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Page Number: 115

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

BREYER, J., dissenting 

quate tool when it comes to modern cases presenting mod-
ern problems.  Consider the Court’s apparent preference for 
founding-era regulation.  See ante, at 25–28.  Our country
confronted profoundly different problems during that time
period than it does today.  Society at the founding was “pre-
dominantly rural.”  C. McKirdy, Misreading the Past: The
Faulty Historical Basis Behind the Supreme Court’s Deci-
sion in District of Columbia v. Heller, 45 Capital U. L. Rev.
107, 151 (2017).  In 1790, most of America’s relatively small 
population of just four million people lived on farms or in
small towns.  Ibid.  Even New York City, the largest Amer-
ican city then, as it is now, had a population of just 33,000
people.  Ibid.    Small  founding-era  towns  are  unlikely  to 
have  faced  the  same  degrees  and  types  of  risks  from  gun 
violence as major metropolitan areas do today, so the types 
of regulations they adopted are unlikely to address modern 
needs.  Id., at 152 (“For the most part, a population living 
on farms and in very small towns did not create conditions 
in which firearms created a significant danger to the public 
welfare”); see also supra, at 8–9. 

This problem is all the more acute when it comes to “mod-
ern-day  circumstances  that  [the  Framers]  could  not  have
anticipated.”  Heller, 554 U. S., at 721–722 (BREYER, J., dis-
senting).  How can we expect laws and cases that are over 
a century old to dictate the legality of regulations targeting
“ghost  guns”  constructed  with  the  aid  of  a  three-dimen-
sional printer?  See, e.g., White House Briefing Room, FACT 
SHEET: The Biden Administration Cracks Down on Ghost 
Guns,  Ensures  That  ATF  Has  the  Leadership  It  Needs
To  Enforce  Our  Gun  Laws  (Apr.  11,  2022),  https://
whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/
04/11/fact-sheet-the-biden-administration-cracks-down-
on-ghost-guns-ensures-that-atf-has-the-leadership-it-
needs-to-enforce-our-gun-laws/.  Or modern laws requiring
all gun shops to offer smart guns, which can only be fired
by  authorized  users?  See,  e.g.,  N. J.  Stat.  Ann.  §2C:58–