Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-843_7j80.pdf
Page Number: 56.0

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

Opinion of the Court 

Aug. 13, 1853)); see E. Ruben & S. Cornell, Firearm Region-
alism and Public Carry: Placing Southern Antebellum Case 
Law in Context, 125 Yale L. J. Forum 121, 130, n. 53 (2015). 
And one scholar who canvassed 19th-century newspapers—
which  routinely  reported  on  local  judicial  matters—found
only a handful of other examples in Massachusetts and the
District  of  Columbia,  all  involving  black  defendants  who 
may have been targeted for selective or pretextual enforce-
ment.  See  R.  Leider,  Constitutional  Liquidation,  Surety 
Laws, and the Right To Bear Arms 15–17, in New Histories
of Gun Rights and Regulation (J. Blocher, J. Charles, & D.
Miller eds.) (forthcoming); see also Brief for Professor Rob-
ert Leider et al. as Amici Curiae 31–32.  That is surely too
slender a reed on which to hang a historical tradition of re-
stricting the right to public carry.25 

Respondents also argue that surety statutes were severe
restrictions  on  firearms  because  the  “reasonable  cause  to 
fear”  standard  was  essentially  pro forma,  given  that 
“merely carrying firearms in populous areas breached the
peace” per se.  Brief for Respondents 27.  But that is a coun-
terintuitive reading of the language that the surety statutes
actually used.  If the mere carrying of handguns breached 
the peace, it would be odd to draft a surety statute requiring 
a complainant to demonstrate “reasonable cause to fear an
injury,  or  breach  of  the  peace,”  Mass.  Rev.  Stat.,  ch.  134,
§16,  rather  than  a  reasonable  likelihood  that  the  arms-
bearer carried a covered weapon.  After all, if it was the na-
ture  of  the  weapon  rather  than  the  manner  of  carry  that 

—————— 

25 The dissent speculates that the absence of recorded cases involving
surety laws may simply “show that these laws were normally followed.” 
Post, at 45.  Perhaps.  But again, the burden rests with the government 
to  establish  the  relevant  tradition  of  regulation,  see supra,  at  15,  and, 
given all of the other features of surety laws that make them poor ana-
logues to New York’s proper-cause standard, we consider the barren rec-
ord of enforcement to be simply one additional reason to discount their
relevance.