Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-915_8o6b.pdf
Page Number: 19.0

Cite as:  602 U. S. ____ (2024) 

15 

Opinion of the Court 

922(g)(8) imposes is also permissible.
  Rahimi argues Heller requires us to affirm, because Sec-
tion 922(g)(8) bars individuals subject to restraining orders
from possessing guns in the home, and in Heller we invali-
dated  an  “absolute  prohibition  of  handguns  . . .  in  the 
home.”  554 U. S., at 636; Brief for Respondent 32.  But Hel-
ler never established a categorical rule that the Constitu-
tion prohibits regulations that forbid firearm possession in 
the home.  In fact, our opinion stated that many such pro-
hibitions, like those on the possession of firearms by “felons 
and the mentally ill,” are “presumptively lawful.”  554 U. S., 
at 626, 627, n. 26. 

Our  analysis  of  the  surety  laws  in  Bruen  also  does  not 
help Rahimi.  In Bruen, we explained that the surety laws
were not a proper historical analogue for New York’s gun
licensing regime.  597 U. S., at 55–60.  What distinguished
the  regimes,  we  observed,  was  that  the  surety  laws  “pre-
sumed that individuals had a right to . . . carry,” whereas
New  York’s  law  effectively  presumed  that  no  citizen  had 
such  a  right,  absent  a  special  need.  Id.,  at  56  (emphasis 
deleted).  Section  922(g)(8)(C)(i)  does  not  make  the  same
faulty presumption.  To the contrary, it presumes, like the
surety  laws  before  it,  that  the  Second  Amendment  right
may only be burdened once a defendant has been found to 
pose a credible threat to the physical safety of others.  See 
ibid. 

While we also noted that the surety laws applied different 
penalties than New York’s special-need regime, we did so 
only to emphasize just how severely the State treated the
rights of its citizens.  Id., at 57.  But as we have explained,
our  Nation’s  tradition  of  firearm  regulation  distinguishes
citizens  who  have  been  found  to  pose  a  credible  threat  to 
the physical safety of others from those who have not.  The 
conclusion that focused regulations like the surety laws are
not a historical analogue for a broad prohibitory regime like