Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-843_7j80.pdf
Page Number: 127

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

BREYER, J., dissenting 

with a lawfully obtained license.  See supra, at 12.  Moreo-
ver, as Heller recognized, and the Court acknowledges, “the 
majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question 
held that [these types of] prohibitions on carrying concealed 
weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state 
analogues.”  554  U. S.,  at  626  (emphasis  added);  see  also 
ante, at 44. 

The Court discounts this history because, it says, courts
in four Southern States suggested or held that a ban on con-
cealed carriage was only lawful if open carriage or carriage 
of military pistols was allowed.  Ante, at 44–46.  (The Court 
also cites Bliss v. Commonwealth, 12 Ky. 90 (1822), which
invalidated Kentucky’s concealed-carry prohibition as con-
trary to that State’s Second Amendment analogue.  Id., at 
90–93.  Bliss was later overturned by constitutional amend-
ment and was, as the Court appears to concede, an outlier. 
See Peruta v. County of San Diego, 824 F. 3d 919, 935–936 
(CA9 2016); ante, at 45.)  Several of these decisions, how-
ever,  emphasized  States’  leeway  to  regulate  firearms  car-
riage as necessary “to protect the orderly and well disposed
citizens from the treacherous use of weapons not even de-
signed for any purpose of public defence.”  State v. Smith, 
11 La. 633 (1856); see also Andrews v. State, 50 Tenn. 165, 
179–180 (1871) (stating that “the right to keep” rifles, shot-
guns, muskets, and repeaters could not be “infringed or for-
bidden,” but “[t]heir use [may] be subordinated to such reg-
ulations and limitations as are or may be authorized by the 
law of the land, passed to subserve the general good, so as 
not  to  infringe  the  right  secured  and  the  necessary  inci-
dents  to  the  exercise  of  such  right”);  State  v.  Reid,  1  Ala. 
612, 616 (1840) (recognizing that the constitutional right to 
bear arms “necessarily . . . leave[s] with the Legislature the 
authority to adopt such regulations of police, as may be dic-
tated  by  the  safety  of  the  people  and  the  advancement  of
public  morals”).  And other  courts  upheld  concealed-carry
restrictions without any reference to an exception allowing