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

Opinion of the Court 

a modern regulation is unconstitutional.  And if some juris-
dictions actually attempted to enact analogous regulations
during this timeframe, but those proposals were rejected on 
constitutional grounds, that rejection surely would provide
some probative evidence of unconstitutionality. 

Heller itself exemplifies this kind of straightforward his-
torical inquiry.  One of the District’s regulations challenged 
in  Heller  “totally  ban[ned]  handgun  possession  in  the 
home.”  Id., at 628.  The District in Heller addressed a per-
ceived societal problem—firearm violence in densely popu-
lated  communities—and  it  employed  a  regulation—a  flat
ban on the possession of handguns in the home—that the 
Founders  themselves  could  have  adopted  to  confront  that 
problem.  Accordingly, after considering “founding-era his-
torical 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.  Id., at 631; see also id., at 634 (describing
the claim that “there were somewhat similar restrictions in 
the founding period” a “false proposition”). 

New York’s proper-cause requirement concerns the same 
alleged societal problem addressed in Heller: “handgun vio-
lence,”  primarily  in  “urban  area[s].”  Ibid.   Following  the
course charted by Heller, we will consider whether “histor-
ical  precedent”  from  before,  during,  and  even  after  the 
founding evinces a comparable tradition of regulation.  Id., 
at 631.  And, as we explain below, we find no such tradition
in the historical materials that respondents and their amici 
have brought to bear on that question.  See Part III–B, in-
fra. 

While the historical analogies here and in Heller are rel-
atively  simple  to  draw,  other  cases  implicating  unprece-
dented societal concerns or dramatic technological changes
may  require  a  more  nuanced  approach.  The  regulatory 
challenges posed by firearms today are not always the same