 

handguns are a relatively modern invention. They are different 

in form and in kind from arms in common use during the 

Founding and Reconstruction eras, the relevant periods for 

assessing the original understanding of the Second and the 

Fourteenth Amendments, respectively.10 

Compared to the historical analogues Hanson offers, modern firearms equipped with ELCMs do not have the propensity 

to jam or misfire that plagued many historical weapons. 

ELCMs also have significantly larger capacities and can fire 

multiple rounds in a shorter time. Indeed, a handgun with an 

ELCM can fire more than 10 rounds in a few seconds. The 

Glock 17 handgun, for example, can fire 30 rounds in five seconds. Add to that the ease with which one detachable magazine 

can be swapped for another, and a handgun with an ELCM can 

fire scores of shots in a matter of seconds. 

There were no remotely comparable arms in common use 

even when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. As a 

result, modern firearms equipped with ELCMs have enabled

10 See Bruen, 597 U.S. at 82 (Barrett, J., concurring) (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 or when the Bill of 

Rights was ratified in 1791” (cleaned up)). Because the choice 

would not alter our conclusion, we take no position regarding 

whether the relevant period for analysis is 1791 or 1868. See, e.g.,

Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1898 n.1 (“under the circumstances, resolving 

the dispute [is] unnecessary to decide the case”).

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mass shootings to a degree impossible with Founding or 

Reconstruction era weapons.

To bolster his argument to the contrary, Hanson offers several pre-Fourteenth Amendment examples of weapons capable 

of holding or shooting more than ten rounds without reloading, 

see Appendix: Historical Firearms, some of which are irrelevant and none of which is persuasive. Most of his examples 

were never in common use — indeed, some were no more than 

one-offs or prototypes — and therefore have no bearing on the 

scope of the Second Amendment, which “protects only the 

carrying of weapons that are those in common use at the time.” 

Bruen, 597 U.S. at 47 (cleaned up). Of the four that are 

arguably relevant (the Jennings, Pepperbox, Colt, and 

Winchester), there is no evidence any could be fired as rapidly 

as a modern handgun. All but the Jennings were also prone to 

jamming or to misfiring. As a result, none had nearly the same 

potential for mass shootings as does an ELCM. 

Contrary to Hanson’s assertions, none of his examples is a 

functional analogue to a modern gun with a detachable ELCM. 

We do not expect to find an historical tradition of regulating 

handguns with detachable magazines before ratification of the 

Fourteenth Amendment, much less ratification of the Second 

Amendment, because there was then no “relevantly similar” 

weapon “in common use,” until the late 19th or early 20th century, when the Mauser C96 semi-automatic pistol entered circulation.11 

11 Although the Mauser C96 semi-automatic pistol is relevantly 

similar to a modern handgun with an ELCM, it and similar weapons 

that postdate the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment represent 

dramatic technological advances over Founding- and 

Reconstruction-era firearms. 

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* * *

Because ELCMs implicate unprecedented societal concerns and dramatic technological changes, the lack of a “precise match” does not preclude finding at this preliminary juncture an historical tradition “analogous enough to pass constitutional muster.” Therefore, we hold Hanson is not sufficiently 

likely to succeed on the merits of his claim to warrant the entry 

of a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the magazine cap.

IV. Other Preliminary Injunction Factors

In addition to establishing a likelihood of success on the 

merits, a party seeking a preliminary injunction must make a 

“clear showing” that “it will likely suffer irreparable harm before the district court can resolve the merits of the case,” that 

“the balance of equities favors preliminary relief,” and that “an 

injunction is in the public interest.” Singh v. Berger, 56 F.4th 

88, 95 (D.C. Cir. 2022); see also Winter, 555 U.S. 7, 32 (“An 

injunction is a matter of equitable discretion; it does not follow 

from success on the merits as a matter of course.” (citing 

Weinberger v. Romero–Barcelo, 456 U.S. 305, 313 (1982))). 

Those factors enforce a vital, structural limitation on the role 

of courts. Unlike the Political Branches, courts are 

institutionally reactive. Our authority to alter legal rights and 

obligations generally derives from — rather than precedes —

our determination of the merits. Said another way, “[t]he 

judicial power is inseparably connected with the judicial duty 

to decide cases and controversies by determining the parties’ 

legal rights and obligations,” and a “preliminary injunction is 

remarkable because it imposes a constraint on the enjoined 

party’s actions in advance of any such determination.” O 

Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal v. Ashcroft, 389 

F.3d 973, 1014 (10th Cir. 2004) (McConnell, J., concurring);

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see Delaware State Sportsmen’s Ass’n, Inc. v. Delaware Dep’t 

of Safety & Homeland Sec., 108 F.4th 194, 199 (3d Cir. 2024)

(“Because injunctions can irreparably injure parties, courts 

must use great caution, granting them only in cases where they 

are clearly indispensable to the ends of justice”) (cleaned up).

On the record before us, Hanson has failed to show that the 

preliminary injunction factors warrant the “extraordinary remedy” of a preliminary injunction that would alter a 15-year status quo and effectively grant him the same relief he would obtain at the end of trial before that trial even starts. 

The dissent analyzes none of the normal preliminary 

injunction factors, instead invoking the narrow exception for 

when “the merits of the plaintiffs’ challenge are certain and 

don’t turn on disputed facts.” Dissent at 53 n.234 (citing 

Wrenn v. D.C., 864 F.3d 650, 667 (D.C. Cir. 2017)). But that 

exception does not apply here, even if the dissent is right and 

we are wrong about the merits. No precedent dictates with 

certainty that, in confronting the unprecedented criminal and 

lethal misuse ELCMs have allowed, the District erred in 

capping magazine capacity at 10 rather than 17. Appellants, 

after all, do not argue in this motion that the Second 

Amendment prohibits any cap on magazine capacity for 

semiautomatic weapons. Nor does the dissent. 

Instead, we assess all the preliminary injunction factors to 

determine whether we should act despite our uncertainty on an 

undeveloped record and amid factual disputes, rather than 

deciding before trial simply because we believe we must be 

right. After all, a preliminary injunction “is not a shortcut to 

the merits.” Delaware State Sportsmen’s Assn, 108 F.4th at 

197.

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A. Irreparable Harm

To begin, we note that irreparable harm, even when 

demonstrated, may be insufficient on its own to warrant a 

preliminary injunction. “The award of an interlocutory 

injunction by courts of equity has never been regarded as 

strictly a matter of right, even though irreparable injury may 

otherwise result to the plaintiff.” Yakus v. United States, 321 

U.S. 414, 440 (1944). The purpose of a preliminary injunction 

is not to prevent all harm but “merely to preserve the relative 

positions of the parties until a trial on the merits can be held.”

Starbucks Corp. v. McKinney, 602 U.S. ---, 144 S. Ct. 1570, 

1576, (2024).

Nor does the alleged deprivation of a constitutional right

constitute irreparable harm. Even in the sensitive areas of 

freedom of speech and religion, where the risk of chilling 

protected conduct is especially high, we do not “axiomatically” 

find that a plaintiff will suffer irreparable harm simply because 

it alleges a violation of its rights. Chaplaincy of Full Gospel 

Churches v. England, 454 F.3d 290, 302 (D.C. Cir. 2006). 

Rather, a plaintiff must show why the court will be unable to 

grant meaningful relief following trial. Thus, far from treating 

the Second Amendment as a “second-class right,” McDonald 

v. City of Chicago, Ill., 561 U.S. 742, 780 (2010), we assess 

Hanson’s claim of irreparable harm using the same standard we 

apply to all fundamental rights. 

Hanson has not come forward with a factual record 

showing that he will be irreparably harmed if he is required to 

wait until the court hears his case before obtaining largercapacity magazines for his firearms. “Irreparable harm,” in this 

context, refers to harm within a specific timeframe. That is, 

Hanson must demonstrate injury that is sufficiently certain, 

persuasively demonstrated, and so clearly irremediable that it 

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warrants a court reaching out to alter the status quo before the 

merits are resolved. See O Centro Espirita, 389 F.3d at 1013 

(“[T]here are cases in which preservation of the status quo may 

so clearly inflict irreparable harm on the movant, with so little 

probability of being upheld on the merits, that a preliminary 

injunction may be appropriate even though it requires a 

departure from the status quo”).

Hanson rests his entire irreparable harm showing on the 

argument that the District’s magazine cap burdens his Second 

Amendment right to use magazines of between 11 and 17 

rounds for self-defense. See Oral Arg. Tr. 11:20–12:22 (counsel for Hanson explaining that the largest magazine that Hanson “possess[es]” and “want[s] to carry in the District” holds 

17 bullets); Oral Arg. Tr. 14:17–25 (similar); see also id. at 

9:20–13:13 (counsel for Hanson acknowledging that the requested preliminary injunction is limited to Hanson’s as-applied challenge); id. at 77:20–23 (“[T]he imposition, the actual 

threat to the right here is the ability for my clients to bear an 

arm that they’ve decided is necessary for their self-defense purposes.”); id. at 20:9–21:3 (counsel for Hanson acknowledging 

that self-defense is the operative Second Amendment interest 

for their preliminary-injunction request). But Hanson does not 

offer any factual showing of irreparable harm to his self-defense interest.

First, Hanson has not provided any specific explanation of 

the irreparable harm he faces from having the ability to fire 11, 

but not 18, rounds without pausing during the pendency of this 

litigation. 12 In fact, each of the appellants owns at least one 

12 The District’s magazine cap permits Hanson to fire 11 rounds 

without pausing — 10 rounds in the magazine, plus one round in the 

chamber. Hanson seeks to use 17-round magazines that would 

enable him to fire 18 rounds without pausing — 17 rounds in the 

magazine, plus one round in the chamber.

USCA Case #23-7061 Document #2082477 Filed: 10/29/2024 Page 33 of 99
34

handgun for which the standard-issue magazine contains 10 or 

fewer rounds. See J.A. 181–185. And the standard-issue magazine for six of the 13 firearms at issue in this as-applied challenge likewise contains no more than 10 rounds. See J.A. 181–

185. Hanson, having limited his injunctive request to his asapplied challenge, does not allege that he faces difficulty obtaining such standard-issue magazines, and he does not identify 

any irreparable harm to his self-defense that will arise if he is 

limited to using the magazines that he already owns while the 

merits of his constitutional challenge to the District’s magazine 

cap are resolved.

Hanson protests that he faces irreparable harm from the 

District’s magazine cap because it prevents him from “be[ing] 

prepared for th[e] unthinkable circumstance where [he] might 

need to use more than [10] rounds.” Oral Arg. Tr. 75:22–23; 

see id. at 75:22–76:6; see also id. at 72:23–78:1. But Hanson 

concedes that such circumstances are, at most, “rare” and “unusual.” Id. at. 74:25, 75:6; see id. at 76:17–24. The Supreme 

Court has held that “simply showing some possibility of irreparable injury” is not sufficient to make the irreparable harm 

showing needed to obtain preliminary relief. Nken v. Holder, 

556 U.S. 418, 434 (2009) (emphasis added; quotations 

omitted). Yet in Hanson’s own words, he has raised only remote conjecture. See Oral Arg. Tr. 75:22–23, 74:25, 75:6.

Highlighting that point, Hanson himself has explained 

that, “[i]n most self-defense circumstances, pulling out a 

weapon and brandishing it will scare off somebody else.” Oral 

Arg. Tr. 75:9–10. In addition, Hanson’s own evidence in support of a preliminary injunction shows that “the average 

amount of rounds fired in self-defense is usually less than 10” 

and “generally only two or three.” J.A. 721 (Decl. of John 

Murphy); see id. at 1039–1040 (district court noting that a prior 

study conducted by one of Hanson’s experts “concluded that 

USCA Case #23-7061 Document #2082477 Filed: 10/29/2024 Page 34 of 99
35

the average number of shots a civilian fired in a self-defense 

incident [between 1997 and 2001] was 2.2”). Hanson, in short, 

has not shown that there will be any “time-sensitive” actual 

effect on his ability to engage in self-defense while this 

litigation proceeds. See Del. State Sportsmen’s Ass’n., 108 

F.4th at 205 (declining preliminarily to enjoin a similar 

magazine-size cap when there was “scant evidence” of any 

“time-sensitive need” for larger magazines than the law 

allowed).

Second, Hanson himself does not argue that any restriction 

on magazine capacity would inflict irreparable harm on his 

Second Amendment rights. He, in fact, agrees with the District 

that the Second Amendment does not protect magazines of all 

sizes, and he concedes that there is a magazine capacity that the 

District can constitutionally limit. See Oral Arg. Tr. 7:23–

10:24 (counsel for Hanson conceding that the District could 

ban magazines not in common use for self-defense). He simply 

disagrees with where the District has drawn that line. But that 

type of close line-drawing regarding how many bullets to permit in a magazine while litigation is pending does not, without 

something more concrete than fear of the “unthinkable,” bespeak irreparable harm. Cf. Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of 

N. New England, 546 U.S. 320, 330 (2006) (“Making distinctions . . . where line-drawing is inherently complex, may call 

for a far more serious invasion of the legislative domain than 

we ought to undertake.”) (cleaned up).

Third, Hanson has evidenced no urgency in obtaining relief 

in this litigation. He consented to a stay of district court proceedings pending resolution of this appeal while at the same 

time failing to seek expedited review from this court. “[A] 

party requesting a preliminary injunction must generally show 

reasonable diligence.” Benisek v. Lamone, 585 U.S. 155, 159 

(2018). Although consenting to a stay or declining to seek 

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36

expedited review on appeal will not always establish lack of 

diligence on the part of the party seeking injunctive relief, such 

action, when unexplained, undercuts claims of irreparable 

harm. Hanson’s unhurried litigation tactics counsel against a 

finding of irreparable harm here.

B. Balance of the Equities

Finally, the balance of equities also weighs against granting 

a preliminary injunction at this time. A party seeking a preliminary injunction must show that “the balance of equities favors 

preliminary relief” and that “an injunction is in the public interest.” Singh, 56 F.4th at 95. In analyzing this record, we 

must carefully balance the equities by weighing the harm to the 

moving party and the public if there is no injunction against the 

harm to the government and the public if there is. See League 

of Women Voters of the U.S. v. Newby, 838 F.3d 1, 12–14 (D.C. 

Cir. 2016).

On the District’s side of the balance is the governmental 

interest in enforcing its duly enacted law, and the likelihood of 

“concrete harm to [the District’s] law enforcement and public 

safety interests” were we to grant a preliminary injunction. 

Maryland v. King, 567 U.S. 1301, 1303 (2012) (Roberts, C.J., 

in chambers). The District has demonstrated that it will likely 

suffer irreparable harm if an injunction issues. Even at this preliminary stage, the record contains evidence that the District 

would experience an influx of ELCMs if this court were to preliminarily enjoin the District’s magazine cap. See J.A. 119. 

The District notes that over one million ELCMs “flooded into 

California in the brief [one-week] period after [California’s 

ELCM cap] was enjoined but before the ruling was stayed by 

the district court.” District Br. 51 (citing Matthew Green, Gun 

Groups: More Than a Million High-Capacity Magazines 

Flooded California During Weeklong Ban Suspension, KQED 

USCA Case #23-7061 Document #2082477 Filed: 10/29/2024 Page 36 of 99
37

(Apr. 12, 2019), https://perma.cc/65NQ-Z6D6). Hanson has 

not offered any evidence that rebuts this claim or that shows 

the District would not face similar harm were an injunction to 

issue here. 

The District’s harm, moreover, encompasses not only the 

likely proliferation of ELCMs, but also the uses to which those 

magazines can be put. The District submitted expert testimony 

that ELCMs are “extraordinarily lethal” when used in combination with semiautomatic firearms, increasing the number of 

individuals killed in mass shootings and other criminal activity. 

J.A. 477; see id. (“Without extended magazines, semiautomatic 

rifles cause an average of 40 percent more deaths and injuries 

in mass shootings than regular firearms, and semiautomatic 

handguns [cause] 11 percent more than regular firearms. But 

with extended magazines, semiautomatic rifles cause an average of 299 percent more deaths and injuries than regular firearms, and semiautomatic handguns [cause] 184 percent more 

than regular firearms.”). The District has a particular and 

unique interest in reducing that lethality “given homeland security issues in the District” as the seat of the federal government and the location of countless sensitive governmental institutions and protected personnel. Br. of Appellee 4 (quoting 

Committee on Pub. Safety and the Judiciary, D.C. Council, 

Report on Bill 17-843, at 9 (2008)).

Hanson, for his part, asserts the public’s interest in exercising the Second Amendment right to bear constitutionally 

protected arms. Cf. Singh, 56 F.4th at 107 (“On the Plaintiffs’

side of the balance is the weighty public interest in the free exercise of religion that RFRA protects”). 

Yet the mere fact that Hanson seeks to enjoin the District’s 

magazine cap on constitutional grounds does not decide our 

balance-of-the-equities inquiry. To the contrary, this court 

USCA Case #23-7061 Document #2082477 Filed: 10/29/2024 Page 37 of 99
38

must balance the equities of the parties and the public even 

when a party seeks to restrain the enforcement of an allegedly 

unconstitutional law. See Singh, 56 F.4th at 107–109; 

Archdiocese of Wash. v. Washington Metro. Area Transit 

Auth., 897 F.3d 314, 334–335 (D.C. Cir. 2018). Furthermore, 

we have stated that the public interest in such cases “rises and 

falls with the strength of [the moving party’s] showing” on the 

merits. Archdiocese of Wash., 897 F.3d at 335. While “[t]he 

public interest favors the protection of constitutional rights,” 

Hanson would need to establish a likely violation of his constitutional rights to establish that the public interest outweighs the 

District’s unrebutted showing of substantial harm, a showing 

he has not made. Id. (explaining the parties’ relative equities 

might balance differently if the plaintiffs had established a 

likelihood of success on the merits of their constitutional claim 

and, in turn, that the public interest favored an injunction). 

In addition, Hanson is seeking at this preliminary stage a 

longstanding-status-quo-altering injunction that effectively 

gives him the full relief he would receive if he won on the merits. Preliminary injunctions, though, “are generally a ‘stopgap 

measure’ meant only to ‘preserve the relative positions of the 

parties’ until trial.” Singh, 56 F.4th at 95 (quoting Sherley v. 

Sebelius, 689 F.3d 776, 781–782 (D.C. Cir. 2012)). “After all, 

‘deciding whether to grant a preliminary injunction is normally 

to make a choice under conditions of grave uncertainty.’” Id.

(quoting O Centro Espirita, 389 F.3d at 1015). Because “a 

grant of preliminary relief could prove to be mistaken once the 

merits are finally decided,” courts must be “institutionally wary 

of granting relief that disrupts, rather than preserves, the status 

quo, especially when that relief cannot be undone if the nonmovant ultimately wins on the merits.” Id. (quotations 

omitted). At bottom, that “reluctance to disturb the status quo 

prior to trial on the merits is an expression of judicial humility.” 

O Centro Espirita, 389 F.3d at 1015.

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39

Concern about so materially altering the status quo has 

particular purchase on the record of this case. For 15 years, 

District law enforcement has operated and been resourced with 

the magazine cap in place. The District has also shown that an 

erroneously issued preliminary injunction suspending its law 

could drastically compromise the District’s ability to enforce 

its magazine cap far into the future — long beyond the term of 

the preliminary injunction itself — because of the likelihood 

that ELCMs will flood into the District during any such injunctive relief. Hanson, in contrast, would suffer from an erroneous 

preliminary analysis of his claim for a far shorter time while 

the merits of this case are resolved. Those unequal consequences carry material weight in the equitable preliminary-injunction calculus. Cf. Singh, 56 F.4th at 97 (“The public consequences of employing the extraordinary remedy of injunction 

necessarily include the risk that the relief requested will cause 

unusual disruption if granted in error, for example by disturbing the status quo in a way that cannot readily be undone.”) 

(cleaned up).

Finally, we cannot simply rebalance the equities by limiting injunctive relief to the four appellants in this case. Were 

this court to direct the issuance of such a preliminary injunction, a follow-on class-action suit seeking the same relief would 

inevitably follow and almost inevitably have to be granted. 

Allowing preliminary injunctive relief in such a case would ultimately result in the very harms to the public interest detailed 

above. As a result, the balance of the equities in this case does 

not favor a preliminary injunction, no matter the injunction’s 

scope.

In sum, the ancient principle primum non nocere — first, 

do no harm — “counsels against forcing changes before there 

has been a determination of the parties’ legal rights” and in 

USCA Case #23-7061 Document #2082477 Filed: 10/29/2024 Page 39 of 99
40

favor of maintaining the status quo. O Centro Espirita, 389 

F.3d at 1012. Hanson has not, on the record before us, shown 

the type of irreparable harm and favorable balancing of equities 

and interests that can warrant the exceptional relief of a statusquo-altering injunction handing him the same relief he would 

ordinarily obtain only after prevailing on the merits. 

V. Summary and Conclusion

Because Hanson has failed to demonstrate a likelihood of 

success on the merits or that he has suffered irreparable harm, 

and because the balance of equities does not weigh in his favor, 

the order of the district court is 

Affirmed.

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41 

Appendix: Historical Firearms

Hanson offers a plethora of historical examples to argue 

that extra-large capacity magazines (ELCMs) are nothing new. 

For the reasons given below, each of his examples misses the 

mark.

His first example is a 16-shot wheellock created around 

1580. See David B. Kopel, The History of Firearm Magazines 

and Magazine Prohibitions, 78 ALB. L. REV. 849, 852 & n.21 

(2015) (citing Lewis Winant, Firearms Curiosa 168–70 (Ishi 

Press Int’l 2009) (1954)). The wheellock lacks both the rapidreloading capability and the trigger control of a modern semiautomatic handgun with a detachable magazine, which limited 

its potential lethality. One wheel lock would ignite a fuse and 

fire the ten upper charges without stopping and another wheel 

lock would fire the remaining six lower charges. This gun was 

“very rare,” however; indeed, it may have been a one-off, artisanal curiosity. Winant, above, at 168–70; see A 16-Shot 

Wheel Lock, America’s 1st Freedom (June 2014), 

https://web.archive.org/web/20140702092902/https:/www.nra

publications.org/index.php/17739/a-16-shot-wheel-lock/

(noting the “highly decorated” and “unique rifle” had 

“achieved a multi-shot capability that would not be reached 

again until the American Civil War”). 

Hanson also directs us to the “Puckle Gun,” patented in 

1718, which he describes as one of “the more successful of the 

early designs” of multi-shot firearms. But the Puckle Gun 

never entered commercial production; only two prototypes 

were made; and they suffered from mechanical problems. Br. 

of Amici Curiae Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence et al. 

(Brady Br.) at 10–11. Even if it had entered commercial 

production, however, the Puckle Gun still would not be a 

“relevantly similar” analogue: It was mounted on a tripod and 

USCA Case #23-7061 Document #2082477 Filed: 10/29/2024 Page 41 of 99
42

operated by hand crank, making it more akin to a Gatling gun 

than to a semiautomatic handgun with an ELCM. 

U.K. Patent No. 418 (issued May 15, 1718). 

Hanson next proffers the Girandoni air rifle, invented in 

1779. The Girandoni rifle was never in common use: Only 

around 1,500 were produced and even fewer made their way to 

America. Robert J. Spitzer, Understanding Gun Law History 

after Bruen: Moving Forward by Looking Back, 51 FORDHAM 

URB. L.J. 57, 76–77 (2023); see also John Plaster, The History 

of Sniping & Sharpshooting 70 (2008). It remained such a 

curiosity that, in 1792, one museum proprietor in New York 

charged visitors six pence to see it discharge a shot. Gardiner 

Baker, To the Curious, The Weekly Museum (New York, NY), 

Feb. 11, 1792. 

USCA Case #23-7061 Document #2082477 Filed: 10/29/2024 Page 42 of 99
43 

Hanson’s next example, the Jennings multi-shot flintlock 

rifle, was beset by “technical challenges.” Ass’n of N.J. Rifle 

& Pistol Clubs v. Att’y Gen. N.J., 974 F.3d 237, 255 (3d Cir. 

2020) (Matey, J., dissenting) (cleaned up), cert. granted, judgment vacated sub nom. Ass’n of N.J. Rifle & Pistol Clubs v. 

Bruck, 142 S. Ct. 2894 (2022). The rifle has a “complicated 

mechanism” with a moving hopper and swivel covers that 

required a hammer to be pulled back for each shot. Corey R. 

Wardrop, A Close-up Look at the Ellis-Jennings Repeating 

Flintlock Rifle, THE FIREARM BLOG (July 27, 2017), 

https://web.archive.org/web/20220402053233/https://www.th

efirearmblog.com/blog/2017/07/27/close-look-ellis-jenningsrepeating-flintlock-rifle/. Moreover, most of these rifles had a 

capacity of only four shots, and only 521 were ever made. Id.

Hanson also points to “Pepperbox” pistols, which were capable of firing only “five or six rounds without reloading,” and 

therefore are not comparable in lethality to a modern ELCM. 

Brady Br. at 13 (citing Wheelgun Wednesday: A Closer Look 

at Pepperbox Pistols, THE FIREARM BLOG (Dec. 8, 2021), 

https://perma.cc/2Z2U-RJ62)) (cleaned up). Pepperbox pistols 

were also prone to “chain-firing," that is, all barrels firing at 

once. Id.

Next is the Colt revolver, introduced in 1836. See 

Improvement in Fire-Arms, U.S. Patent No. 9430X (issued 

Feb. 25, 1836). The Colt revolver “was the first widely used 

multishot weapon,” Jim Rasenberger, Revolver: Sam Colt and 

the Six-Shooter that Changed America 401 (2020), but the 

shooter was required to cock the hammer before firing each 

round; the gun was limited to six shots; it was prone to 

jamming; and, unlike a handgun with an ELCM, it could not be 

rapidly reloaded. The six-shooter is not a relevant comparator 

because the District allows six-shooters. Its magazine cap is 

set at 10 (plus one in the chamber). 

USCA Case #23-7061 Document #2082477 Filed: 10/29/2024 Page 43 of 99
44 

Hanson next points to the Bennet & Haviland Revolving 

Rifle, which began circulating in 1838, as well as the similar 

Porter and Hall rifles of the 1850s. There is no evidence that 

any of these rifles were in common use. John Paul Jarvis, 

Bennet & Havilland Revolving Rifle: A Link in the Repeating 

Rifle Chain, GUNS.COM (Apr. 3, 2012 5:44 PM), 

https://perma.cc/6FLX-AE5G (“experts believe that Bennett & 

Havilland made fewer than 10 full-scale” rifles); Ian

McCollum, RIA: Porter Turret Rifle, FORGOTTEN WEAPONS 

BLOG (Feb. 7, 2016), https://perma.cc/N5J5-R93H (only 

“several thousand examples” of the Porter rifle were made); 

Norm Flayderman, Flayderman’s Guide to Antique American 

Firearms and their Values 713 (9th ed. 2007) (noting an 

unknown quantity were made and the rifle is “[v]ery rare”). 

The other antebellum firearms Hanson identifies — the 

Enouy Ferris wheel revolver, the Jarre harmonica pistol, and 

pin-fire revolvers — all have similar limitations. None was 

ever in common use — indeed, the Enouy Ferris wheel 

revolver may have been a one-off curiosity. Dan Zimmerman, 

Is the 48-Shot Enouy the Most Unusual Revolver in History?, 

THE TRUTH ABOUT GUNS (Oct. 18, 2015), 

https://perma.cc/6FW9-J27J (noting “[t]here are no records of 

it ever being manufactured or sold commercially”). Those that 

were capable of firing more than six shots tended to be 

cumbersome and unwieldy, limiting their potential lethality. 

USCA Case #23-7061 Document #2082477 Filed: 10/29/2024 Page 44 of 99
45 

Lewis Winant, Firearms Curiosa 207 (Greenberg 1955) (1954) 

(depicting the Ferris wheel revolver). Although one version of 

the Jarre harmonica pistol did have a detachable magazine, it 

still required the hammer to be cocked before firing each round, 

id. at 244–45, and “[t]he particularly awkward design of the 

pinfire cartridge made it difficult to deploy in a repeating pistol.” Unique Handgun Detail, THE HANDGUN INFORMATION 

RESOURCE (2024), https://perma.cc/6PVH-LWDD. 

Hanson’s next example, the Josselyn belt-fed chain pistol 

(patented in 1866), was likewise unwieldy and was likely never 

in common use. As with the Colt revolver, the need to cock 

the hammer before firing each round limited the rate of fire and 

therefore the potential lethality of the weapon. Chain Guns—

I, FIREARMS HISTORY, TECHNOLOGY & DEVELOPMENT BLOG

(July 23, 2014 1:35 AM), https://perma.cc/MT7P-JP5L. 

USCA Case #23-7061 Document #2082477 Filed: 10/29/2024 Page 45 of 99
46 

Improvement in Revolving Fire-Arms, U.S. Patent No. 52,248 

(issued Jan. 24, 1866). 

Hanson also argues the Winchester Repeater rifle of 1866 

is analogous to an ELCM. Although it had a magazine capable 

of firing more than ten rounds without reloading, it required 

manual manipulation of a lever in between each shot. Ryan 

Hodges, The 1866 Rifle, TAYLOR’S & COMPANY (Aug. 26, 

2020), https://perma.cc/7STW-8WMS. The magazine was 

also exposed, which made it susceptible to jamming. Id. For 

this reason, the rifle lacks the potential lethality of a modern 

weapon equipped with an ELCM. 

USCA Case #23-7061 Document #2082477 Filed: 10/29/2024 Page 46 of 99
WALKER, Circuit Judge, dissenting: 

In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court held 

that the government cannot categorically ban an arm in 

common use for lawful purposes. Magazines holding more 

than ten rounds of ammunition are arms in common use for 

lawful purposes. Therefore, the government cannot ban them. 

I. Background 

In 2003, Dick Heller and five other plaintiffs alleged that 

the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns violated their 

Second Amendment right to “keep and bear Arms.”1

 Five 

years later, the Supreme Court agreed.2 It held D.C.’s law 

unconstitutional because the law banned an arm “in common 

use” for lawful purposes.3 

A month after Heller’s victory, he returned to federal 

court.4 This time, in Heller II, he challenged D.C.’s felony 

prohibition on possessing what D.C. calls a “large capacity 

ammunition feeding device” — defined as “a magazine, belt, 

1

 U.S. Const. amend. II. 

2 District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 635-36 (2008). 

3 Id. at 624, 627 (cleaned up); see also id. at 629. 

When I refer to a ban on arms in common use for lawful purposes, 

I mean a complete ban that covers everyone, everywhere — not, for 

example, targeted “prohibitions on the possession of firearms by 

felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of 

firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government 

buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the 

commercial sale of arms,” id. at 626-27, or “prohibitions on carrying 

concealed weapons,” id. at 626, or the disarming of individuals who 

pose “a credible threat to the physical safety of others,” United States 

v. Rahimi, No. 22-915, 602 U.S. ___, slip op. at 15 (June 21, 2024). 

4 Heller v. District of Columbia, 670 F.3d 1244 (D.C. Cir. 2011) 

(Heller II). 

USCA Case #23-7061 Document #2082477 Filed: 10/29/2024 Page 47 of 99
2 

drum, feed strip, or similar device that has a capacity of, or that 

can be readily restored or converted to accept, more than 10 

rounds of ammunition.”5 D.C.’s ban on these plus-ten 

magazines is categorical; it extends to every purpose (even 

self-defense) and to every location (even inside the home).6

 

Heller lost his second suit before a divided panel of this 

court. It upheld D.C.’s ban on plus-ten magazines because the 

ban was substantially related to an important government 

interest.7 But this court’s decision in Heller II was effectively 

overruled in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. 

Bruen.

8

 There, the Supreme Court reaffirmed its holding in 

Heller I and repudiated “means-end scrutiny in the Second 

Amendment context.”9 

5

 D.C. Code § 7-2506.01(b) (2009); see Heller II, 670 F.3d at 1249. 

Heller II also included challenges to D.C.’s ban on semi-automatic 

rifles and its gun registration and licensing requirements. 670 F.3d 

at 1248-49. 

6

 The prohibited magazines are neither unusually “large,” D.C. Code 

§ 7-2506.01(b) (2013), nor “extra-large,” Majority Op. at 5. See 

infra Part III.A. So I will simply call them “plus-ten magazines.” 

Cf. Duncan v. Bonta, 19 F.4th 1087, 1140 n.1 (9th Cir. 2021) 

(Duncan II) (en banc) (Bumatay, J., dissenting) (“we would be more 

correct to refer to” plus-ten magazines as “standard-capacity 

magazines,” rather than “large-capacity magazine[s]” (cleaned up)), 

cert. granted, judgment vacated, and remanded, 142 S. Ct. 2895 

(2022), and vacated and remanded by Duncan v. Bonta, 49 F.4th 

1228 (9th Cir. 2022). 

7 Heller II, 670 F.3d at 1263-64; cf. Heller v. District of Columbia, 

801 F.3d 264, 274-80 (D.C. Cir. 2015) (Heller III) (applying meansend scrutiny to D.C.’s gun registration regime). 

8

 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022). 

9 Id. at 2127; see id. at 2125-27. 

USCA Case #23-7061 Document #2082477 Filed: 10/29/2024 Page 48 of 99
3 

After Bruen, Andrew Hanson and three other D.C. 

residents filed this suit. They own handguns, as well as 

magazines that hold up to 17 rounds of ammunition. Because 

of D.C.’s ban on plus-ten magazines, they must store those 

magazines outside of D.C., away from their homes. 

These gun owners sought a permanent injunction and a 

declaration that D.C.’s ban is unconstitutional. 

Simultaneously, they requested a preliminary injunction 

permitting them to keep their up-to-17-round magazines with 

their handguns in D.C. while this suit proceeded. 

The district court found that the gun owners were not 

likely to succeed on the merits.10 So it denied the preliminary 

injunction without assessing any other equitable factors.11 The 

gun owners appealed, requesting a preliminary or permanent 

injunction. 

Because the district court’s decision depended entirely on 

a legal conclusion — that the government can categorically 

ban an arm in common use for lawful purposes — review is de 

novo.12 

10 Hanson v. District of Columbia, 671 F. Supp. 3d 1, 3 (D.D.C. 

2023).

11 Id.; see Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 555 

U.S. 7, 20 (2008) (a party seeking a preliminary injunction must 

show that (1) “he is likely to succeed on the merits,” (2) “he is likely 

to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief,” 

(3) “the balance of equities tips in his favor,” and (4) “an injunction 

is in the public interest”). 

12 Huisha-Huisha v. Mayorkas, 27 F.4th 718, 726 (D.C. Cir. 2022). 

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4 

II. The Government Cannot Ban Arms in Common Use 

for Lawful Purposes 

The Second Amendment guarantees law-abiding citizens 

a right against categorical bans of an arm in common use for 

lawful purposes. What follows is the story of how the Supreme 

Court came to affirm that right — and then reaffirm it over and 

over and over again. 

A. Text and History 

I begin with a much-abbreviated version of the history that 

informs the Second Amendment.13 My hope here is to provide 

any readers new to this topic with a prologue to the Supreme 

Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence. Later, I’ll explain 

why that jurisprudence holds that the government cannot ban 

an arm in common use for lawful purposes. 

1. The English Bill of Rights and Colonial History 

(1689-1775) 

In the 1660s, Britain’s Stuart king began to disarm 

Protestants and other politically disfavored subjects.14 After 

the Stuarts’ ouster and exile in 1688, King William and Queen 

Mary assented to a parliamentary declaration that became the 

13 Some of the finest judges in the country have written detailed 

accounts of that history, which I commend to the interested reader. 

The most recent example is Judge Richardson’s excellent dissent in 

Bianchi v. Brown, No. 21-1255, 111 F.4th __, slip op. at 85-183 (4th 

Cir. Aug. 6, 2024) (en banc). Others are cited throughout this 

opinion. 

14 Heller, 554 U.S. at 592-93. 

USCA Case #23-7061 Document #2082477 Filed: 10/29/2024 Page 50 of 99
5 

1689 English Bill of Rights.15 It “explicitly protected a right to 

keep arms for self-defense.”16 

“As English subjects,” American “colonists considered 

themselves to be vested with the same fundamental rights as 

other Englishmen.”17 That included the “right of selfpreservation” to “repel force by force.”18 So when King 

George III tried “to disarm the colonists just as the Stuarts 

attempted to disarm Protestants,” his attempts “provoked 

polemical reactions by Americans invoking their rights as 

Englishmen to keep arms.”19 

Then, in 1775, the “spark that ignited the American 

Revolution was struck at Lexington and Concord, when the 

15 Id. at 593; Duncan v. Becerra, 970 F.3d 1133, 1144 (9th Cir. 2020) 

(Duncan I) (panel), reh’g en banc granted, opinion vacated, 988 F.3d 

1209 (9th Cir. 2021), and on reh’g en banc sub nom. Duncan II, 19 

F.4th 1087. 

16 McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 768 (2010); see also

1 W. & M., ch. 2 (1689) (“That the Subjects which are Protestants, 

may have Arms for their Defence suitable to their Conditions, and as 

allowed by Law.”), in 6 Statutes of the Realm at 143. 

In a reversal of the Stuart Era, the English Bill of Rights extended 

gun rights only to Protestants. But by 1765, though anti-Catholic 

politics and prejudice persisted, “the right to keep and bear arms was 

one of the fundamental rights of Englishmen.” McDonald, 561 U.S. 

at 768 (cleaned up) (noting that Blackstone recognized this 

fundamental right in 1765). 

17 McDonald, 561 U.S. at 816 (Thomas, J., concurring in part and 

concurring in the judgment). 

18 Heller, 554 U.S. at 595 (cleaned up) (citing 1 William Blackstone, 

Commentaries at *145 n.42 (1803) (notes of St. George Tucker)). 

19 First quoting Duncan I, 970 F.3d at 1153; then quoting McDonald, 

561 U.S. at 768 (cleaned up). 

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6 

British governor dispatched soldiers to seize the local farmers’ 

arms and powder stores.”20

2. The Second Amendment, State-Constitution Analogues, 

and the “Palladium of the Liberties of a Republic” 

(1775-1833) 

The American Revolution led to Western Civilization’s 

“seminal era of constitution writing.”21 The thirteen states 

“created the first thirteen constitutions in this country, indeed 

many of the first constitutions in the world.”22 Almost 

immediately, four of them guaranteed gun rights.23 

By 1787, the nation was debating whether to ratify the 

United States Constitution, proposed by that summer’s 

Philadelphia Convention.24 In that debate, “the fear that the 

Federal Government would disarm the people in order to 

impose rule through a standing army or select militia was 

pervasive in Antifederalist rhetoric.”25 “In response, the 

Federalists agreed to include a Bill of Rights, which, of course, 

20 Rahimi, slip op. at 5; Duncan I, 970 F.3d at 1153. 

21 Jeffrey S. Sutton, 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making 

of American Constitutional Law 11 (2018). 

22 Id. at 10. 

23 Heller, 554 U.S. at 600-02; see also McDonald, 561 U.S. at 769. 

24 Heller, 554 U.S. at 598-99 (discussing ratification debates). 

25 Id. (citing Letters from The Federal Farmer III (Oct. 10, 1787), in

2 The Complete Anti-Federalist 234, 242 (H. Storing ed. 1981), and 

2 Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution 508-

09 (M. Jensen ed. 1976) (comments of John Smilie at the 

Pennsylvania ratifying convention)). 

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7 

featured the right to bear arms.”26 Its Second Amendment 

provides: 

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the 

security of a free State, the right of the people to keep 

and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.27

In the three decades that followed ratification of the Bill of 

Rights, nine more states guaranteed gun rights in their 

constitutions.28 After that, as new states joined the Union, 

many of their constitutions made similar guarantees.29 They 

reflected what Joseph Story observed in 1833: “The right of the 

26 Duncan I, 970 F.3d at 1144. 

27 U.S. Const. amend. II. 

28 See McDonald, 561 U.S. at 769. 

29 See, e.g., An Act to Provide for the Due Execution of the Laws of 

the United States Within the State of Michigan, ch. 239, sec. 1, 5 Stat 

61, 61 (1836) (applying United States law to Michigan); An Act to 

Admit the State of Michigan into the Union, upon an Equal Footing 

with the Original States, ch. 6, sec. 1, 5 Stat. 144, 144 (1837) 

(formally admitting Michigan as a state); Mich. Const. of 1835, art. I, 

§ 13 (“right to bear arms”); An Act for the Admission of the State of 

Arkansas into the Union, and to Provide for the Due Execution of the 

Laws of the United States, Within the Same, and for Other Purposes, 

ch. 100, secs. 1 & 3, 5 Stat. 50, 50-51 (1836) (admitting Arkansas); 

Ark. Const. of 1836, art. II, § 21 (“right to keep and to bear arms”); 

An Act to Extend the Laws of the United States over the State of 

Texas, and for Other Purposes, ch. 1, sec. 1, 6 Stat. 1, 1 (1845) 

(annexing Texas); Tex. Const. of 1845, art. I, § 13 (“right to keep 

and bear arms”); An Act for the Admission of Iowa and Florida into 

the Union, ch. 48, sec. 1, 6 Stat. 742, 742 (1845) (admitting Florida); 

An Act Supplemental to the Act for the Admission of Florida and 

Iowa into the Union, and for Other Purposes, ch. 75, sec. 2, 6 Stat. 

788, 788 (1845) (formally applying United States law to Florida); 

Fla. Const. of 1838, art. I, § 21 (“right to keep and to bear arms”). 

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8 

citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as 

the palladium of the liberties of a republic . . . .”30

3. The Fourteenth Amendment 

(1868) 

Just as guns were often the difference between life and 

death for “the remote settler” who needed “to defend himself 

and his family against hostile Indian tribes and outlaws, wolves 

and bears,”31 guns were often the only defense for AfricanAmericans against night riders and lynch mobs after the Civil 

War.32 So when states “of the old Confederacy” engaged in 

“systematic efforts . . . to disarm” recently freed slaves and 

“many of the over 180,000 African-Americans who served in 

the Union Army,” Congress passed the Freedmen’s Bureau Act 

30 3 Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United 

States § 1890, at 746 (1833); see also McDonald, 561 U.S. at 769-

70 (citing “Founding-era legal commentators” including Joseph 

Story, St. George Tucker, and William Rawle). 

31 Oral Arg. Tr. at 8 (comment of Kennedy, J.), District of Columbia 

v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008) (No. 07-290), 2008 WL 731297. 

32 McDonald, 561 U.S. at 855-58 (Thomas, J., concurring in part and 

concurring in the judgment); see also Duncan I, 970 F.3d at 1154 

(The NAACP’s co-founder once wrote of a year plagued by racial 

lynchings in the late nineteenth century, “the only case where the 

proposed lynching did not occur, was where the men armed 

themselves . . . and prevented it. The only times an Afro-American 

who was assaulted [and] got away has been when he had a gun and 

used it in self-defense.” (quoting Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors and 

Other Writings: The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892-

1900, at 70 (Jacqueline Jones Royster ed., 1997))). 

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9 

of 1866.33 It guaranteed “the constitutional right to bear arms” 

to all citizens “without respect to race or color.”34 

That same year, Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act.35 

Its “principal proponents . . . meant to end the disarmament of 

African-Americans in the South.”36 Then, “to provide a 

constitutional basis for protecting the rights set out in the Civil 

Rights Act of 1866,” Congress passed and the states ratified the 

Fourteenth Amendment.37 Its first section provides: 

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, 

and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of 

the United States and of the State wherein they reside. 

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall 

abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the 

United States; nor shall any State deprive any person 

of life, liberty, or property, without due process of 

law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the 

equal protection of the laws.38

4. Takeaways from the Second Amendment’s Text and 

History 

D.C. has offered no reason to doubt that throughout all of 

this history, no federal or state legislature enacted a blanket ban 

on a gun in common use for lawful purposes. Yes, there could 

33 McDonald, 561 U.S. at 771. 

34 Ch. 200, § 14, 14 Stat. 173, 176-177 (1866). 

35 Ch. 31, 14 Stat. 27 (1866). 

36 McDonald, 561 U.S. at 774 n.23. 

37 Id. at 775. 

38 U.S. Const. amend. 14 § 1; see also id. § 5 (granting Congress 

enforcement power). 

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10 

be limits on who possesses a gun.39 Yes, there could be limits 

on where and how you carry a gun.40 And yes, there could be 

limits on owning and carrying unusual guns.41 But D.C. has 

failed to identify any categorical ban on a gun in common use 

for lawful purposes in the first century of our nation’s history.42

B. Supreme Court Precedents 

The Supreme Court’s first notable application of the 

Second Amendment did not occur until 1939 — when it 

distinguished unusual weapons from those in common use.43 

And its first extensive consideration of the Amendment’s 

meaning did not come until 2008 — when it relied on this 

distinction to hold that the government cannot completely ban 

an arm in common use for lawful purposes. In the 16 years 

since then, the Court has invariably reaffirmed that principle. 

39 Rahimi, slip op. at 10-13 (citing Founding-era “regulations 

targeting individuals who physically threatened others”). 

40 Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2133 (citing examples of “sensitive places” 

where weapons were historically prohibited). 

41 Heller, 554 U.S. at 627 (explaining that there is an “historical 

tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual 

weapons” (cleaned up)). 

42 See Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2126 (it is the government’s burden to 

“demonstrate that [its] regulation is consistent with this Nation’s 

historical tradition of firearm regulation”). 

43 “For most of our history, the Bill of Rights was not thought 

applicable to the States, and the Federal Government did not 

significantly regulate the possession of firearms by law-abiding 

citizens.” Heller, 554 U.S. at 625. 

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1. United States v. Miller

(1939) 

In 1934, Congress enacted the National Firearms 

Act — the first significant federal gun law.44 It regulated a 

special class of unusual firearms.45 This class included fully 

automatic machine guns, sawed-off shotguns, and shortbarreled rifles.46 

The National Firearms Act required pre-existing owners to 

register those firearms.47 It also compelled sellers and 

transferors to pay special taxes.48 So obtaining a covered arm 

became expensive, but not illegal. 

The Supreme Court upheld the National Firearms Act in 

United States v. Miller.

49 There, “two washed-up Oklahoma 

bank robbers” had been charged with transporting an 

unregistered sawed-off shotgun in interstate commerce.50 The 

44 National Firearms Act, Pub. L. No. 73-474, 48 Stat. 1236 (1934). 

45 Id. § 1(a), 48 Stat. at 1236. 

46 Id. 

Machine guns are automatic weapons. Id. § 1(b), 48 Stat. at 1236 

(defining “machine gun”). They fire “repeatedly with a single pull 

of the trigger. That is, once its trigger is depressed, the weapon will 

automatically continue to fire until its trigger is released or the 

ammunition is exhausted.” Staples v. United States, 511 U.S. 600, 

602 n.1 (1994). 

47 National Firearms Act, § 5(a), 48 Stat. at 1238. 

48 Id. §§ 2(a), 3(b), 48 Stat. at 1237. 

49 307 U.S. 174, 183 (1939). 

50 Brian L. Frye, The Peculiar Story of United States v. Miller, 3 

N.Y.U. J.L. & Liberty 48, 48 (2008); see id. at 50 (describing how 

Miller was a “test case arranged by the government and designed to 

support the constitutionality of federal gun control”). 

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Court held that the Second Amendment does not protect “the 

right to keep and bear such an instrument.”51 

In explaining why, Miller referred to Founding-Era 

history. It observed that men called to serve in the militia 

“were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves 

and of the kind in common use at the time.”52 Therefore, in the 

Court’s view, the Second Amendment did not protect the 

weapon at issue in Miller, which was unusual at the time of the 

bank robbers’ arrest.53

The Supreme Court has since “read Miller to say only that 

the Second Amendment does not protect those weapons not 

typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful 

purposes,”54 explaining (this time without the multiple 

negatives) that “Miller said . . . the sorts of weapons protected 

were those in common use at the time.”55 

2. Staples v. United States

(1994) 

Five and a half decades after Miller, the Supreme Court 

considered another case about the National Firearms 

Act — Staples v. United States.

56 

51 Miller, 307 U.S. at 178. 

52 Id. at 179 (emphasis added); see id. at 179-82 (citing state laws 

requiring men to keep and bear commonly used firearms for militia 

service). 

53 Id. at 178. 

54 Heller, 554 U.S. at 625; see also id. at 623 (Miller recognizes that 

“the Second Amendment right, whatever its nature, extends only to 

certain types of weapons”). 

55 Id. at 627 (cleaned up). 

56 511 U.S. 600 (1994). 

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Staples reversed a conviction under the National Firearms 

Act for possession of an unregistered fully automatic machine 

gun.57 The Court held that the government must (and did not) 

prove the defendant knew his AR-15 rifle had been converted 

to enable automatic fire.58 That’s because most modern guns 

are “so commonplace and generally available” that a defendant 

cannot be considered “on notice” of likely regulation just 

because a gun is dangerous.59 

Consistent with Miller, Staples contrasted guns like a 

semiautomatic AR-15 rifle that “traditionally have been widely 

accepted as lawful possessions” with “certain categories” of 

unusual guns like fully automatic “machineguns, sawed-off 

shotguns, and artillery pieces.”60 So even though Staples was 

not a constitutional decision, it confirmed a principle that 

would matter in future cases about the Second Amendment: 

Arms in common use for lawful purposes are legally distinct 

from unusual, “quasi-suspect” arms.61

3. District of Columbia v. Heller

(2008) 

D.C. has long been an anti-gun outlier in a nation where, 

as Staples said, guns are “widely accepted as lawful 

possessions.”62 By 1976, D.C. had “banned all handgun 

57 Id. at 602. 

58 Id. at 603, 619. 

59 Id. at 611. 

60 Id. at 611-12. 

61 See Heller II, 670 F.3d at 1288 (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting) 

(cleaned up). 

62 Staples, 511 U.S. at 612; see id. at 611-12. 

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14 

possession.”63 That ban was challenged by Dick Heller in a 

suit decided by the Supreme Court in 2008.64 

During the litigation in Heller, D.C. made a series of 

arguments designed to render the Second Amendment a dead 

letter. For starters, D.C. argued that the Second Amendment 

does not “entitle[] individuals to have guns for their own 

private purposes.”65 Next, D.C. argued that there’s no right to 

handguns when “the District allows residents to keep rifles and 

shotguns.”66 Finally, D.C. argued that its “predictive judgment 

about how best to reduce gun violence was reasonable” and 

“entitled to substantial deference.”67 

In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court 

rejected every one of D.C.’s arguments.68 In so doing, it made 

four increasingly specific holdings. Each was dependent on the 

holding before it. 

Heller’s first holding was its broadest: As a general 

matter, the Second Amendment guarantees an “individual 

right” to possess and carry “arms,” though that right is “not 

unlimited.”69

63 Wrenn v. District of Columbia, 864 F.3d 650, 655 (D.C. Cir. 2017) 

(citing D.C. Code § 7-2502.01(a), 7-2502.02(a)(4)). 

64 Heller, 554 U.S. at 574-76. 

65 Petitioner Br. at 8, Heller, 554 U.S. at 570 (No. 07-290), 2008 WL 

102223. 

66 Id. at 10; see id. at 48, 54-55. 

67 Id. at 11. 

68 See 554 U.S. 570, 628-29, 629, 634-36 (2008). 

69 Id. at 579-81, 581-92, 626-28. 

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Heller’s second holding concerned how to discover the 

Second Amendment’s limits: Courts must rely “on the 

historical understanding of the Amendment to demark the 

limits on the exercise of that right.”70 This historical approach 

led Heller to distinguish D.C.’s law from “longstanding 

prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the 

mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in 

sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or 

laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial 

sale of arms.”71 Heller thus “exemplifies” a “straightforward 

historical inquiry.”72

In adopting this historical approach, “Heller decline[d] to 

engage in means-end scrutiny generally” and “specifically 

ruled out the intermediate-scrutiny test.”73 The Court 

explained: 

We know of no other enumerated constitutional right 

whose core protection has been subjected to a 

freestanding “interest-balancing” approach. The 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.74 

70 Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2128 (describing Heller). 

71 Heller, 554 U.S. at 626-27. 

72 Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2131. 

73 Id. at 2129. 

74 Heller, 554 U.S. at 634; see also id. (“A constitutional guarantee 

subject to future judges’ assessments of its usefulness is no 

constitutional guarantee at all.”); id. at 635 (“Like the First, [the 

Second Amendment] is the very product of an interest balancing by 

the people . . . .”). 

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Heller then applied that “straightforward historical 

inquiry”75 to reach its third holding: Whereas the United 

States has a “historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of 

‘dangerous and unusual weapons,’ there is no historical 

tradition of banning arms ‘in common use.’”76 So arms “in 

common use” are “protected,” and “a complete prohibition of 

their use is invalid.”77

Heller’s third holding confirmed the same critical 

distinction on which Miller had relied in 1939 — the 

distinction between “unusual” weapons versus weapons “in 

common use” for lawful purposes.78 That distinction 

“dovetailed with the historical practice of the militia bringing 

‘the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to 

75 Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2131 (describing Heller). 

76 Heller, 554 U.S. at 627 (quoting Miller, 307 U.S. at 179) (cleaned 

up). 

77 Id. at 624, 627, 629; see also Heller II, 670 F.3d at 1269 

(Kavanaugh, J., dissenting) (Heller held that the government cannot 

ban arms when “they have not traditionally been banned and are in 

common use by law-abiding citizens.”); id. at 1271-72 (Kavanaugh, 

J., dissenting) (“As to bans on categories of guns, the Heller Court 

stated that the government may ban classes of guns that have been 

banned in our ‘historical tradition’ — namely, guns that are 

‘dangerous and unusual’ and thus are not the sorts of 

lawful weapons that citizens typically possess at home.” (cleaned 

up)); id. at 1272 (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting) (“The [Heller] Court 

said that ‘dangerous and unusual weapons’ are equivalent to those 

weapons not ‘in common use,’ as the latter phrase was used in United 

States v. Miller.”). 

78 Heller, 554 U.S. at 623-25; supra Part II.B.1 (discussing Miller). 

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17 

militia duty’; i.e., weapons that were ‘in common use at the 

time.’”79

From there, Heller reached its fourth and final holding: 

Because handguns are in common use today, law-abiding 

citizens have a Second Amendment right to keep them in their 

homes for self-defense.80 It didn’t matter whether D.C. 

residents could already keep other guns — it only mattered that 

handguns are in common use.81 Nor did it matter whether 

handguns were once unusual — it only mattered that they are 

common now.82

Heller explained time and again that this fourth holding (a 

right to handguns) depended on its third holding (a right to 

possess arms “in common use” for lawful purposes): 

 “It is enough to note, as we have observed, that the 

American people have considered the handgun to be the 

quintessential self-defense weapon.”83

79 Mark W. Smith, What Part of “In Common Use” Don't You 

Understand?: How Courts Have Defied Heller in Arms-Ban 

Cases — Again, Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y Per Curiam, No. 41, at 4 

(2023) (“Smith, How Courts Have Defied Heller”) (quoting Heller, 

554 U.S. at 627). 

80 Heller, 554 U.S. at 628-29; see also Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2143 

(discussing Heller). 

81 Heller, 554 U.S. at 629. 

82 See id. at 582 (“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”). 

83 Id. at 629. 

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 “The handgun ban amounts to a prohibition of an entire 

class of ‘arms’ that is overwhelmingly chosen by 

American society for that lawful purpose.”84

 “Whatever the reason, handguns are the most popular 

weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the 

home, and a complete prohibition of their use is 

invalid.”85

 “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.”86

 

In other words, Heller did not simply hold that the Second 

Amendment is an individual right, then add a lot of dicta, and 

then finally hold that D.C. cannot ban handguns. What came 

between Heller’s first and last holdings is binding on lower 

courts, because each of Heller’s four increasingly specific 

holdings is dependent on the holding before it: 

1) There is, in general, an individual right to keep and 

bear arms; 

2) Exceptions to that right depend on the history and 

tradition of gun regulations; 

3) There is no history and tradition of banning arms in 

common use for lawful purposes; and 

4) Handguns cannot be categorically banned precisely 

because they are in common use for lawful purposes. 

84 Id. at 628. 

85 Id. at 629. 

86 Id. at 628-29 (cleaned up). 

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Of course, Heller did not ignore “the problem of handgun 

violence in this country.”87 It took “seriously the concerns” of 

those “who believe that prohibition of handgun ownership is a 

solution.”88 But the Court was bound by the Second 

Amendment’s command that the government may not ban arms 

in common use for lawful purposes — whether good policy or 

not. As this court later recognized: “Heller I closed off the 

possibility” that we could “find some benefits weighty enough 

to justify other effective bans on the right to keep common 

arms.”89

4. McDonald v. City of Chicago

(2010)

Two years after Heller, in McDonald v. City of Chicago, 

the Supreme Court confirmed that because of the Fourteenth 

Amendment, “the Second Amendment right is fully applicable 

to the States.”90 McDonald explained that “the right to keep 

and bear arms is fundamental to our scheme of ordered 

liberty.”91 It is “‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and 

tradition.’”92

87 Id. at 636. 

88 Id.

89 Wrenn, 864 F.3d at 665. But see Bianchi, slip op. at 64 (“Imagine, 

then, living through these recent tragedies. Imagine the sense of loss 

that afflicts not only the moment, but the lifetimes of those families 

and friends affected. And then imagine that you mobilize and lobby 

your representatives to pass preventative legislation, only to be told 

by a court that your Constitution renders you powerless to save 

others from your family’s fate.” (emphasis omitted)). 

90 561 U.S. 742, 750 (2010). 

91 Id. at 767 (emphasis omitted). 

92 Id. at 768 (quoting Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 721 

(1997)). 

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At the same time, “McDonald underscore[d] that text, 

history, and tradition guide analysis of gun laws and 

regulations.”93 It confirmed that exceptions to the general right 

to keep and bear arms depend on “longstanding regulatory 

measures,” not “judicial interest balancing,” which Heller had 

“expressly rejected.”94 And like Heller, it held that “citizens 

must be permitted to use handguns for the core lawful purpose 

of self-defense” because handguns “are the most preferred 

firearm in the nation to keep and use for protection of one’s 

home and family.”95 

In McDonald, the Supreme Court had a chance to back 

away from Heller’s holdings. Instead, it doubled down. 

5. “Defiance” of Heller

(2010-2022) 

 

With Heller and McDonald, the Supreme Court left little 

doubt about the validity of severe gun-control regimes. But 

revanchist legislatures responded with “defiance.”96 

D.C. led the way. After its ban on keeping handguns was 

held unconstitutional, it followed “with a ban on carrying.”97 

“And when that was struck down,” D.C. confined “carrying a 

93 Heller II, 670 F.3d at 1278 (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting). 

94 McDonald, 561 U.S. at 785-86 (plurality); see also id. at 803 

(Scalia, J., concurring) (“traditional, historically focused method”). 

95 Id. at 767-68 (cleaned up). 

96 Silvester v. Becerra, 138 S. Ct. 945, 951 (2018) (Thomas, J., 

dissenting from denial of certiorari); cf. Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 

1, 17 (1958) (“we should answer the premise of the actions of the 

Governor and Legislature that they are not bound by our holding in 

the Brown case”). 

97 Wrenn, 864 F.3d at 655 (citing D.C. Code § 22-4504). 

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handgun in public to those with a special need for selfdefense.”98 D.C. then lost in court again, this time after 

arguing that the Second Amendment’s “core does not cover 

public carrying at all.”99

D.C.’s unveiled contempt for Heller and McDonald was 

not unique. For example, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial 

Court held that the Second Amendment does not protect stun 

guns100 — a decision that the unanimous Supreme Court 

summarily reversed in Caetano v. Massachusetts.

101 With a 

terse, two-page opinion, the Court dispensed with the state 

court’s thin reasoning as patently “inconsistent” with the 

“clear” holdings of Heller and McDonald.

102

Caetano put lower courts on notice: Exceptions to gun 

rights under the Second Amendment depend on a historical 

tradition of analogous regulations, and there is no historical 

tradition of banning arms in common use for lawful purposes. 

Many state courts did not get the memo. Nor did some 

federal circuit courts. 

98 Id. (citing Palmer v. District of Columbia, 59 F. Supp. 3d 173 

(D.D.C. 2014) and D.C. Code § 22-4506(a)-(b)). 

99 Id. at 657. 

100 Commonwealth v. Caetano, 26 N.E.3d 688, 692-94 (Mass. 2015). 

101 577 U.S. 411, 412 (2016). 

102 Id. at 412; see id. at 411-12 (swiftly rejecting each of the state 

court’s three rationales for its holding, which were that (1) stun guns 

“were not in common use at the time of the Second Amendment’s 

enactment,” (2) stun guns are “unusual” because they are “a 

thoroughly modern invention,” and (3) stun guns are not “readily 

adaptable to use in the military” (cleaned up)). 

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In particular, several federal circuits devised “a ‘two-step’ 

framework for analyzing Second Amendment challenges that 

combines history with means-end scrutiny.”103 That approach 

was “policy by another name,” and it “eviscerate[d] many of 

the protections recognized in Heller and McDonald.”104 In the 

Ninth Circuit, for example, the government at one point 

enjoyed an “‘undefeated, 50–0 record’” against Second 

Amendment challenges.105 

Meanwhile, a number of Supreme Court justices raised the 

alarm: 

 Justice Thomas (joined by Justice Scalia) lamented that 

“[d]espite the clarity with which we described the Second 

Amendment’s core protection for the right of self-defense, 

lower courts . . . have failed to protect it.”106 

 Justice Thomas (again joined by Justice Scalia) criticized 

lower courts’ “crabbed reading of Heller” and 

103 Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2125; see id. at 2125-27 & n.4 (citing cases). 

104 First quoting Rahimi, slip op. at 18 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring); 

then quoting Friedman v. City of Highland Park, 577 U.S. 1039, 

1041 (2015) (Friedman II) (Thomas, J., dissenting from denial of 

certiorari). Because I later refer to the Seventh Circuit opinion with 

the same caption, I will cite this one as Friedman II. 

105 Rahimi, slip op. at 5 (Gorsuch, J., concurring) (quoting Duncan II, 

19 F.4th at 1167 n.8 (VanDyke, J., dissenting)); see also Bruen, 142 

S. Ct. at 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.”). 

106 Jackson v. City and County of San Francisco, 135 S. Ct. 2799, 

2799 (2015) (Thomas, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari). 

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“noncompliance with our Second Amendment 

precedents.”107 

 Justice Thomas said that “lower courts are resisting this 

Court’s decisions in Heller and McDonald and are failing 

to protect the Second Amendment to the same extent that 

they protect other constitutional rights.”108 

 Justice Alito (joined by Justice Thomas) criticized lowercourt “reasoning” that “defies our decision in Heller.”109 

 Justice Alito (joined by Justice Gorsuch) expressed 

“concern” about “the way Heller has been treated in the 

lower courts.”110 

 Justice Kavanaugh shared a similar “concern that some 

federal and state courts may not be properly applying 

Heller and McDonald.”111 

 Justice Thomas (joined by Justice Kavanaugh) again 

accused the lower courts of “blatant defiance,” explaining 

that means-end scrutiny was “entirely inconsistent with 

Heller” and “appear[ed] to be entirely made up.” 112

These five justices did not chastise lower courts only for 

ignoring Heller’s holding that history and tradition alone 

107 Friedman II, 577 U.S. at 1039, 1041 (Thomas, J., dissenting from 

denial of certiorari). 

108 Silvester, 138 S. Ct. at 950 (Thomas, J., dissenting from denial of 

certiorari). 

109 Caetano, 577 U.S. at 414 (Alito, J., concurring in the judgment). 

110 New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York, 

140 S. Ct. 1525, 1544 (2020) (Alito, J., dissenting). 

111 Id. at 1527 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring). 

112 Rogers v. Grewal, 140 S. Ct. 1865, 1867 (2020) (Thomas, J., 

dissenting from denial of certiorari). 

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determine exceptions to the Second Amendment’s textual 

baseline. They also chided lower courts for ignoring Heller’s 

more specific holding — that there is no historical tradition of 

categorical bans on arms “in common use” for lawful 

purposes.113

Consider, for example, Friedman v. City of Highland 

Park.

114 The Court declined to take up a challenge to a city ban 

on “many of the most commonly owned” semiautomatic rifles 

and the plus-ten magazines commonly used with them.115 

Justice Thomas dissented from the denial of certiorari, joined 

by Justice Scalia. He explained that Heller and McDonald do 

not allow “categorical bans on firearms that millions of 

Americans commonly own for lawful purposes,”116 repeatedly 

underscoring Heller’s third holding about arms in common use: 

 “Heller asks whether the law bans types of firearms 

commonly used for a lawful purpose — regardless of 

whether alternatives exist.”117

 “Heller draws a distinction between such firearms [in 

common use for a lawful purpose] and weapons specially 

adapted to unlawful uses and not in common use, such as 

sawed-off shotguns.”118 

113 Heller, 554 U.S. at 627. 

114 577 U.S. 1039, 1039 (2015) (Thomas, J., dissenting from denial 

of certiorari). 

115 Id. at 1039 (Thomas, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari). 

116 Id. (Thomas, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari). 

117 Id. at 1042 (Thomas, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari). 

118 Id. (Thomas, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari). 

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 Heller and McDonald “excluded from [Second 

Amendment] protection only those weapons not typically 

possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.”119 

 “Roughly 5 million Americans own AR-style 

semiautomatic rifles. The overwhelming majority of 

citizens who own and use such rifles do so for lawful 

purposes, including self-defense and target shooting. 

Under our precedents, that is all that is needed for citizens 

to have a right under the Second Amendment to keep such 

weapons.”120

Consider also Caetano, the stun-gun case in which the 

unanimous Supreme Court summarily reversed the 

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. There, Justice Alito 

(joined by Justice Thomas) wrote separately to emphasize 

Heller’s third holding about arms in common use: 

 “[T]he pertinent Second Amendment inquiry is whether 

[the arms] are commonly possessed by law-abiding 

citizens for lawful purposes today.”121

 “A weapon may not be banned unless it is both dangerous 

and unusual.”122 

119 Id. at 1040 (Thomas, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) 

(cleaned up). 

120 Id. at 1042 (Thomas, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) 

(emphasis added). 

121 Caetano, 577 U.S. at 420 (Alito, J., concurring in the judgment) 

(emphasis omitted). 

122 Id. at 417 (Alito, J., concurring in the judgment). 

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 “[T]he relative dangerousness of a weapon is irrelevant

when the weapon belongs to a class of arms commonly 

used for lawful purposes.”123 

 “While less popular than handguns, stun guns are widely 

owned and accepted as a legitimate means of self-defense 

across the country. Massachusetts’ categorical ban of such 

weapons therefore violates the Second Amendment.”124

Supreme Court justices were not alone in objecting to 

lower courts’ “eviscerat[ion]” of Heller and McDonald.

125 “A 

chorus” of district judges and dissenting circuit judges echoed 

them.126 One was then-Judge Kavanaugh. 

123 Id. at 418 (Alito, J., concurring in the judgment) (emphasis 

added). 

124 Id. at 420 (Alito, J., concurring in the judgment) (emphasis 

added); see id. (Alito, J., concurring in the judgment) (noting “that 

hundreds of thousands of Tasers and stun guns have been sold to 

private citizens, who it appears may lawfully possess them in 45 

States” (cleaned up)). 

125 Friedman II, 577 U.S. at 1041 (Thomas, J., dissenting from denial 

of certiorari). 

126 Duncan II, 19 F.4th at 1147 (Bumatay, J., dissenting, joined by 

Ikuta and Nelson, JJ.) (citing Mai v. United States, 974 F.3d 1082, 

1083 (9th Cir. 2020) (Collins, J., dissenting from the denial of reh’g 

en banc)); id. at 1097 (VanDyke, J., dissenting from the denial of 

reh’g en banc); Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs, Inc. 

v. Attorney General of New Jersey, 910 F.3d 106, 126 (3d Cir. 2018) 

(Bibas, J. dissenting); Mance v. Sessions, 896 F.3d 390, 394 (5th Cir. 

2018) (Elrod, J., joined by Jones, Smith, Willett, Ho, Duncan, and 

Engelhardt, JJ., dissenting from the denial of reh’g en banc); Tyler v. 

Hillsdale Cnty. Sheriff’s Department, 837 F.3d 678, 702 (6th Cir. 

2016) (Batchelder, J., concurring in most of the judgment); id. at 710 

(Sutton, J., concurring in most of the judgment)). 

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Dissenting in Heller II, Judge Kavanaugh urged this court 

to apply Heller I’s second and third holdings. He said, “Heller

and McDonald leave little doubt that courts are to assess gun 

bans and regulations based on text, history, and tradition, not 

by a balancing test such as strict or intermediate scrutiny.”127 

And he added, “In Heller, the Supreme Court held that 

handguns . . . are constitutionally protected because they have 

not traditionally been banned and are in common use by lawabiding citizens.”128

6. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen

(2022) 

In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. 

Bruen, the Supreme Court vindicated the chorus of circuitcourt dissenters, repudiated “means-end” scrutiny (again), and 

(again) reaffirmed Heller’s second holding that “when the 

Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s 

conduct,” exceptions to that right must be “consistent with this 

Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”129 

127 Heller II, 670 F.3d at 1271 (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting); see also 

id. at 1272 (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting) (“The scope of the right is 

thus determined by ‘historical justifications.’” (quoting Heller, 554 

U.S. at 635)). 

128 Id. at 1269 (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting) (emphasis added); see also 

id. at 1288 (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting) (“the government may not 

generally ban semi-automatic guns” because “semi-automatic 

weapons ‘traditionally have been widely accepted as lawful 

possessions’” (quoting Staples, 511 U.S. at 612)). 

129 142 S. Ct. 2111, 2126-27 (2022); see also id. at 2131 (“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.”); id. at 2128 

(Heller “assessed the lawfulness of that handgun ban by scrutinizing 

whether it comported with history and tradition”). 

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At the same time, Bruen gave lower courts additional 

guidance about how to apply Heller’s history-and-tradition 

test. As in other constitutional contexts, the burden is on the 

government to justify regulations that are “presumptively 

protect[ed].”130 And the government satisfies that burden only 

if it can “identify a well-established and representative 

historical analogue” within our country’s historical tradition.131

Bruen applied that history-and-tradition test to a New 

York law that conditioned licenses to carry handguns “on a 

citizen’s showing of” a “special need for self-defense.”132 

Bruen needed to conduct its own historical inquiry 

“because . . . Bruen did not involve an arms ban” and so “could 

not be resolved by applying Heller’s rule” that the government 

cannot ban arms in common use for lawful purposes. 133 The 

Court considered the history and held that New York’s law was 

not “consistent with the Second Amendment’s text and 

historical understanding.”134

In addition, Bruen reaffirmed Heller’s third 

holding — that, in view of our nation’s history and tradition, 

the government cannot categorically ban a class of arms in 

common use for lawful purposes: “[Heller] 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.’”135 Heller’s “historical 

130 Id. at 2129-30. 

131 Id. at 2133 (emphasis omitted). 

132 Id. at 2122. 

133 Smith, How Courts Have Defied Heller, at 11 (emphasis omitted). 

134 Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2131. 

135 Id. at 2128 (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 627 (cleaned up)). 

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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.”136

So in summary, Bruen: 

 Confirmed Heller’s second holding, which established 

the history-and-tradition test; 

 Described how to apply Heller’s history-and-tradition 

test to types of gun regulations that the Supreme Court 

has not already considered; 

 Held that there is no historical tradition analogous to 

New York’s public-carry regulation — which was a 

time-place-manner regulation, not a categorical ban 

controlled by Heller’s third holding that the 

government cannot ban arms “in common use” for 

lawful purposes; and 

 Reaffirmed that third holding of Heller. 

7. United States v. Rahimi

(2024)

Just two years after Bruen, the Supreme Court returned to 

the Second Amendment in United States v. Rahimi.

137 It 

reviewed a federal statute that “prohibits an individual subject 

to a domestic violence restraining order from possessing a 

firearm if that order includes a finding that he ‘represents a 

136 Id. (cleaned up). 

137 No. 22-915, 602 U.S. ___, slip op. (June 21, 2024). 

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credible threat to the physical safety of an intimate partner,’ or 

a child of the partner or individual.”138 

In Rahimi, the government proposed two traditional types 

of laws to show that “the new law is relevantly similar to laws 

that our tradition is understood to permit.”139 Because those 

old laws (1) imposed burdens like the new law’s burdens for 

reasons like the new law’s reasons, (2) were widespread, and 

(3) were old enough to help illuminate the Second 

Amendment’s original meaning, the Court upheld the new law. 

It held that the nation’s “tradition of firearm regulation allows 

the Government to disarm individuals who present a credible 

threat to the physical safety of others.”140 

In so doing, Rahimi “carefully buil[t] on Heller, 

McDonald, and Bruen.”141 It reiterated the history-andtradition test already well established under Heller, McDonald, 

and Bruen, while also reaffirming their distinction between 

arms in common use versus “‘dangerous and unusual 

weapons.’”142 In addition, its multiple opinions elaborated on 

the standard for using analogical reasoning to determine 

whether a modern law falls within a historical tradition. 

8. Takeaways from the Supreme Court’s Precedents 

Where do all these cases leave us? For starters, Heller’s 

four holdings remain undisturbed: There is an individual 

(though not unlimited) right to possess and carry arms. 

138 Id. at 1 (quoting 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8) (cleaned up)). 

139 Id. at 23 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) (cleaned up). 

140 Id. at 16 (majority). 

141 Id. at 23 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring). 

142 Id. at 6 (majority) (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 627). 

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Exceptions to that right depend on history and tradition. There 

is no history and tradition of banning arms in common use for 

lawful purposes. D.C. cannot categorically ban handguns 

because they are in common use. 

To Heller’s final and most specific holding, we can add 

the most specific holdings of McDonald, Bruen, and Rahimi. 

Like the federal government and federal enclaves, states too 

cannot categorically ban handguns because they are in common 

use for lawful purposes — McDonald.

143 The government also 

cannot impose an unusually restrictive licensing regime like 

New York’s because it is inconsistent with the nation’s 

historical tradition — Bruen.

144 In contrast, the government 

can temporarily disarm people who present a credible threat of 

violence because that type of law is consistent with the nation’s 

historical tradition — Rahimi.

145 

None of those holdings should cause unusual “difficulty” 

for “judges on the ground.”146 For example, in cases about 

banning arms in common use, Heller and its progeny require 

no “mad scramble for historical records”147 because they have 

“already done the work and provided the test that [we] must 

143 McDonald, 561 U.S. at 749-50. 

144 Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2156. 

145 Rahimi, slip op. at 5. 

146 Id. at 1 (Jackson, J., concurring); see also id. at 2 (Jackson, J., 

concurring) (“The message that lower courts are sending now in 

Second Amendment cases could not be clearer. They say there is 

little method to Bruen’s madness.”); id. (citing many lower-court 

judges’ complaints about the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence). 

147 Id. at 5 n.3 (Jackson, J., concurring). 

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32 

apply.”148 And when we fail to apply their rule, “the blame” 

lies “with us, not with them.”149

 As for gun laws other than complete bans on arms in 

common use for lawful purposes (Heller), unusually restrictive 

licensing regimes (Bruen), and temporary disarmaments of 

specific people who credibly threaten violence (Rahimi), the 

government can defend laws regulating conduct covered by the 

Second Amendment’s plain text only by identifying an 

appropriate analogue from our nation’s historical tradition.150 

Three considerations must inform that “analogical reasoning 

under the Second Amendment.”151 

First, “[w]hy and how the regulation burdens the right are 

central to this inquiry.”152 The government must identify 

traditional laws that had a similar justification and imposed a 

similar burden when compared to the challenged modern law. 

“[I]f earlier generations addressed the [same] societal problem, 

but did so through materially different means, that . . . could be 

evidence that a modern regulation is unconstitutional.”153 

(Spoiler alert: This is a problem for the majority’s two 

analogues.) 

Second, to establish a historical tradition, the government 

needs analogues that represent the “collective understanding of 

Americans.”154 So outliers don’t count. That’s why Bruen

148 Smith, How Courts Have Defied Heller, at 10. 

149 Rahimi, slip op. at 1 (Jackson, J., concurring). 

150 See Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2133. 

151 Id.; see also Rahimi, slip op. at 7-8. 

152 Rahimi, slip op. at 7; see also Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2132-33. 

153 Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2131. 

154 Rahimi, slip op. at 11 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring). 

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dismissed “three colonial regulations” and “a few late-19thcentury outlier jurisdictions.”155 And it’s why Heller “would 

not stake” its “interpretation of the Second Amendment upon a 

single law, in effect in a single city, that contradicts the 

overwhelming weight of other evidence.”156 (Spoiler alert: 

This is a problem for the majority’s state-law analogue.) 

Third, “when it comes to interpreting the Constitution, not 

all history is created equal.”157 The “Second Amendment 

‘codified a pre-existing right’ belonging to the American 

people, one that carries the same ‘scope’ today that it was 

‘understood to have when the people adopted’ it.”158 So its 

scope “is pegged to the public understanding of the right when 

the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791.”159 

That means “the history that matters most is the history 

surrounding the ratification of the text.”160 For the Second 

Amendment, the Founding Era matters more than the halfcentury that followed it, which matters more than the latenineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, which matter more 

than the late-twentieth and twenty-first centuries, which do not 

155 Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2142 (emphasis omitted); id. at 2156; see also 

id. at 2153 (“while we recognize the support that postbellum Texas 

provides for [the government’s] view, we will not give 

disproportionate weight to a single state statute and a pair of statecourt decisions”); Bevis v. City of Naperville, Illinois, 85 F.4th 1175, 

1218 (7th Cir. 2023) (Brennan, J., dissenting) (“three analogues were 

not enough in Bruen”). 

156 Heller, 554 U.S. at 632. 

157 Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2136. 

158 Rahimi, slip op. at 2 (Gorsuch, J., concurring) (quoting Heller, 

554 U.S. at 592). 

159 Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2137. 

160 Rahimi, slip op. at 2 (Barrett, J., concurring). 

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34 

matter much at all. (Spoiler alert: This too is a problem for the 

majority.) 

To be sure, “post-ratification history” can “be important,” 

especially when it’s close in time to the Founding, the 

constitutional text is vague, the Founding-Era history is 

inconclusive, the post-Founding tradition is well-established, 

and judicial precedents give no guidance.161 Put differently, 

post-ratification history matters when the only alternative is 

policymaking from the bench.162 But “evidence of tradition 

unmoored from original meaning is not binding law. And 

scattered cases or regulations pulled from history may have 

little bearing on the meaning of the text.”163 

Heller is, as ever, instructive. There, the Founding-Era 

history mattered the most. The Court said that if discussions 

“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.”164 That’s why “Heller’s 

interest in mid- to late-19th-century commentary was 

secondary.”165 Heller’s “19th-century evidence was treated as 

161 Id. at 10-11 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring). 

162 See id. at 10 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) (“there can be little else 

to guide a judge deciding a constitutional case in that situation, unless 

the judge simply defaults to his or her own policy preferences”). 

163 Id. at 2-3 (Barrett, J., concurring) (cleaned up); see also Bruen, 

142 S. Ct. at 2137 (“to the extent later history contradicts what the 

text says, the text controls”); id. (“‘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’” 

(quoting Heller II, 670 F.3d at 1274 n.6 (Kavanaugh, J., 

dissenting))). 

164 Heller, 554 U.S. at 614. 

165 Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2137. 

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35 

mere confirmation of what the Court thought had already been 

established,”166 and it refused to give that “postenactment 

history more weight than it can rightly bear.”167 

So to sum up the history-and-tradition test, a historical 

analogue need not be a “dead ringer” or “historical twin.”168 

But analogues are strongest when (1) they burden gun rights 

for a similar reason and in a similar way as the challenged 

modern law; and (2) they represent the nation’s collective 

understanding; and (3) they were enacted in an instructive 

historical period, preferably around the Second Amendment’s 

ratification in 1791. In Rahimi, the government won when it 

hit that trifecta. In Heller, McDonald, and Bruen, the 

government lost when it could not. 

III. D.C.’s Ban on Plus-Ten Magazines Is Unconstitutional 

D.C.’s ban on commonly used plus-ten magazines 

conflicts with Heller’s holding that the government cannot ban 

an arm in common use for lawful purposes. That alone decides 

this case. 

In addition, D.C. has failed to show that its ban is 

consistent with the nation’s historical tradition — even 

166 Id. (cleaned up). 

167 Id. at 2136; see also id. at 2131 (“after considering ‘founding-era

historical precedent,’ including ‘various restrictive laws in the 

colonial period,’ and finding that none was analogous to the 

District’s ban, Heller concluded that the handgun ban was 

unconstitutional” (emphasis added) (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 

631)); Duncan II, 19 F.4th at 1158 (Bumatay, J., dissenting) 

(“Prohibition-era laws of Michigan, Rhode Island, and Ohio . . . 

aren’t nearly old enough to be longstanding”). 

168 Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2133 (emphasis omitted). 

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36 

assuming Heller left it an open question. That too is a sufficient 

reason to hold that D.C.’s ban is unconstitutional.169

A. Applying Heller’s Common-Use Test to D.C.’s Ban on 

Plus-Ten Magazines 

The majority presumes that plus-ten magazines are arms 

in common use by law-abiding citizens for the lawful purpose 

of self-defense.170 On that, we agree.171 

169 When I say D.C.’s ban is unconstitutional, I mean it is 

unconstitutional as applied to magazines that hold up to 17 rounds. 

Those are the only magazines at issue in this appeal, which concerns 

the plaintiffs’ as-applied challenge. See Majority Op. at 7 n.2. We 

are not asked to decide whether there is a right to magazines that hold 

more than 17 rounds. Cf. Heller II, 670 F.3d at 1261 (“There may 

well be some capacity above which magazines are not in common 

use but, if so, the record is devoid of evidence as to what that capacity 

is; in any event, that capacity surely is not ten.”). 

170 Majority Op. at 11. 

171 The majority uses the formulation “in common use for selfdefense,” see, e.g., id. (emphasis added), whereas I use the 

formulation “in common use for lawful purposes,” cf. Bianchi, slip 

op. at 87-88 (Richardson, J., dissenting) (“the tradition of prohibiting 

dangerous and unusual weapons . . . does not support a complete ban 

on the possession of weapons that are commonly used for lawful 

purposes” (emphasis added)); Friedman v. City of Highland Park, 

Illinois, 784 F.3d 406, 415 (7th Cir. 2015) (Friedman I) (Manion, J., 

dissenting) (“The ‘common use’ test . . . asks whether a particular 

weapon is commonly used by law-abiding citizens for lawful 

purposes.” (emphasis added)). For today’s case, the difference 

doesn’t matter because the majority presumes that plus-ten 

magazines are in common use by law-abiding citizens for “selfdefense,” which is a “lawful purpose.” 

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37 

That should not be a close question. Americans have in 

their hands and homes an estimated 100 million plus-ten 

magazines.172 They likely account for about half of all 

Because the distinction may matter in future cases, I offer a quick 

note on why it seems to me that the “lawful purposes” formulation is 

more faithful to the Supreme Court’s precedents. 

The Supreme Court has often noted other lawful purposes for 

keeping and bearing arms, in addition to self-defense. Heller, 554 

U.S. at 599 (“preserving the militia was [not] the only reason 

Americans valued the ancient right; most undoubtedly thought it 

even more important for self-defense and hunting” (emphasis 

added)); id. at 636-37 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (framing the question 

in Heller as “[w]hether [the Second Amendment] . . . protects the 

right to possess and use guns for [lawful] nonmilitary purposes like 

hunting and personal self-defense”); see also id. at 620 (majority) 

(noting that the Court had previously “described the right protected 

by the Second Amendment as bearing arms for a lawful purpose” 

(cleaned up)). Though the Court has also often mentioned selfdefense, that’s because self-defense is the primary “lawful purpose” 

for which Americans keep and bear arms. See id. at 630 (self-defense 

is handguns’ “core lawful purpose”); id. at 624 (using the phrase “for 

lawful purposes like self-defense” (emphasis added)); McDonald, 

561 U.S. at 780 (plurality) (stating that the “central holding in 

Heller” was “that the Second Amendment protects a personal right 

to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes, most notably for selfdefense within the home” (emphasis added)); cf. Bianchi, slip op. at 

175-76 (Richardson, J., dissenting) (cautioning against a framework 

that “allows judges to decide just how important they think certain 

firearms are for self-defense and then to weigh th[at] finding against 

the threat they believe those arms pose to the public at large”). 

172 See Duncan II, 19 F.4th at 1155 (Bumatay, J., dissenting); see also 

William English, 2021 National Firearms Survey: Updated Analysis 

Including Types of Firearms Owned, SSRN, at 20, 24 (May 13, 

2022), https://perma.cc/PXN2-T3XG (“English Report”) (estimating 

that Americans have, over time, owned more than 500 million plusten magazines, including 269 million for handguns). 

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38 

magazines in circulation,173 and nearly half of gun owners have 

owned them.174 These magazines “come standard” with many 

of the nation’s most popular firearms, including “[m]illions of 

semiautomatic pistols, the ‘quintessential self-defense weapon’ 

for the American people.”175 

I could say more.176 But if plus-ten magazines are (1) half 

of America’s magazines, (2) owned by half of America’s gun 

owners, and (3) often standard on Americans’ preferred 

weapon for self-defense, what else needs to be said? That is 

(more than) enough to show common use for lawful purposes. 

173 See Duncan II, 19 F.4th at 1155 (Bumatay, J., dissenting); id. at 

1097 (majority) (“experts estimate that approximately half of all 

privately owned magazines in the United States have a capacity 

greater than ten rounds”). 

174 See English Report at 1-2, 20. 

175 Duncan II, 19 F.4th at 1155 (Bumatay, J., dissenting) (quoting 

Heller, 554 U.S. at 629); see also Duncan I, 970 F.3d at 1142 

(“several variants of the Glock pistol — dubbed ‘America’s gun’ due 

to its popularity — come standard with a seventeen-round 

magazine”); Kolbe v. Hogan, 849 F.3d 114, 129 (4th Cir. 2017) 

(“Most pistols are manufactured with magazines holding ten to 

seventeen rounds . . . .”), abrogated by Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111, 2125-

27 (2022); David B. Kopel, The History of Firearm Magazines and 

Magazine Prohibitions, 78 Alb. L. Rev. 849, 874 (2015) (“It is 

indisputable in the modern United States that magazines of up to 

thirty rounds for rifles and up to twenty rounds for handguns are 

standard equipment for many popular firearms.”). 

176 Plus-ten magazines also have “a long historical lineage.” Duncan 

II, 19 F.4th at 1140 (Bumatay, J., dissenting). “They enjoyed 

widespread use throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,” 

with “no longstanding prohibitions against them.” Id. (Bumatay, J., 

dissenting). 

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39 

In the context of a complete ban on a category of arms, 

“that is all that is needed for citizens to have a right under the 

Second Amendment to keep such weapons.”177 Heller held 

that because handguns are “in common use,” D.C.’s “complete 

prohibition of their use is invalid.”178 For the same reason, 

D.C.’s ban on plus-ten magazines is unconstitutional.179 

177 Friedman II, 577 U.S. at 1042 (Thomas, J., dissenting from denial 

of certiorari) (emphasis added). 

178 Heller, 554 U.S. at 624, 629; see also supra Part II.B.3. 

179 See, e.g., Duncan II, 19 F.4th at 1140 (Bumatay, J., dissenting) 

(“The state bans . . . [plus-ten] magazines [that] are lawfully owned 

by millions of people nationwide and come standard on the most 

popular firearms sold today. . . . But the Constitution protects the 

right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms typically 

possessed for lawful purposes.”); Duncan I, 970 F.3d at 1169 

(“California’s near-categorical ban of [plus-ten magazines] . . . 

criminalizes the possession of half of all magazines in America 

today. It makes unlawful magazines that are commonly used in 

handguns by law-abiding citizens for self-defense. And it 

substantially burdens the core right of self-defense guaranteed to the 

people under the Second Amendment.”); New Jersey Rifle & Pistol 

Clubs, 910 F.3d at 126-27, 130 (Bibas, J., dissenting) (“I would 

enjoin this Act until New Jersey provides real evidence to satisfy its 

burden of proving the Act constitutional. . . . People commonly 

possess large magazines to defend themselves and their families in 

their homes. That is exactly why banning them burdens the core 

Second Amendment right.”); cf. Bianchi, slip op. at 152-53 

(Richardson, J., dissenting) (The “evidence shows that millions of 

Americans have chosen to equip themselves with semiautomatic 

rifles, like the AR-15, for various lawful purposes. So Appellees 

have failed to prove that these weapons are ‘unusual’ such that they 

can be constitutionally outlawed. Maryland’s ban therefore violates 

the Second Amendment.”). 

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In other words: 

Major Premise (explained at length above): 

Heller held that the government cannot ban arms in 

common use for lawful purposes. 

Minor Premise (undisputed by the majority): 

Plus-ten magazines are arms in common use for 

lawful purposes. 

Conclusion: 

The government cannot ban plus-ten magazines.180

180 Before discussing in the next section my disagreement with the 

majority, I digress here to note two areas where the majority and I 

share common ground. 

First, I agree with the majority’s decision to presume that it doesn’t 

matter whether plus-ten magazines “are rarely used to fire more than 

a couple rounds in self-defense.” Majority Op. at 11. A handgun 

may be “used” without firing it, and a magazine may be “used” 

without dispensing a single round (let alone depleting its capacity). 

See Heller, 554 U.S. at 629, 636 (recognizing that handguns are 

commonly “used for self-defense” (emphasis added)); English 

Report at 14 (noting that “in the vast majority of defensive gun uses 

(81.9%), the gun was not fired”). What matters, again, is that 

millions of law-abiding Americans have chosen to arm themselves 

with plus-ten magazines to use for a lawful purpose. Id. at 26-33 

(survey responses commenting on the utility of plus-ten magazines 

in self-defense situations); id. at 23 (62.4% of 39 million plus-ten 

magazine owners — about 24 million — own them for home 

defense). In any event, Americans do often fire more than ten rounds 

at the shooting range, and target practice is a perfectly lawful, 

common use. See id.

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B. Regarding the Majority

To repeat, I read Heller and its progeny to have already

held that the government cannot ban an arm in common use for 

lawful purposes. But I also respect the good faith with which 

my fellow panel members have concluded otherwise. In their 

view, the validity of every ban on arms in common use is its 

own open question, so D.C. deserves the chance to show its ban 

“is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm 

regulation.”181 

Even if that is in fact an open question, D.C. has identified 

no “historical tradition” of any ban on an arm in common use 

for lawful purposes. Neither has the majority. Instead, the 

Second, though the majority says I argue that “any restriction” of 

arms in common use is unconstitutional, that is not my position. See

Majority Op. at 12 (“Hanson would have us stop here, as would our 

dissenting colleague, arguing that, under Bruen, to find an arm is in 

common use renders any restriction of that arm unconstitutional.”). 

I agree with the majority that some regulations of arms in common 

use are constitutional — including some regulations of plus-ten 

magazines. But that’s because some regulations are not outright 

bans. Regulations of arms in common use — other than outright 

bans — are constitutional if they are “consistent with this Nation’s 

historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2126. 

Heller lists some regulations — other than outright bans — that are 

likely consistent with our nation’s history and tradition of firearms 

regulation: “prohibitions on carrying concealed” arms in common 

use; prohibitions on the possession of arms in common use “by 

felons and the mentally ill”; “forbidding the carrying of” arms in 

common use “in sensitive places such as schools and government 

buildings”; and “laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the 

commercial sale of arms” in common use. Heller, 554 U.S. at 626-

27 & n.26. 

181 Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2126. 

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majority invents a regulatory category — “restrictions on . . . 

weapons particularly capable of unprecedented lethality.”182 

Then it says such restrictions are consistent with two historical 

analogues.183 

I agree with the majority that the history-and-tradition test 

allows for historical analogues less specific than, say, bans on 

plus-ten magazines. After all, “the Second Amendment 

permits more than just those regulations identical to ones that 

could be found in 1791.”184 But the history-and-tradition test 

demands a level of generality more specific than the majority’s 

preferred category of “restrictions on weapons particularly 

capable of unprecedented lethality.”185 

Heller never mentioned that category — even though the 

Court was told that the handguns at issue there “are used in an 

extraordinary percentage of this country’s well-publicized 

shootings, including the large majority of mass shootings.”186 

Instead, Heller set the level of generality for bannable arms at 

“dangerous and unusual” arms — i.e., arms not “in common 

use” for lawful purposes.187 So did the Supreme Court’s 

182 Majority Op. at 18. 

183 See id. at 18-25. 

184 See Rahimi, slip op. at 7. 

185 See Majority Op. at 18; see also id. at 13 (considering “an 

unbroken tradition of regulating weapons to protect communities” 

(cleaned up) to be “the pinnacle of abstraction” and representative of 

a “regulatory blank check”). 

186 See Br. of Violence Policy Center et al. as Amici Curiae 

Supporting Petitioners at 24, Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (No. 07-290), 

2008 WL 136348; see also Smith, How Courts Have Defied Heller, 

at 7-8. 

187 Heller, 554 U.S. at 627 (emphasis added) (cleaned up). 

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subsequent cases.188 They confirm that “the relative 

dangerousness of a weapon is irrelevant when the weapon 

belongs to a class of arms commonly used for lawful 

purposes.”189 

As for the two historical analogues proposed by the 

majority, they do not show a historical tradition of laws like 

D.C.’s ban of plus-ten magazines. The majority first points to 

a “handful” of outlier state and territorial laws from the second 

half of the nineteenth century that restricted the open carry of 

Bowie knives.190 The majority’s second analogue — the 

National Firearms Act of 1934 — regulated only “unusual” 

weapons like fully automatic machine guns, not arms “in 

common use” like the plus-ten magazines that D.C. has 

banned.191

1. Outlier State and Territory Bowie-Knife Regulation 

(1871-1889) 

In the 1870s and ‘80s, two states (Texas and Arkansas) and 

a federal territory (Arizona) prohibited the open carry of Bowie 

188 See supra Part II.B.4, 6-7. 

189 Caetano, 577 U.S. at 418 (Alito, J., concurring in the judgment) 

(emphasis added). 

190 See Majority Op. at 19-20. 

191 See id. at 22-24. 

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knives.192 For the sake of argument, let’s suppose that Bowie 

knives were arms in common use for lawful purposes.193

Even then, these three laws did not impose the “burden” 

on arms that D.C.’s total ban imposes because none of these 

laws banned Bowie knives from the home.194 Plus, two 

expressly permitted keeping Bowie knives at one’s “place of 

business,” and all of these laws allowed travelers to carry 

Bowie knives.195 In contrast, D.C.’s plus-ten magazine ban 

192 An Act to Regulate the Keeping and Bearing of Deadly Weapons, 

1871 Tex. Gen. Laws 25, ch. 34, § 1 (prohibiting “any person” from 

“carrying [a Bowie knife] on or about his person, saddle, or in his 

saddle bags”); An Act to Preserve the Public Peace and Prevent 

Crime, 1881 Ark. Acts 191, no. 96, § 1 (crime to “wear or carry” 

Bowie knives “in any manner”); An Act Defining and Punishing 

Certain Offenses Against the Public Peace, 1889 Ariz. Sess. Laws 

30, no. 13, § 1 (no person may “carry [a Bowie knife] on or about his 

person, saddle, or in his saddle bags”); see Majority Op. at 19-20 

(citing these three laws as “ban[ning] the carrying, rather than only 

the concealment, of Bowie knives”); An Act to Provide a Temporary 

Government for the Territory of Arizona, Pub. L. No. 37-56, ch. 56, 

§ 1, 12 Stat. 664, 665 (1863) (creating the “temporary” Arizona 

territory government that enacted the Bowie-knife law). 

193 But see Majority Op. at 20 (“those weapons . . . are usually 

employed in private broils, and . . . are efficient only in the hands of 

the robber and the assassin” (quoting Aymette v. State, 21 Tenn. 154, 

158 (1840))). 

194 Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2133. 

195 See 1871 Tex. Gen. Laws 25, § 1 (“provided, that this section shall 

not be so construed as to prohibit any person from keeping or bearing 

arms on his or her own premises, or at his or her own place of 

business, . . . nor to prohibit persons traveling in the State from 

keeping or carrying arms with their baggage” (second and third 

emphasis added)); 1881 Ark. Acts 191, § 1 (“Provided, further, That 

nothing in this act be so construed as to prohibit any person from 

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45 

applies in the home and everywhere else. For that reason alone, 

the three laws are not analogous to D.C.’s. 

In addition, three laws passed nearly a century after the 

Second Amendment’s ratification (plus a couple of state court 

decisions)196 hardly constitute a “representative historical 

analogue”197 that reflects the “collective understanding of 

Americans.”198 Heller refused to “stake” its “interpretation of 

the Second Amendment upon a single law, in effect in a single 

city.”199 Bruen refused to “give disproportionate weight to a 

single state statute” — or even to “three.”200 

carrying any weapon when upon a journey, or upon his own 

premises.” (second emphasis added)); 1889 Ariz. Sess. Laws 30, Act 

No. 13, § 2 (“The preceding article shall not apply to . . . the carrying 

of arms on ones [sic] own premises or place of business, nor to 

persons traveling . . . .” (emphases added)). 

196 See Majority Op. at 19-21. 

197 Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2133 (emphasis omitted). 

198 Rahimi, slip op. at 11 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring). 

199 Heller, 554 U.S. at 632. 

200 Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2153, 2156. 

By the way, neither of the state court decisions quoted by the 

majority addressed bans on Bowie knives. See Cockrum v. State, 24 

Tex. 394, 401 (1859) (law enhancing the penalty for manslaughter 

committed with Bowie knife); Aymette, 21 Tenn. at 156 (law 

prohibiting concealed carry of Bowie knives). And in fact, both 

courts conspicuously affirmed the right to possess Bowie knives. See

Cockrum, 24 Tex. at 403 (“The right to carry a bowie-knife for lawful 

defense is secured, and must be admitted.”); Aymette, 21 Tenn. at 

160 (noting that “citizens have the unqualified right to keep the 

weapon,” while explaining that “the right to bear arms is not of that 

unqualified character” (emphases original)); see also Bianchi, slip 

op. at 140-41 (Richardson, J., dissenting) (Aymette and similar state 

cases “determined whether the regulated weapon was in common use 

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Three statutes from the late 1800s are not only too 

little — they’re also too late. Recall that “Heller’s interest in 

mid- to late-19th-century commentary was secondary.”201 

Likewise, in Bruen, “post-Civil War discussions of the right” 

did “not provide as much insight into its original meaning as 

earlier sources” in part because they occurred “75 years after 

the ratification of the Second Amendment.”202 So even if the 

majority’s “handful” of states had gone further and completely 

banned Bowie knives in the late 1800s, “scattered cases or 

regulations pulled from history may have little bearing on the 

meaning of the text” of the Second Amendment.203 

for lawful purposes. If it was, then they held that the government 

could regulate the possession or carry of that weapon, but that it 

could not completely ban it. Yet if that weapon was not in common 

use for lawful purposes, and if the weapon was particularly useful for 

criminal activity, then the government could outlaw it.”). 

201 Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2137. 

202 Id. (cleaned up). 

203 Rahimi, slip op. at 2-3 (Barrett, J., concurring). 

Bruen left open the question of whether the right to keep and bear 

arms, as applied against the states through the Fourteenth 

Amendment, should be interpreted as it was understood in 1791, 

when the Second Amendment was ratified, or in 1868, when the 

Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. See 142 S. Ct. at 2138. I take 

no position on that debate, or on mid- to late-19th-century 

regulations’ relevance to analysis of modern laws enacted by a state, 

rather than by the federal government or a federal enclave like D.C. 

Here, because the Second Amendment applies directly to D.C., the 

original meaning that controls is undoubtedly the original meaning 

in 1791. 

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2. The National Firearms Act 

(1934) 

As for the National Firearms Act of 1934, it regulated only 

“unusual” weapons like fully automatic machine guns and 

sawed-off shotguns, which were “not typically possessed by 

law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.”204 And to know that, 

you don’t need to look beyond the United States Reports. The 

Supreme Court “stated in Staples and again in Heller” that 

“short-barreled shotguns and automatic ‘M-16 rifles and the 

like’ are not in common use.”205

Therefore, even if the 1934 Act is representative of our 

historical tradition of firearm regulation,206 it is not “relevantly 

similar” to D.C.’s ban on plus-ten magazines.207 Unlike D.C.’s 

ban, the 1934 Act did not regulate arms “in common use,” so it 

did not “impose a comparable burden” on the right to keep and 

bear arms.208 In fact, the 1934 Act might be affirmative 

evidence against D.C. — Bruen said an old regulation “could 

be evidence that a modern regulation is unconstitutional” if 

204 Heller, 554 U.S. at 623, 625, 627 (emphasis added); see also 

Heller II, 670 F.3d at 1287 (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting) (fully 

automatic machine guns “were developed for the battlefield and were 

never in widespread civilian use in the United States” (emphasis 

added)). 

205 Heller II, 670 F.3d at 1288 (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting) (emphasis 

added) (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 627, and citing Staples, 511 U.S. 

at 611-12). 

206 See Heller, 554 U.S. at 624 (considering it “startling” to think 

“that the National Firearms Act’s restrictions on machineguns . . . 

might be unconstitutional”). 

207 Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2132 (cleaned up). 

208 Id. at 2133. 

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“earlier generations addressed the [same] societal problem, but 

did so through materially different means.”209 

D.C. suggests that machine guns were in common use by 

mobsters and outlaws in 1934.210 That could hardly matter 

less.211 What matters is whether they were in common use “for 

209 Id. at 2131; cf. Garland v. Cargill, No. 22-976, 602 U.S. __, slip 

op. at 1 (June 14, 2024) (federal ban on machine guns does not cover 

bump stocks, even though bump stocks enable a semiautomatic gun 

to approach a rate of fire similar to a machine gun). 

210 See Majority Op. at 22-23 (quoting then-Attorney General 

Cummings’s estimate of “at least 500,000” criminals “who are 

warring against society and who are carrying about with them or 

have available at hand, weapons of the most deadly character,” 

National Firearms Act: Hearing(s) on H.R. 9066 Before the Comm. 

on Ways and Means, 73rd Cong. 45 (1934) (cleaned up)). 

For two reasons, Cummings’ testimony is not best understood to 

suggest (let alone prove) that 500,000 law-abiding citizens possessed 

machine guns and sawed-off shotguns. First, he was talking about 

criminals. Second, “weapons of the most deadly character” could be 

anything from a switch blade to a Tommy gun. As for the latter, only 

15,000 commercially available Tommy guns were produced; a hefty 

price tag led to a “lack of demand” and “few sales.” Bruce N. 

Canfield, The G.I. Thompson in World War II, Am. Rifleman (Feb. 

20, 2019), https://perma.cc/UN9S-3UZE. So “the bulk of the 

15,000 . . . Thompson submachine guns languished in the warehouse 

with only a relatively small number trickling out periodically.” Id.; 

see also Heller II, 670 F.3d at 1287 (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting) (“The 

Thompson machine gun (commonly known as the ‘Tommy gun’) 

entered commercial sale in the United States in the mid-1920s but 

saw very limited civilian use outside of organized crime and law 

enforcement.” (emphasis added)). 

211 Friedman I, 784 F.3d at 416 (Manion, J., dissenting) (“it matters 

not whether fifty or five thousand mob enforcers used a particular 

weapon, the question is whether a critical mass of law-abiding 

citizens did”). 

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lawful purposes.”212 D.C. has not shown that fully automatic 

machine guns were ever in common use by law-abiding 

citizens, and I do not understand the majority to argue 

otherwise. 

In addition, although the Supreme Court has said Congress 

could ban machine guns without violating the Second 

Amendment, Congress did not actually do so in the 1934 

Act.213 Instead, the Act merely imposed a registration 

requirement, restricted transfers, and imposed special taxes.214 

Then, about five decades later, Congress prohibited the 

possession of machine guns made after 1986, while still 

grandfathering in the possession and transfer of machine guns 

made before then.215 So unlike D.C.’s magazine ban, the less 

burdensome 1934 Act was not even a complete ban on a 

category of arms. 

* * * 

Finally, a word on the majority’s “nuanced approach” to 

“unprecedented societal concerns or dramatic technological 

changes.”216 The phrase comes from dicta in Bruen — a 

decision that did not involve “unprecedented societal concerns 

or dramatic technological changes” and did not apply the 

212 Heller, 554 U.S. at 624 (emphasis added); McDonald, 561 U.S. at 

780 (plurality) (emphasis added). 

213 See National Firearms Act, §§ 2, 3(a), 4, 5(a), (6), 10, 11, 48 Stat. 

at 1237-38. 

214 Id.; see also id. § 8(a) (requiring identification marks on restricted 

firearms); id. § 9 (recordkeeping requirement for transfers). 

215 See supra Part II.B.1; 18 U.S.C. § 922(o)(1) (making it “unlawful 

for any person to transfer or possess a machinegun”); id. 

§ 922(o)(2)(B) (grandfather provision). 

216 Majority Op. at 26 (cleaned up); see id. at 25-30. 

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“nuanced approach.”217 Heller, McDonald, and Rahimi didn’t 

apply it either. 

This single stray line of dicta from Bruen is the foundation 

of the majority’s analysis — a slender reed compared to a 

holding of Heller that the government cannot ban arms in 

common use for lawful purposes, especially when Heller’s 

distinction between common and uncommon arms was

reaffirmed again (McDonald) and again (Bruen) and again 

(Rahimi). But even if “unprecedented societal concerns or 

dramatic technological changes” can justify some limited 

regulation of common arms, a law “may not be compatible with 

the right if it [regulates] to an extent beyond what was done at 

the founding.”218

Here, D.C. has not named a single Founding-Era law that 

bans an arm in common use for lawful purposes. (The majority 

does not say otherwise.) Nor has D.C. named a single such law 

from the first hundred years of the nation’s independence. 

(Again, the majority does not say otherwise.) And even to the 

extent that later laws can be relevant, D.C. has identified no 

“well-established and representative historical analogue” that 

imposed a “burden” comparable to D.C.’s outright ban on an 

arm in common use for lawful purposes.219

217 Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2132. 

218 Rahimi, slip op. at 7; see also id. at 2 (Gorsuch, J., concurring) 

(regardless of an analogue’s justification, “the government must 

establish that, in at least some of its applications, the challenged law 

‘imposes a comparable burden on the right of armed self-defense’ to 

that imposed by a historically recognized regulation” (quoting 

Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2133) (cleaned up)). 

219 Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2133 (emphasis omitted). 

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V. Conclusion 

Mark Twain once told a story about an evening at church. 

He said that at first the sermon was so inspiring that he planned 

to put $400 into the collection plate: “I wanted to give that and 

borrow more to give.”220 But then his opinion of the sermon 

tapered off: “My enthusiasm went down, down, down — $100 

at a time, till finally when the plate came round I stole 10 cents 

out of it.”221

I agree with most of what the majority says in the first 18 

pages of its clear, concise, and eloquent opinion.222 I agree that 

plus-ten magazines are likely “‘Arms’ within the meaning of 

the Second Amendment,”223 “in common use” for the lawful 

purpose of “self-defense,”224 and covered by “the Second 

Amendment’s plain text.”225 And I agree that a ban on plusten magazines is not analogous to regulations about the storage 

of gunpowder; or to restrictions on the time, place, and manner 

of carrying arms; or to state laws from the Prohibition Era 

directed at machine guns.226

But then I part ways with the majority in two respects. 

220 See “Mark Twain Says Women Should Vote,” New York Times, 

p.5 (Jan. 21, 1901). 

221 Id. 

222 I don’t mean to suggest that Twain’s experience is perfectly 

analogous to mine. It’s no “dead ringer” or “historical twin.” Bruen, 

142 S. Ct. at 2133 (emphasis omitted). 

223 See Majority Op. at 9 (quoting U.S. Const. amend II). 

224 Id. at 11. 

225 Id. (cleaned up). 

226 See id. at 15-18. 

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First, the majority reads Heller to leave open the question 

of whether the government can ever ban an arm in common use 

for lawful purposes.227 In contrast, I read Heller to answer that 

question. It held that “a complete prohibition of their use is 

invalid.”228 

 

Second, even assuming that the validity of those bans is an 

open question, the majority gets the answer wrong. D.C. has 

failed to “demonstrate that [its] regulation is consistent with 

this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”229

The majority’s contrary conclusion depends on two types 

of regulations.230 But neither of them is analogous. The first 

of them — a “handful” of laws enacted nearly a century after 

the Second Amendment’s ratification in two outlier states and 

a territory — did not cover arms kept at home or carried while 

traveling; in addition, those laws are too little and too late to 

establish a historical tradition.231 As for the second purported 

analogue, it covered only “unusual” arms — not arms in 

common use for lawful purposes.232 So neither demonstrates a 

tradition of laws imposing a burden comparable to D.C.’s 

complete ban on commonly possessed plus-ten magazines. 

Because D.C.’s law violates the right to keep and bear 

arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment, I would reverse 

227 See Majority Op. at 12 (concluding that “Bruen . . . precludes th[e] 

argument” that Heller prohibits bans on arms in common use for 

lawful purposes, full stop). 

228 Heller, 554 U.S. at 629; see also supra Part II.B.3. 

229 Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2126. 

230 See Majority Op. at 19-25. 

231 See id. at 19-20. 

232 See id. at 22-24. 

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the district court’s decision and direct it to enter a permanent 

injunction.233

I respectfully dissent. 

233 If “our holding at this stage” — review of a denial or grant of a 

preliminary injunction — “makes a certain outcome inevitable . . . , 

we have the power to dispose of it as may be just under the 

circumstances, and should do so to obviate further and entirely 

unnecessary proceedings below.” Wrenn, 864 F.3d at 667 (cleaned 

up). Like the D.C. gun law in Wrenn, D.C.’s ban “merits invalidation 

under Heller,” so it would “wast[e] judicial resources” to “remand[ ] 

for the court to develop the record.” Id. (citing Moore v. Madigan, 

702 F.3d 933, 942 (7th Cir. 2012) (reversing denials of preliminary 

injunctions and remanding with instructions to enter declarations of 

unconstitutionality and permanent injunctions)). 

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