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

BREYER, J., dissenting 

“ends”)  against  the  methods  used  to  achieve  those  objec-
tives (its “means”).  Judges are far less accustomed to re-
solving difficult historical questions.  Courts are, after all, 
staffed by lawyers, not historians.  Legal experts typically 
have little experience answering contested historical ques-
tions  or  applying  those  answers  to  resolve  contemporary
problems.

The  Court’s  insistence  that  judges  and  lawyers  rely 
nearly  exclusively  on  history  to  interpret  the  Second 
Amendment thus raises a host of troubling questions.  Con-
sider, for example, the following.  Do lower courts have the 
research resources necessary to conduct exhaustive histor-
ical analyses in every Second Amendment case?  What his-
torical regulations and decisions qualify as representative
analogues  to  modern  laws?    How  will  judges  determine 
which  historians  have  the  better  view  of  close  historical 
questions?    Will  the  meaning  of  the  Second  Amendment 
change if or when new historical evidence becomes availa-
ble?  And, most importantly, will the Court’s approach per-
mit judges to reach the outcomes they prefer and then cloak 
those outcomes in the language of history?  See S. Cornell, 
Heller, New Originalism, and Law Office History: “Meet the 
New Boss, Same as the Old Boss,” 56 UCLA L. Rev. 1095, 
1098 (2009) (describing “law office history” as “a results ori-
ented  methodology  in  which  evidence  is  selectively  gath-
ered and interpreted to produce a preordained conclusion”). 
Consider  Heller  itself.  That case, fraught  with difficult
historical questions, illustrates the practical problems with 
expecting  courts  to  decide  important  constitutional  ques-
tions based solely on history.  The majority in Heller under-
took  40  pages  of  textual  and  historical  analysis  and  con-
cluded that the Second Amendment’s protection of the right 
to “keep and bear Arms” historically encompassed an “indi-
vidual  right  to  possess  and  carry  weapons  in  case  of  con-
frontation”—that is, for self-defense.  554 U. S., at 592; see 
also id., at 579–619.  Justice Stevens’ dissent conducted an