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

Opinion of the Court 

Ga., at 251.  But to the extent the Act also prohibited “bear-
ing arms openly,” the court went on, it was “in conflict with 
the  Constitutio[n]  and  void.”  Ibid.;  see  also  Heller,  554 
U. S., at 612.  The Georgia Supreme Court’s  treatment of 
the  State’s  general  prohibition  on  the  public  carriage  of
handguns indicates that it was considered beyond the con-
stitutional  pale  in  antebellum  America  to  altogether  pro-
hibit public carry.

Finally, we agree that Tennessee’s prohibition on carry-
ing “publicly or privately” any “belt or pocket pisto[l],” 1821 
Tenn. Acts ch. 13, p. 15, was, on its face, uniquely severe, 
see Heller, 554 U. S., at 629.  That said, when the Tennessee 
Supreme  Court  addressed  the  constitutionality  of  a  sub-
stantively  identical  successor  provision,  see  1870  Tenn. 
Acts ch. 13, §1, p. 28, the court read this language to permit
the public carry of larger, military-style pistols because any 
categorical  prohibition  on  their  carry  would  “violat[e]  the
constitutional  right  to  keep  arms.”  Andrews  v.  State,  50 
Tenn. 165, 187 (1871); see also Heller, 554 U. S., at 629 (dis-
cussing Andrews).21 

All told, these antebellum state-court decisions evince a 
consensus view that States could not altogether prohibit the
public carry of “arms” protected by the Second Amendment
or state analogues.22 

—————— 

21 Shortly after Andrews, 50 Tenn. 165, Tennessee codified an excep-
tion  to  the  State’s  handgun  ban  for  “an[y]  army  pistol,  or  such  as  are 
commonly carried and used in the United States Army” so long as they 
were carried “openly in [one’s] hands.”  1871 Tenn. Pub. Acts ch. 90, §1; 
see also State v. Wilburn, 66 Tenn. 57, 61–63 (1872); Porter v. State, 66 
Tenn. 106, 107–108 (1874). 

22 The Territory of New Mexico made it a crime in 1860 to carry “any 
class of pistols whatever” “concealed or otherwise.”  1860 Terr. of N. M. 
Laws §§1–2, p. 94.  This extreme restriction is an outlier statute enacted 
by a territorial government nearly 70 years after the ratification of the 
Bill  of  Rights,  and  its  constitutionality  was  never  tested  in  court.  Its 
value  in  discerning  the  original  meaning  of  the  Second  Amendment  is
insubstantial.  Moreover,  like  many  other  stringent  carry  restrictions