Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-843_7j80.pdf
Page Number: 118

Cite as:  597 U. S. ____ (2022) 

35 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

roughly contemporaneously with the ratification of the Sec-
ond Amendment.  See infra, at 40–42.  I therefore begin, as 
the Court does, ante, at 30–31, with the English ancestors
of New York’s laws regulating public carriage of firearms. 

The relevant English history begins in the late-13th and 
early-14th centuries, when Edward I and Edward II issued
a series of orders to local sheriffs that prohibited any person
from “going armed.”  See 4 Calendar of the Close Rolls, Ed-
ward I, 1296–1302, p. 318 (Sept. 15, 1299) (1906); id., at 588 
(July 16, 1302); 5  id., Edward I, 1302–1307, at 210 (June 
10, 1304) (1908); id., Edward II, 1307–1313, at 52 (Feb. 9, 
1308) (1892); id., at 257 (Apr. 9, 1310); id., at 553 (Oct. 12, 
1312);  id.,  Edward  II,  1323–1327,  at  560  (Apr.  28,  1326) 
(1898); 1 Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls of the City 
of  London,  1323–1364,  p.  15  (Nov.  1326)  (A.  Thomas  ed.
1926).  Violators  were  subject  to  punishment,  including 
“forfeiture  of  life  and  limb.”    See,  e.g.,  4  Calendar  of  the 
Close Rolls, Edward I, 1296–1302, at 318 (Sept. 15, 1299) 
(1906).  Many of these royal edicts contained exemptions for
persons who had obtained “the king’s special licence.”  See 
ibid.; 5 id., Edward I, 1302–1307, at 210 (June 10, 1304); 
id., Edward II, 1307–1313, at 553 (Oct. 12, 1312); id., Ed-
ward  II,  1323–1327,  at  560  (Apr.  28,  1326).    Like  New 
York’s law, these early edicts prohibited public carriage ab-
sent  special  governmental  permission  and  enforced  that
prohibition on pain of punishment.

The Court seems to suggest that these early regulations 
are irrelevant because they were enacted during a time of 
“turmoil” when “malefactors . . . harried the country, com-
mitting assaults and murders.”  Ante, at 31 (internal quo-
tation marks omitted).  But it would seem to me that what 
the  Court  characterizes  as  a  “right  of  armed  self-defense”
would be more, rather than less, necessary during a time of 
“turmoil.”  Ante, at 20.  The Court also suggests that laws
that were enacted before firearms arrived in England, like