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Page Number: 123.0

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

BREYER, J., dissenting 

presented to us, are even roughly  correct, it is difficult to 
see how the Court can believe that English history fails to
support legal restrictions on the public carriage of firearms. 

B. The Colonies. 
The  American  Colonies  continued  the  English  tradition
of regulating public carriage on this side of the Atlantic.  In 
1686, the colony of East New Jersey passed a law providing 
that  “no  person  or  persons  . . .  shall  presume  privately  to
wear any pocket pistol, skeines, stilladers, daggers or dirks, 
or  other  unusual  or  unlawful  weapons  within  this  Prov-
ince.”  An  Act  Against  Wearing  Swords,  &c.,  ch.  9,  in 
Grants,  Concessions,  and  Original  Constitutions  of  the 
Province of New Jersey 290 (2d ed. 1881).  East New Jersey
also  specifically  prohibited  “planter[s]”  from  “rid[ing]  or
go[ing] armed with sword, pistol, or dagger.”  Ibid.  Massa-
chusetts Bay and New Hampshire followed suit in 1692 and 
1771,  respectively,  enacting  laws  that,  like  the  Statute  of 
Northampton, provided that those who went “armed Offen-
sively”  could  be  punished.  An  Act  for  the  Punishing  of
Criminal  Offenders,  1692  Mass.  Acts  and  Laws  no.  6,  pp.
11–12;  An  Act  for  the  Punishing  of  Criminal  Offenders, 
1771 N. H. Acts and Laws ch. 6, §5, p. 17. 

It is true, as the Court points out, that these laws were 
only enacted in three colonies.  Ante, at 37.  But that does 
not  mean  that  they  may  be  dismissed  as  outliers.    They
were successors to several centuries of comparable laws in
England, see supra, at 34–40, and predecessors to numer-
ous  similar  (in  some  cases,  materially  identical)  laws  en-
acted by the States after the founding, see infra, at 41–42. 
And  while  it  may  be  true  that  these  laws  applied  only  to 
“dangerous and unusual weapons,” see ante, at 38 (majority 
opinion), that category almost certainly included guns, see
Charles, 60 Clev. St. L. Rev., at 34, n. 181 (listing 18th cen-
tury sources defining “ ‘offensive weapons’ ” to include “ ‘Fire 
Arms’ ”  and  “ ‘Guns’ ”);  State  v.  Huntly,  25  N. C.  418,  422