Court Opinion

ID: 9955267
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-03-27 22:00:32.898899+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:15:24.362129
License: Public Domain

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
                             FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
                                  _____________

                                       No. 21-1832
                                      _____________

     MADISON M. LARA; SOPHIA KNEPLEY; LOGAN D. MILLER; SECOND
     AMENDMENT FOUNDATION, INC.; FIREARMS POLICY COALITION,
                               Appellants

                                             v.

                 COMMISSIONER PENNSYLVANIA STATE POLICE
                               __________

                    On Appeal from the United States District Court
                         For the Western District of Pennsylvania
                                (D.C. No. 2-20-cv-01582)
                   District Judge: Honorable William S. Stickman, IV
                                   _______________

                           SUR PETITION FOR REHEARING
                                  _______________

Present: CHAGARES, Chief Judge, JORDAN, HARDIMAN, SHWARTZ, KRAUSE,
RESTREPO, BIBAS, PORTER, MATEY, PHIPPS, FREEMAN, MONTGOMERY-
REEVES, CHUNG, and SMITH,* Circuit Judges

       The petition for rehearing filed by appellant in the above-entitled case having been

submitted to the judges who participated in the decision of this Court and to all the other

available circuit judges of the circuit in regular active service, and no judge who

concurred in the decision having asked for rehearing, and a majority of the judges of the

_______________
      *Judge Smith’s vote is limited to panel rehearing only.
circuit in regular service not having voted for rehearing, the petition for rehearing by the

panel and the Court en banc, is DENIED. Judges Shwartz, Krause, Restrepo, Freeman,

Montgomery-Reeves and Chung voted to grant the petition. Judge Krause files the

attached dissent.

                                                  BY THE COURT

                                                   s/ Kent A. Jordan
                                                  Circuit Judge

Date: March 27, 2024

cc: All counsel of record

                                              2
KRAUSE, Circuit Judge, dissenting sur denial of rehearing en
banc.
        When they ratified the Second Amendment, our
Founders did not intend to bind the nation in a straitjacket of
18th-century legislation, nor did they mean to prevent future
generations from protecting themselves against gun violence
more rampant and destructive than the Founders could have
possibly imagined. At a minimum, one would think that the
states’ understanding of the Second Amendment at the time of
the “Second Founding”1—the moment in 1868 when they
incorporated the Bill of Rights against themselves—is part of
“the Nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation”2
informing the constitutionality of modern-day regulations.

       Indeed, since the Supreme Court tethered their
constitutionality to the existence of historical precedent in
District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), we and
the other Courts of Appeals have consistently looked to
Reconstruction-era, as well as Founding-era sources, and, even
as the Supreme Court has acknowledged the “ongoing
scholarly debate” about their relevance,3 it too has relied on
Reconstruction-era sources in each of its recent major opinions
on the right to bear arms. Notably, the Supreme Court is
expected within the next few months, if not weeks, to issue its

1
  See, e.g., Eric Foner, The Second Founding: How The Civil
War and Reconstruction Remade The Constitution (2019); see
also Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows
of Harvard Coll., 143 S. Ct. 2141, 2175 (2023) (referring to the
incorporation of the Bill of Rights as “a Second Founding”).
2
  N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111, 2126
(2022).
3
  Id. at 2138.

                               1
next seminal opinion, clarifying its historical methodology in
the absence of Founding-era analogues.

        Yet despite our own precedent acknowledging the
relevance of Reconstruction-era sources, our recognition in an
en banc opinion just last year that the Supreme Court relies on
both Founding-era and Reconstruction-era sources,4 and an
imminent decision from the Supreme Court that may prove
dispositive to this case, the panel majority here announced—
over Judge Restrepo’s compelling dissent—that all historical
sources after 1791 are irrelevant to our Nation’s historical
tradition and must be “set aside” when seeking out the
“historical analogues” required to uphold a modern-day gun
regulations.5 The panel majority then held—based exclusively
on 18th-century militia laws and without regard to the
voluminous support the statutory scheme finds in 19th-century
analogues—that Pennsylvania’s prohibition on 18-to-20-year-
old youth carrying firearms in public during statewide
emergencies is unconstitutional.6

        The panel majority was incorrect, but more importantly,
it erred profoundly in the methodology to which it purports to
bind this entire Court and with far-reaching consequences.
Against this backdrop, we should be granting Pennsylvania’s

4
  Range v. Att’y Gen., 69 F.4th 96, 104 (3d Cir. 2023) (en banc),
petition for cert. filed sub nom. Garland v. Range, No. 23-374
(U.S. Oct. 5, 2023).
5
  Lara v. Comm’r Pa. State Police, 91 F.4th 122, 134 (3d Cir.
2024).
6
   Id. (discussing Sections 6106, 6107, and 6109 of
Pennsylvania’s Uniform Firearms Act of 1995, 18 Pa. Cons.
Stat. §§ 6101–6128 (2024)).

                               2
petition for en banc review,7 supported by 17 other states and
the District of Columbia as amici, or at least holding it c.a.v.
pending the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v.
Rahimi.8 But instead, over the objection of nearly half our
Court, we are denying it outright.

        I respectfully dissent from that denial for four reasons.
First, without en banc review, the panel majority’s
pronouncement cannot bind future panels of this Court. We
have held Reconstruction-era sources to be relevant in
decisions both before and after Bruen so, under our case law
and our Internal Operating Procedures, en banc rehearing is
necessary before any subsequent panel can bind our Court to a
contrary position.9 Second, en banc review would allow us to
apply the proper historical methodology, which would compel
a different outcome in this case. Third, en banc review is
necessary for error correction: Even if we limit ourselves to
Founding-era sources, the panel failed to recognize that
legislatures in that era were authorized to categorically disarm
groups they reasonably judged to pose a particular risk of
danger, and Pennsylvania’s modern-day judgment that youth
under the age of 21 pose such a risk is well supported by

7
   See generally Commissioner’s Petition for Rehearing, or,
Alternatively, Rehearing En banc, Lara, 91 F.4th 122 (No. 21-
1832), ECF No. 81.
8
  No. 22-915 (U.S. argued Nov. 7, 2023); see Brief of Amici
Curiae Illinois et al. in Support of Defendant-Appellee’s
Petition for Rehearing or Rehearing En banc, Lara, 91 F.4th
122 (No. 23-1832), ECF No. 82 (explaining the wide-ranging
impact of the divided panel’s majority opinion for states across
the country).
9
  See 3d Cir. I.O.P. 9.1.

                               3
evidence subject to judicial notice. And fourth, the majority’s
narrow focus on the Founding era demands rehearing because
it ignores the Supreme Court’s recognition that “cases
implicating unprecedented societal concerns or dramatic
technological changes may require a more nuanced
approach.”10 For each of these reasons, discussed in turn
below, en banc review should be granted.

          A.     En banc Consideration Is Necessary Before
                 Our Court Can Adopt the Panel Majority’s
                 Novel Methodology.

       Confronted with 19th-century regulations supporting
the constitutionality of Pennsylvania’s statutory scheme, the
panel majority took the position that it could simply “set aside”
that evidence based on its pronouncement that “the Second
Amendment should be understood according to its public
meaning in 1791,” rather than “according to [its] public
meaning in 1868.” Lara v. Comm’r Pa. State Police, 91 F.4th
122, 134 (3d Cir. 2024). But that novel methodology, which
the majority attempted to ground in a “hint” in New York State
Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022), and
inferences from cases outside the Second Amendment context,
see Lara, 941 F.4th at 133, not only contravened Bruen and
other Supreme Court precedent within the Second Amendment
context, see infra, but also violated our Internal Operating
Procedures by purporting to overrule the holdings of prior
panels without either en banc review or clear abrogation of our
prior precedent by the Supreme Court, see 3d Cir. I.O.P. 9.1.

10
     Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2131, 2132.

                                 4
        For its part, the Supreme Court has cited to and relied
upon Reconstruction-era sources, in addition to Founding-era
sources in all of its recent Second Amendment cases—Bruen
included. Whatever “hint[s]” the panel majority may take from
Bruen, Lara, 91 F.4th at 133, the Supreme Court there
recognized that states are “bound to respect the right to keep
and bear arms because of the Fourteenth Amendment, not the
Second,” and proceeded to consider not just 18th-century
analogues but also “[e]vidence from around the adoption of the
Fourteenth Amendment,” Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2137, 2150. The
Supreme Court has also cited Reconstruction-era sources as
relevant historical evidence in its other Second Amendment
cases. See, e.g., McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742,
777 (2010) (Alito, J.) (“[I]t is clear that the Framers and
ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment counted the right to
keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary
to our system of ordered liberty.”); Heller, 554 U.S. at 605
(“We now address how the Second Amendment was
interpreted from immediately after its ratification through the
end of the 19th century.”).

        Until the underlying panel opinion here, our Court, too,
has followed the Supreme Court’s instruction and consistently
relied upon Reconstruction-era sources, alongside Founding-
era sources, as relevant historic analogues in defining “the
Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Bruen, 142
S. Ct. at 2126; see, e.g., Frein v. Pa. State Police, 47 F.4th 247,
255 (3d Cir. 2022) (“Plus, the Fourteenth Amendment’s
ratifiers understood that it would stop gun seizures.”);
Drummond v. Robinson Township, 9 F.4th 217, 228 (3d Cir.
2021) (“Some Colonial and Reconstruction Era governments
made it illegal to sell guns to enslaved or formerly enslaved
people and members of Native American tribes.”), abrogated

                                5
on other grounds by Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111; Folajtar v. Att’y
Gen., 980 F.3d 897, 905 (3d Cir. 2020) (considering statutes
from “the turn of the nineteenth century”), abrogated on other
grounds by Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111.

       Most recently, our en banc opinion in Range likewise
acknowledged that Reconstruction-era sources are relevant.
We acknowledged Bruen’s “emphasis on Founding and
Reconstruction-era sources” and rejected only the notion that a
statute enacted “nearly a century after the Fourteenth
Amendment’s       ratification”   could     be     considered
“longstanding.” Range v. Att’y Gen., 69 F.4th 96, 104 (3d Cir.
2023) (en banc) (emphasis added), petition for cert. filed sub
nom. Garland v. Range, No. 23-374 (U.S. Oct. 5, 2023). Thus,
both pre- and post-Bruen, we—along with other Courts of
Appeals11—have held Reconstruction-era sources to be both
relevant and informative.

11
  As the First Circuit recently observed, while Bruen “indeed
indicated that founding-era historical precedent is of primary
importance for identifying a tradition of comparable
regulation,” it also “relied upon how the Second Amendment
was interpreted from immediately after its ratification through
the end of the 19th century” and “likewise left open the
possibility that late-19th-century evidence and 20th-century
historical evidence may have probative value if it does not
contradict[] earlier evidence.” Ocean State Tactical, LLC v.
Rhode Island, --- F.4th ---, No. 23-1072, 2024 WL 980633, at
*10 (1st Cir. Mar. 7, 2024) (internal citations and quotation
marks omitted)). See also Antonyuk v. Chiumento, 89 F.4th
271, 305 (2d Cir. 2023) (“We therefore agree with the decisions
of our sister circuits—emphasizing the understanding that
prevailed when the States adopted the Fourteenth

                              6
       In view of this precedent, en banc rehearing is required
before any subsequent panel has authority to hold—let alone
to bind this Court to a holding—that Reconstruction-era
sources must henceforth be “set aside,” Lara, 91 F.4th at 134,
when interpreting the Second Amendment. See 3d Cir. I.O.P.
9.1 (providing that prior panels’ holdings are “binding on
subsequent panels” and “no subsequent panel overrules the
holding . . . of a previous panel” because “Court en banc
consideration is required to do so.”).

       The only exception to this well-established rule arises
when the “prior panel’s holding is in conflict with Supreme
Court precedent.” Karns v. Shanahan, 879 F.3d 504, 514–15
(3d Cir. 2018) (quotation marks omitted). But that is not the
case here. Even the Lara panel acknowledged it was acting on

Amendment—is, along with the understanding of that right
held by the founders in 1791, a relevant consideration.”
(internal citations and quotation marks omitted)), petition for
cert. filed sub nom. Antonyuk v. James, No. 23-910 (U.S. Feb.
20, 2024); Ezell v. City of Chicago, 651 F.3d 684, 705 (7th Cir.
2011) (“[T]he most relevant historical period for questions
about the scope of the Second Amendment as applied to the
States is the period leading up to and surrounding the
ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.”), abrogated on
other grounds by Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111; United States v.
Greeno, 679 F.3d 510, 518 (6th Cir. 2012) (similar), abrogated
on other grounds by Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111; Gould v. Morgan,
907 F.3d 659, 669 (1st Cir. 2018) (discussing a “comprehensive
survey of the historical record,” which included laws from the
19th century), abrogated on other grounds by Bruen, 142 S. Ct.
2111; see also Brief of Amici Curiae Illinois et al., supra note
7, 12 (collecting cases).

                               7
what it perceived as a “hint” the Supreme Court dropped in
Bruen, not a holding. Lara, 91 F.4th at 133. Bruen, in fact,
reiterated the “methodological approach to the Second
Amendment” that the Court adopted in Heller, including its
rejection of the notion that Reconstruction-era sources were
“illegitimate postenactment legislative history.” 142 S. Ct. at
2127 (quotation marks omitted). It also confirmed that
examination of sources from that era—including “19th-century
cases,” congressional and public “discourse after the Civil
War,” and the understanding of post-Civil War
commentators—“was a critical tool of constitutional
interpretation” in understanding the Second Amendment. Id.
at 2127–28 (quotation marks omitted). And although the Court
cautioned against giving postenactment history “more weight
than it can rightly bear” and noted that it has “generally
assumed that the scope of the protection applicable to the
Federal Government and States is pegged to the public
understanding of the right when the Bill of Rights was adopted
in 1791,” the Court was explicit that it was not resolving the
“debate on whether courts should primarily rely on the
prevailing understanding of an individual right when the
Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868 when defining its
scope.” Id. at 2137–38.

        Ironically, the Court appears poised to sway, if not
resolve, that debate in its forthcoming decision in United States
v. Rahimi, No. 22-915 (U.S. argued Nov. 7, 2023). The
question presented there is whether prohibiting a domestic
abuser from possessing a firearm, under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8),
violates the Second Amendment in the absence of comparable
Founding-era precedent. Thus, Rahimi seems likely to address
whether courts evaluating the constitutionality of modern-day
legislation may consider developments in the law post-

                               8
ratification or are indeed constrained to Founding-era
sources.12 Why, then, are we denying Pennsylvania’s petition
for review, declining even to hold it c.a.v. for Rahimi’s
forthcoming guidance, and ruling instead based on a supposed
“hint” in Bruen? Hints and assumptions by the Supreme Court
are not holdings, see Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619, 631
(1993), and neither can justify our denial of rehearing en banc
when the novel approach of a divided panel purports to
overturn our precedent.

       In sum, our failure to grant en banc rehearing not only
creates a circuit split and allows an opinion resting on an
invalid premise to stand; it also means the panel majority’s
holding concerning Reconstruction-era sources will not bind
this Court going forward. To the contrary, “where our cases
conflict, the earlier is the controlling authority and the latter is
ineffective as precedent.” Bracey v. Superintendent Rockview
SCI, 986 F.3d 274, 290 n.14 (3d Cr. 2021) (cleaned up) (citing
3d Cir. I.O.P. 9.1). The petition for rehearing thus should be
granted to secure the uniformity of our Second Amendment

12
  This petition should be held c.a.v. for the additional reason
that Rahimi appears likely to address one or more other
dispositive issues, including who counts among “the People”
protected by the Second Amendment; the contours of Bruen’s
“history and tradition” test; the level of deference we should
give legislatures in making categorical, predictive judgments
about groups that pose particular risks; what, if any, findings
legislatures must make to justify those judgments; and whether
evidence of legislative authority to make those judgments
includes consensus among the states today. See generally Brief
for the United States, Rahimi, No. 22-915 (U.S. Aug. 14,
2023).

                                 9
case law, or if not granted, at least held c.a.v. for the
forthcoming opinion in Rahimi.

       B.     En banc Rehearing Is Necessary Because
              Under      the   Proper   Methodology,
              Pennsylvania’s  Statutory  Scheme   is
              Constitutional.

       Because Reconstruction-era sources are relevant and
the panel majority disregarded them, en banc rehearing is the
only way to conduct the comparative analysis Bruen requires.
That analysis compels a different outcome. Judge Restrepo
catalogued the historical evidence that “[a]t the Founding,
people under 21 lacked full legal personhood,” so, at the first
step of the Bruen test, those youth are not among “the people”
protected by the text of the Second Amendment. Lara, 91 F.4th
at 142 (Restrepo, J., dissenting). He also persuasively
explained why, even if we reach Bruen’s second step and
determine whether the regulation is “consistent with the
Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” Bruen, 142
S. Ct. at 2126, Pennsylvania’s statutory scheme is
constitutional. Among other reasons, he observed that “at least
17 states passed laws restricting the sale of firearms to people
under 21” between 1856 and 1893. See Lara, 91 F.4th at 147
(Restrepo, J., dissenting) (citing Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2129–30).

       I join that conclusion and offer here some concrete
examples of ways that the “how” and “why” of those historical
statutes map onto Pennsylvania’s.13

13
   Although Bruen eschewed a free-standing “means-end
scrutiny” or “interest-balancing inquiry” for modern-day
regulations, 142 S. Ct. at 2129, it embraced a comparative

                               10
       By way of background, before the Fourteenth
Amendment was ratified in 1868, a number of states treated 21
as the age of majority14 and effectively prevented, or at least
hindered, “minors” from even obtaining firearms. See, e.g.,
1856 Ala. Laws 17; 1859 Ky. Acts 245, § 23; 1856 Tenn. Pub.
Acts 92. Other states adopted similar regulations in the years
immediately after ratification, see, e.g., 1875 Ind. Acts 59;
1879 Mo. Rev. Stat. § 1274; 1878 Miss. Laws 175–76,15
signaling that the generation that incorporated the Second
Amendment against the states did not understand it to limit
their ability to pass such regulations, see Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at
2136–37 (acknowledging that historical examples from the
years immediately following ratification can, in some cases,
provide evidence about the public understanding of an
Amendment). Indeed, a 19th century treatise written by “the

means-end analysis by directing us to look to “how” (the
means) and “why” (the end) historical “regulations burden a
law-abiding citizen’s right to armed self-defense” and then to
consider whether the “modern . . . regulation[] impose[s] a
comparable burden . . . [that] is comparably justified,” id. at
2133.
14
    See, e.g., Vincent v. Rogers, 30 Ala. 471, 473 (1857)
(describing a minor as an individual “under twenty-one years
of age”); Warwick v. Cooper, 37 Tenn. (5 Sneed) 659, 660–61
(1858) (referring to 21 as the age of majority); Newland v.
Gentry, 57 Ky. (18 B. Mon.) 666, 671 (1857) (referring to 21
as the age of majority); 1879 Mo. Rev. Stat. § 2559 (explaining
that a male is a minor until he turns 21, and a female is a minor
until she turns 18).
15
   See also Jones v. Bonta, 34 F.4th 704, 740 (9th Cir. 2022)
(collecting statutes), vacated on reh’g, 47 F.4th 1124 (9th Cir.
2022).

                               11
most famous” voice on the Second Amendment at the time,
Heller, 554 U.S. at 616, explained that states “may prohibit the
sale of arms to minors,” Thomas M. Cooley, Treatise on
Constitutional Limitations 740 n.4 (5th ed. 1883).

        By broadly criminalizing any attempt to convey a
firearm to those under the age of 21, these statutes effectively
prevented young citizens not just from carrying publicly in
times of emergency, but from possessing firearms at all. Thus,
as to “how” these prohibitions burdened the right to bear arms,
the 18th-century laws were far more onerous than
Pennsylvania’s, which prohibits such youth only from carrying
publicly during statewide emergencies, see 18 Pa. Cons. Stat.
§§ 6106, 6107, 6109. If the generation that incorporated the
Bill of Rights against the states believed that states could
constitutionally impose more burdensome gun regulations on
this age group, a fortiori it would have viewed Pennsylvania’s
more limited prohibition as constitutional.

       In terms of “why” the statutes were enacted, these
Reconstruction-era laws again are comparable to
Pennsylvania’s statutory scheme—certainly more so than the
Founding-era militia statutes on which the panel majority
relied. As I discuss in greater detail in Section D, infra,
interpersonal gun violence “was not a problem in the Founding
era that warranted much attention,” in large part because the
firearms that our Founders possessed simply lacked the
capacity of those today to inflict mass casualties in a matter of
seconds.16 By the late 19th century, however, “gun violence

16
  Saul Cornell, The Right to Carry Firearms Outside of the
Home: Separating Historical Myths from Historical Realities,
39 Fordham Urb. L. J. 1695, 1713 (2012).

                               12
had emerged as a serious problem in American life.”17 This
development was fueled by the mass production of firearms
that began during the wave of American industrialization in the
mid-19th century,18 and it was accompanied by renewed efforts
to market gun ownership to the average American consumer.19
It was also driven by “the trauma of the [Civil War] and the
enormous increase in the production of guns necessary to
supply two opposing armies,” which “intensified the problem
posed by firearms violence and gave a new impetus to
regulation.”20

       In this changed America, “interpersonal gun violence
and the collective terrorist violence perpetuated by groups such

17
   Saul Cornell, The Right to Regulate Arms in the Era of the
Fourteenth Amendment: The Emergence of Good Cause
Permit Schemes in Post-Civil War America, 55 U.C. Davis L.
Rev. Online 65, 69 (2021).
18
   James B. Jacobs and Alex Haberman, 3D-Printed Firearms,
Do-It-Yourself Guns, & the Second Amendment, 80 Law &
Contemp. Probs. 129, 137–38 (2017); see also David Yamane,
The Sociology of U.S. Gun Culture, 11 Sociology Compass 1,
2 (2017) (“The 19th century shift from craft to industrial
production, from hand‐made unique parts to machine‐made
interchangeable parts, dramatically increased manufacturing
capacities, and gun manufacturing played a central role in this
development.”).
19
   See Pamela Haag, The Gunning of America: Business and
the Making of American Gun Culture xvii–xxi (2016)
(explaining how gun manufacturers employed new marketing
strategies to create a civilian market for firearms in the 19th
century).
20
   Cornell (2021), supra note 17, at 69.

                              13
as the Ku Klux Klan” replaced the “ancient fears of tyrannical
Stuart monarchs and standing armies” that preoccupied the
Founding generation.21 Those same concerns about public
safety apply to today’s America, where increasingly deadly
firearms are mass-produced at an unprecedented rate,22 and
have motivated states like Pennsylvania to regulate the ability
of still-maturing young people to carry firearms.23

        In short, both the “how” and the “why” of
Pennsylvania’s statute track those of its Reconstruction-era
analogues, so en banc rehearing would allow us not just to
correct the panel’s mistaken methodology, but also its mistaken
result.

        C.    En banc Rehearing Is Also Necessary for
              Proper Consideration of Founding-Era
              Sources.

       Even if we were to follow the majority’s approach and
“set aside the Commissioner’s catalogue of statutes from the
mid-to-late nineteenth century,” Lara, 91 F.4th at 134, en banc
rehearing is warranted because Pennsylvania’s statutory
scheme has support in Founding-era history to which we look

21
   Id.
22
    Glenn Thrush, U.S. Gun Production Triples Since 2000,
Fueled by Handgun Purchases, The N.Y. Times (Updated June
8,                                                           2022),
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/us/politics/gun-
manufacturing-atf.html.
23
   See, e.g., Brief for Illinois, et al. as Amici Curiae Supporting
Appellee’s Petition for Rehearing, Lara v. Commissioner
Pennsylvania State Police, 91 F.4th 122 (3d Cir. 2024).

                                14
for a “match . . . in principle, not with precision.” Range, 69
F.4th at 117 (Krause, J., dissenting).

         It is by now well established that, as then-Judge Barrett
put it, “founding-era legislatures categorically disarmed groups
whom they judged to be a threat to the public safety.” Kanter
v. Barr, 919 F.3d 437, 458 (7th Cir. 2019) (Barrett, J.,
dissenting), abrogated by Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022). And
it was the legislatures of the Founding generation that
determined—consistent with the Second Amendment—which
groups posed sufficient risk to justify categorical disarmament.
See Range, 69 F.4th at 115 (Shwartz, J., dissenting) (“[U]nder
Bruen, the relevant inquiry is why a given regulation, such as
a ban based on one’s status, was enacted and how that
regulation was implemented.”); id. at 119–128 (Krause, J.,
dissenting) (cataloguing the historical disarmament of groups
that legislatures judged untrustworthy to follow the law).

        Pennsylvania exercised such legislative judgment when
it decided that those under 21 categorically pose a danger to
public safety during times of emergency, and its judgment is
entitled to deference—at least where, as here, it is supported
by evidence. Modern crime statistics, of which we can take
judicial notice,24 confirm that youth under 21 commit violent

24
   Several of the sources that follow are drawn from the District
Court record, while others may be considered under Federal
Rule of Evidence 201. See, e.g., Clark v. Governor of N.J., 53
F.4th 769, 774 (3d Cir. 2022) (taking judicial notice of publicly
available statistics); Stone v. High Mountain Mining Co., LLC,
89 F.4th 1246, 1261 n.7 (10th Cir. 2024) (same); United States
v. United Bhd. of Carpenters and Joiners of America, Loc. 169,

                               15
gun crimes at a far disproportionate rate. In 2019, for example,
although 18- to 20-year-olds made up less than 4% of the U.S.
population, they accounted for more than 15% of all homicide
and manslaughter arrests.25 National data collected by the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) also confirms that
homicide rates peak between the ages of 18 and 20.26 Indeed,
that age group commits gun homicides at a rate three times
higher than adults aged 21 or older.27 And “[a]dditional studies

457 F.2d 210, 214 n.7 (7th Cir. 1972) (taking judicial notice of
statistics from United States Bureau of Census Reports).
25
   See U.S. Dep’t of Just., Crime in the United States, Arrests,
by Age, 2019, at Table 38, https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-
u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/tables/table-38;
U.S. Census Bureau, Age and Sex Composition in the United
States: 2019, at Table 1, National Population by
Characteristics:                    2010-                    2019,
https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2019/demo/age-and-
sex/2019-age-sex-composition.html.
26
   See Daniel W. Webster et al., The Case for Gun Policy
Reforms in America, Johns Hopkins Ctr. for Gun Policy &
Research       5    (last      updated     Feb.      5,     2014),
http://web.archive.org/web/20160325061021/http:/www.jhsp
h.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-center-
for-gun-policy-and-
research/publications/WhitePaper020514_CaseforGunPolicy
Reforms.pdf.
27
    Everytown Research & Policy, Everytown for Gun Safety
(last          updated           Mar.            1,         2022),
https://everytownresearch.org/stat/eighteen-to-20-year-olds-
commit-gun-homicides-at-a-rate-triple-the-rate-of-those-21-
and-years-older/; see also Jones v. Bonta, 34 F.4th 704, 760
(9th Cir. 2022) (Stein, J., dissenting in part) (noting that 18- to

                                16
show that at least one in eight victims of mass shootings from
1992 to 2018 were killed by an 18 to 20-year-old[.]”28

       Our understanding of why youth commit violent crimes
has also evolved dramatically in recent decades, further
reinforcing Pennsylvania’s legislative judgment that young
people pose a particular danger in carrying firearms during
states of emergency. We now understand, for example, that
those under 21 are uniquely predisposed to impulsive, reckless
behavior because their brains have not yet fully developed.29

20-year-olds “commit gun homicides at a rate three times
higher than adults above the age of 21”), vacated on reh’g, 47
F.4th 1124 (9th Cir. 2022); Hirschfeld v. Bureau of Alcohol,
Firearms, Tobacco & Explosives, 5 F.4th 407, 478 (4th Cir.
2021) (Wynn, J., dissenting) (noting that “from 2013 to 2017,
young adults aged 18 to 20 committed gun homicides at a rate
nearly four times higher than adults 21 and older”) (alteration
in original) (internal citations and quotation marks omitted),
vacated as moot, 14 F.4th 322 (4th Cir. 2021).
28
   Jones, 34 F.4th at 760 (Stein, J., dissenting in part) (citing
Joshua D. Brown and Amie J. Goodin, Mass Casualty Shooting
Venues, Types of Firearms, and Age of Perpetrators in the
United States, 1982–2018, 108 Am. J. Pub. Health 1385, 1386
(2018)).
29
   See also Nat’l Rifle Ass’n of America, Inc. v. Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, & Explosives, 700 F.3d 135, 210
n. 21 (5th Cir. 2012) (“[M]odern scientific research supports
the commonsense notion that 18-to-20-year-olds tend to be
more impulsive than young adults aged 21 and over.”),
abrogated on other grounds by Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111; Horsley
v. Trame, 808 F.3d 1126, 1133 (7th Cir. 2015) (“The evidence
now is strong that the brain does not cease to mature until the

                               17
Specifically, the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for
impulse control and judgment, is the last part of the brain to
fully mature and continues to develop until a person is in their
mid-20s.30 By contrast, the limbic system, which controls
emotions like fear, anger, and pleasure, develops far earlier,
and young people generally rely heavily on this region of their
brains to guide their decision-making.31

       As a result, young adults are both uniquely prone to
negative emotional states32 and uniquely unable to moderate
their emotional impulses. Indeed, while “a 19-year-old might
possess a brain that looks ‘adult-like’ and that supports mature
cognitive performance under calm or ‘neutral’ conditions, that
same brain tends to look much more like that of a younger kid
when evocative emotions are triggered, resulting in
significantly      weaker       cognitive        performance.”33

early 20s in those relevant parts that govern impulsivity,
judgment, planning for the future, foresight of consequences,
and other characteristics that make people morally culpable.”)
(citation omitted).
30
   See, e.g., Mariam Arain et al., Maturation of the Adolescent
Brain, 9 Neuropsychiatric Disease & Treatment 449, 453, 456
(2013); Elizabeth R. Sowell et al., In Vivo Evidence for Post-
adolescent Brain Maturation in Frontal and Striatal Regions,
2 Nature Neuroscience 859, 859–60 (1999).
31
   Arain, supra note 30, at 453.
32
   Leah H. Somerville et al., A Time of Change: Behavioral and
Neural Correlates of Adolescent Sensitivity to Appetitive and
Aversive Environmental Cues, 72 Brain and Cognition 124,
125 (2010).
33
   Hirschfeld, 5 F.4th at 476 (Wynn, J., dissenting) (quoting
Jason Chein, Adolescent Brain Immaturity Makes Pending

                              18
Unsurprisingly, this combination makes young adults
especially prone to reckless and violent behavior.34

       While the scarcity and limited lethality of their weapons
gave our Founding generation little reason to fear the danger
of youth gun violence, today’s legislatures have good reason to
do so. And because that group is especially prone to impulsive,
violent behavior, Pennsylvania’s legislature reasonably
decided that allowing them to carry firearms in public during
statewide emergencies, when emotions already run high and
violence may be widespread, would pose a particular danger to
public safety. That judgment reflects precisely the type of
determination that led our Founders to categorically disarm
other groups they deemed to be dangerous and puts
Pennsylvania’s statute comfortably within the Nation’s
historical tradition even at the “First Founding.”

Execution Inappropriate, Bloomberg Law (Sept. 17, 2020 4:00
AM), https://www.bloomberglaw.com/bloomberglawnews/us-
law-week/XBBCKGKK000000).
34
   Michael Dreyfuss et al., Teens Impulsively React Rather than
Retreat from Threat, 36 Developmental Neuroscience 220, 220
(2014) (“Adolescents commit more crimes per capita than
children or adults in the United States and in nearly all
industrialized cultures. Their proclivity toward . . . risk taking
has been suggested to underlie the inflection in criminal
activity observed during this time.”).

                               19
       D.     Without Rehearing, The Majority’s Approach
              Will Leave States Powerless to Address One of
              Society’s Most Pressing Social Concerns.

       Rehearing is also needed because the panel majority
failed to apply the “more nuanced approach” that Bruen
prescribes where a statute responds to “unprecedented social
concerns or dramatic technological changes” beyond our
Founders’ ken. 142 S. Ct. at 2132. Pennsylvania’s Uniform
Firearms Act fits that bill.

        Interpersonal gun violence, historians agree, was simply
not a major concern for the Founding generation.35 Because
the “black powder, muzzle-loading weapons” in that era were
“too unreliable and took too long to load,” firearms “were not
the weapon of choice for those with evil intent[.]”36 And when
we consider that these were “tight-knit” rural communities
where “[e]veryone knew everyone else,” “word-of-mouth
spread quickly,” and the population “knew and agreed on what
acts were . . . permitted and forbidden,”37 it is not surprising
that gun violence “simply was not a problem in the Founding
era that warranted much attention and therefore produced no
legislation.”38

35
   Cornell (2012), supra note 16, at 1713.
36
      See Saul Cornell, Constitutional Mischiefs and
Constitutional Remedies: Making Sense of Limits on the Right
to Keep and Bear Arms in the Founding Era, 51 Fordham Urb.
L. J. 25, 38 (2023).
37
   Range v. Att’y Gen., 69 F.4th 96, 117 (3d Cir. 2023) (Krause,
J., dissenting).
38
   Cornell (2012), supra note 16, at 1713.

                              20
       In today’s America, by contrast—where firearms
include automatic assault rifles and high-capacity magazines
and our population is mobile, diverse, and largely urban—
nearly 50,000 people die from gun-related injuries each year,
and over 80% of murders involve a firearm.39 Horrific mass
shootings have also become a daily occurrence, with over 600
such shootings in 2023 alone,40 and 82 so far in the first three
months of 2024.41 And as I have explained in Section C, supra,
the phenomenon of gun violence among those between 18 and
20 presents a particularly troubling new social concern that our
Founders had no reason to contemplate.

       The Supreme Court anticipated this situation when it
recognized in Bruen that “[t]he regulatory challenges posed by
firearms today are not always the same as those that
preoccupied the Founders in 1791 or the Reconstruction
generation in 1868,” and it directed that state laws “implicating
unprecedented societal concerns or dramatic technological
changes may require a more nuanced approach.” 142 S. Ct. at

39
   See, e.g., John Gramlich, What the Data Says About Gun
Deaths in the U.S., PEW Research Ctr. (Apr. 26, 2023),
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-
the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/.
40
   See Molly Bohannon and Ana Faguy, U.S. Faces Second-
Worst Year On Record for Mass Shootings—Nearly 650
Incidents, Forbes (Dec. 25, 2023 9:22 AM),
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/12/25/us-
mass-shootings-near-650-this-year-second-worst-total-on-
record/?sh=1ef8729669e8.
41
   See Mass Shootings in 2024, Gun Violence Archive (last
viewed               Mar.             22,             2024),
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting.

                               21
2132. The panel majority did not heed that counsel, so
considerations of federalism and comity also compel en banc
rehearing.

                             * * *

        The Second Amendment was “intended to endure for
ages to come, and consequently, to be adapted to the various
crises of human affairs,” id. at 2132 (citation omitted), not to
force on modern-day legislatures the fiction that we live in
1791 or to preclude reasonable responses to problems of gun
violence that were unfathomable when the Bill of Rights was
ratified. And both we and the Supreme Court have held the
states’ understanding of the Second Amendment when they
incorporated it through the Fourteenth Amendment to be
relevant and part of “the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm
regulation.” Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2126. The panel majority
decreed the opposite in a decision that violated 3d Cir. I.O.P.
9.1, created a split with our sister circuits, and contravened
Supreme Court precedent. Our refusal to grant rehearing en
banc in this circumstance is all the more perplexing in light of
the Supreme Court’s imminent opinion in Rahimi, which will
necessarily bear on the panel’s reasoning and may well
abrogate it even as the panel’s mandate issues.

       For all of these reasons, I respectfully dissent from the
Court’s denial of en banc rehearing and, as we are declining to
correct our own error, urge the Supreme Court to do so if
presented the opportunity.

                               22