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Page Number: 113

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

BREYER, J., dissenting 

searching historical surveys that the Court’s approach re-
quires.  Tellingly, even the Courts of Appeals that have ad-
dressed the question presented here (namely, the constitu-
tionality  of  public  carriage  restrictions  like  New  York’s)
“have, in large part, avoided extensive historical analysis.” 
Young v. Hawaii, 992 F. 3d 765, 784–785 (CA9 2021) (col-
lecting  cases).  In  contrast,  lawyers  and  courts  are  well 
equipped to administer means-end scrutiny, which is regu-
larly applied in a variety of constitutional contexts, see su-
pra, at 24–25. 

Second, the Court’s opinion today compounds these prob-
lems, for it gives the lower courts precious little guidance 
regarding  how  to  resolve  modern  constitutional  questions
based  almost  solely  on  history.  See,  e.g.,  ante,  at  1 
(BARRETT, J., concurring) (“highlight[ing] two methodologi-
cal points that the Court does not resolve”).  The Court de-
clines to “provide an exhaustive survey of the features that
render  regulations  relevantly  similar  under  the  Second
Amendment.”  Ante, at 20.  Other than noting that its his-
tory-only analysis is “neither a . . . straightjacket nor a . . . 
blank  check,”  the  Court  offers  little  explanation  of  how 
stringently its test should be applied.  Ante, at 21.  Ironi-
cally, the only two “relevan[t]” metrics that the Court does
identify are “how and why” a gun control regulation “bur-
den[s  the]  right  to  armed  self-defense.”    Ante,  at  20.  In 
other words, the Court believes that the most relevant met-
rics of comparison are a regulation’s means (how) and ends
(why)—even as it rejects the utility of means-end scrutiny. 
What the Court offers instead is a laundry list of reasons 
to  discount  seemingly  relevant  historical  evidence.  The 
Court believes that some historical laws and decisions can-
not justify upholding modern regulations because, it says, 
they were outliers.  It explains that just two court decisions 
or  three  colonial  laws  are  not  enough  to  satisfy  its  test. 
Ante, at 37, 57.  But the Court does not say how many cases 
or  laws  would  suffice  “to  show  a  tradition  of  public-carry