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

Opinion of the Court 

analogical reasoning, determining whether a historical reg-
ulation is a proper analogue for a distinctly modern firearm 
regulation requires a determination of whether the two reg-
ulations are “relevantly similar.”  C. Sunstein, On Analogi-
cal Reasoning, 106 Harv. L. Rev. 741, 773 (1993).  And be-
cause “[e]verything is similar in infinite ways to everything
else,” id., at 774, one needs “some metric enabling the anal-
ogizer to assess which similarities are important and which
are  not,”  F.  Schauer  &  B.  Spellman,  Analogy,  Expertise, 
and Experience, 84 U. Chi. L. Rev. 249, 254 (2017).  For in-
stance, a green truck and a green hat are relevantly similar 
if one’s metric is “things that are green.”  See ibid.  They
are not relevantly similar if the applicable metric is “things
you can wear.” 

While we do not now provide an exhaustive survey of the
features  that  render  regulations  relevantly  similar  under
the  Second  Amendment,  we  do  think  that  Heller  and 
McDonald point toward at least two metrics: how and why
the  regulations  burden  a  law-abiding  citizen’s  right  to 
armed self-defense.  As we stated in Heller and repeated in 
McDonald,  “individual  self-defense  is  ‘the  central  compo-
nent’  of  the  Second  Amendment  right.”  McDonald,  561 
U. S., at 767 (quoting Heller, 554 U. S., at 599); see also id., 
at 628 (“the inherent right of self-defense has been central 
to the Second Amendment right”).  Therefore, whether mod-
ern and historical regulations impose a comparable burden 
on the right of armed self-defense and whether that burden 
is comparably justified are “ ‘central’ ” considerations when 
engaging in an analogical inquiry.  McDonald, 561 U. S., at 
767 (quoting Heller, 554 U. S., at 599).7 

—————— 

7 This does not mean that courts may engage in independent means-
end scrutiny under the guise of an analogical inquiry.  Again, the Second
Amendment is the “product of an interest balancing by the people,” not 
the evolving product of federal judges.  Heller, 554 U. S., at 635 (empha-
sis altered).  Analogical reasoning requires judges to apply faithfully the 
balance struck by the founding generation to modern circumstances, and