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

Opinion of the Court 

. . .  robbing  every  one  they  come  across  of  money,  pistols, 
papers, &c.”); id., at 36 (noting how a black man in Tennes-
see  had  been  murdered  on  his  way  to  get  book  subscrip-
tions,  with  the  murderer  taking,  among  other  things,  the 
man’s pistol).

Blacks had “procured great numbers of old army muskets
and revolvers, particularly in Texas,” and “employed them 
to protect themselves” with “vigor and audacity.”  S. Exec. 
Doc. No. 43, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., at 8.  Seeing that govern-
ment  was  inadequately  protecting  them,  “there  [was]  the 
strongest desire on the part of the freedmen to secure arms, 
revolvers particularly.”  H. R. Rep. No. 30, 39th Cong., 1st 
Sess., pt. 3, at 102.

On July 6, 1868, Congress extended the 1866 Freedmen’s 
Bureau Act, see 15 Stat. 83, and reaffirmed that freedmen 
were entitled to the “full and equal benefit of all laws and 
proceedings concerning personal liberty [and] personal se-
curity . . . including the constitutional right to keep and bear 
arms.”  §14,  14  Stat.  176  (1866)  (emphasis  added).    That 
same day, a Bureau official reported that freedmen in Ken-
tucky  and  Tennessee  were  still  constantly  under  threat:
“No Union man or negro who attempts to take any active
part  in  politics,  or  the  improvement  of  his  race,  is  safe  a 
single day; and nearly all sleep upon their arms at night,
and carry concealed weapons during the day.”  H. R. Exec. 
Doc. No. 329, 40th Cong., 2d Sess., at 40.

Of course, even during Reconstruction the right to keep
and bear arms had limits.  But those limits were consistent 
with a right of the public to peaceably carry handguns for 
self-defense.  For instance, when General D. E. Sickles is-
sued a decree in 1866 pre-empting South Carolina’s Black 
Codes—which prohibited firearm possession by blacks—he
stated:  “The  constitutional  rights  of  all  loyal  and  well-
disposed  inhabitants  to  bear  arms  will  not  be  infringed; 
nevertheless this shall not be construed to sanction the un-
lawful practice of carrying concealed weapons. . . . And no