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2  NEW YORK STATE RIFLE & PISTOL ASSN., INC. v. BRUEN 

Syllabus 

Held: New  York’s  proper-cause  requirement  violates  the  Fourteenth 
Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-de-
fense needs from exercising their Second Amendment right to keep and 
bear arms in public for self-defense.  Pp. 8–63.

(a) In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, and McDonald v. 
Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, the Court held that the Second and Fourteenth 
Amendments  protect  an  individual  right  to  keep  and  bear  arms  for 
self-defense.  Under Heller, when the Second Amendment’s plain text 
covers  an  individual’s  conduct,  the  Constitution  presumptively  pro-
tects that conduct, and to justify a firearm regulation the government 
must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with the Nation’s
historical tradition of firearm regulation.  Pp. 8–22.

(1) Since Heller and McDonald, the Courts of Appeals have devel-
oped a “two-step” framework for analyzing Second Amendment chal-
lenges that combines history with means-end scrutiny.  The Court re-
jects that two-part approach as having one step too many.  Step one is
broadly consistent with Heller, which demands a test rooted in the Sec-
ond Amendment’s text, as informed by history.  But Heller and McDon-
ald do not support a second step that applies means-end scrutiny in
the  Second  Amendment  context.  Heller’s  methodology  centered  on
constitutional text and history.  It did not invoke any means-end test 
such as strict or intermediate scrutiny, and it expressly rejected any 
interest-balancing inquiry akin to intermediate scrutiny.  Pp. 9–15.

(2) Historical  analysis  can  sometimes  be  difficult  and  nuanced, 
but reliance on history to inform the meaning of constitutional text is
more legitimate, and more administrable, than asking judges to “make
difficult empirical judgments” about “the costs and benefits of firearms 
restrictions,”  especially  given  their  “lack  [of]  expertise”  in  the  field. 
McDonald, 561 U. S., at 790–791 (plurality opinion).  Federal courts 
tasked  with  making  difficult  empirical  judgments  regarding  firearm
regulations under the banner of “intermediate scrutiny” often defer to 
the determinations of legislatures.  While judicial deference to legisla-
tive interest balancing is understandable—and, elsewhere, appropri-
ate—it is not deference that the Constitution demands here.  The Sec-
ond Amendment “is the very product of an interest balancing by the 
people,”  and  it  “surely  elevates  above  all  other  interests  the  right  of 
law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms” for self-defense.  Heller, 
554 U. S., at 635.  Pp. 15–17.

(3) The test that the Court set forth in Heller and applies today
requires  courts  to  assess  whether  modern  firearms  regulations  are 
consistent  with  the  Second  Amendment’s  text  and  historical  under-
standing.  Of course, the regulatory challenges posed by firearms today
are  not  always  the  same  as  those  that  preoccupied  the  Founders  in 
1791 or the Reconstruction generation in 1868.  But the Constitution