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

Opinion of the Court 

and in the first decade after its adoption, there is no histor-
ical  basis  for  concluding  that  the  pre-existing  right  en-
shrined in the Second Amendment permitted broad prohi-
bitions on all forms of public carry. 

3 
Only after the ratification of the Second Amendment in
1791 did public-carry restrictions proliferate.  Respondents
rely heavily on these restrictions, which generally fell into
three  categories:  common-law  offenses,  statutory  prohibi-
tions, and “surety” statutes.  None of these restrictions im-
posed a substantial burden on public carry analogous to the
burden created by New York’s restrictive licensing regime. 
Common-Law  Offenses.  As  during  the  colonial  and
founding periods, the common-law offenses of “affray” or go-
ing armed “to the terror of the people” continued to impose 
some limits on firearm carry in the antebellum period.  But 
as with the earlier periods, there is no evidence indicating
that  these  common-law  limitations  impaired  the  right  of
the general population to peaceable public carry.

For  example,  the  Tennessee  attorney  general  once 
charged a defendant with the common-law offense of affray, 
arguing  that  the  man  committed  the  crime  when  he 
“ ‘arm[ed] himself with dangerous and unusual weapons, in 
such a manner as will naturally cause terror to the people.’ ”  
Simpson v. State, 13 Tenn. 356, 358 (1833).  More specifi-
cally, the indictment charged that Simpson “with force and 
arms  being  arrayed  in  a  warlike  manner  . . .  unlawfully,
and to the great terror and disturbance of divers good citi-
zens, did make an affray.”  Id., at 361.  The Tennessee Su-
preme Court quashed the indictment, holding that the Stat-
ute of Northampton was never part of Tennessee law.  Id., 
at  359.  But  even  assuming  that  Tennesseans’  ancestors 
brought  with  them  the  common  law  associated  with  the 
Statute,  the  Simpson  court  found  that  if  the  Statute  had