CHAPTER NINE: The Second Amendment

The Second Amendment reads in full:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

554 U.S. 570 (2008)

Scalia, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito, JJ., joined. Stevens, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer, JJ., joined. Breyer, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Stevens, Souter, and Ginsburg, JJ., joined.

Justice Scalia delivered the opinion of the Court.

We consider whether a District of Columbia prohibition on the possession of usable handguns in the home violates the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

I

The District of Columbia generally prohibits the possession of handguns. It is a crime to carry an unregistered firearm, and the registration of handguns is prohibited. Wholly apart from that prohibition, no person may carry a handgun without a license, but the chief of police may issue licenses for 1-year periods. District of Columbia law also requires residents to keep their lawfully owned firearms, such as registered long guns, “unloaded and dissembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar device” unless they are located in a place of business or are being used for lawful recreational activities.

Respondent Dick Heller is a D. C. special police officer authorized to carry a handgun while on duty at the Federal Judicial Center. He applied for a registration certificate for a handgun that he wished to keep at home, but the District refused. He thereafter filed a lawsuit in the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia seeking, on Second Amendment grounds, to enjoin the city from enforcing the bar on the registration of handguns, the licensing requirement insofar as it prohibits the carrying of a firearm in the home without a license, and the trigger-lock requirement insofar as it prohibits the use of “functional firearms within the home.” The District Court dismissed respondent’s complaint. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, construing his complaint as seeking the right to render a firearm operable and carry it about his home in that condition only when necessary for self-defense reversed. It held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess firearms and that the city’s total ban on handguns, as well as its requirement that firearms in the home be kept nonfunctional even when necessary for self-defense, violated that right. The Court of Appeals directed the District Court to enter summary judgment for respondent.

We granted certiorari.

II

We turn first to the meaning of the Second Amendment.

A

The Second Amendment provides: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” In interpreting this text, we are guided by the principle that “[t]he Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning.” Normal meaning may of course include an idiomatic meaning, but it excludes secret or technical meanings that would not have been known to ordinary citizens in the founding generation.

The two sides in this case have set out very different interpretations of the Amendment. Petitioners and today’s dissenting Justices believe that it protects only the right to possess and carry a firearm in connection with militia service. Respondent argues that it protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

The Second Amendment is naturally divided into two parts: its prefatory clause and its operative clause. The former does not limit the latter grammatically, but rather announces a purpose. The Amendment could be rephrased, “Because a well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” See J. Tiffany, A Treatise on Government and Constitutional Law (1867); Brief for Professors of Linguistics and English as Amici Curiae 3 (hereinafter Linguists’ Brief). Although this structure of the Second Amendment is unique in our Constitution, other legal documents of the founding era, particularly individual-rights provisions of state constitutions, commonly included a prefatory statement of purpose.

Logic demands that there be a link between the stated purpose and the command. The Second Amendment would be nonsensical if it read, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to petition for redress of grievances shall not be infringed.” That requirement of logical connection may cause a prefatory clause to resolve an ambiguity in the operative clause (“The separation of church and state being an important objective, the teachings of canons shall have no place in our jurisprudence.” The preface makes clear that the operative clause refers not to canons of interpretation but to clergymen.) But apart from that clarifying function, a prefatory clause does not limit or expand the scope of the operative clause. “‘It is nothing unusual in acts … for the enacting part to go beyond the preamble; the remedy often extends beyond the particular act or mischief which first suggested the necessity of the law.’ ” J. Bishop, Commentaries on Written Laws and Their Interpretation § 51, p. 49 (1882) (quoting Rex v. Marks, 3 East, 157, 165 (K. B. 1802)). Therefore, while we will begin our textual analysis with the operative clause, we will return to the prefatory clause to ensure that our reading of the operative clause is consistent with the announced purpose.

1. Operative Clause.

a. “Right of the People.”

The first salient feature of the operative clause is that it codifies a “right of the people.” The unamended Constitution and the Bill of Rights use the phrase “right of the people” two other times, in the First Amendment’s Assembly-and-Petition Clause and in the Fourth Amendment’s Search-and-Seizure Clause. The Ninth Amendment uses very similar terminology (“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”). All three of these instances unambiguously refer to individual rights, not “collective” rights, or rights that may be exercised only through participation in some corporate body.

Three provisions of the Constitution refer to “the people” in a context other than “rights”—the famous preamble (“We the people”), § 2 of Article I (providing that “the people” will choose members of the House), and the Tenth Amendment (providing that those powers not given the Federal Government remain with “the States” or “the people”). Those provisions arguably refer to “the people” acting collectively—but they deal with the exercise or reservation of powers, not rights. Nowhere else in the Constitution does a “right” attributed to “the people” refer to anything other than an individual right.

What is more, in all six other provisions of the Constitution that mention “the people,” the term unambiguously refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset. * * * *

This contrasts markedly with the phrase “the militia” in the prefatory clause. As we will describe below, the “militia” in colonial America consisted of a subset of “the people”—those who were male, able bodied, and within a certain age range. Reading the Second Amendment as protecting only the right to “keep and bear Arms” in an organized militia therefore fits poorly with the operative clause’s description of the holder of that right as “the people.”

We start therefore with a strong presumption that the Second Amendment right is exercised individually and belongs to all Americans.

b. “Keep and bear Arms.”

We move now from the holder of the right—“the people”—to the substance of the right: “to keep and bear Arms.”

Before addressing the verbs “keep” and “bear,” we interpret their object: “Arms.” The 18th-century meaning is no different from the meaning today. The 1773 edition of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary defined “arms” as “weapons of offence, or armour of defence.” 1 Dictionary of the English Language 107 (4th ed.) (hereinafter Johnson). Timothy Cunningham’s important 1771 legal dictionary defined “arms” as “any thing that a man wears for his defence, or takes into his hands, or useth in wrath to cast at or strike another.” 1 A New and Complete Law Dictionary (1771); see also N. Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) (reprinted 1989) (hereinafter Webster) (similar).

The term was applied, then as now, to weapons that were not specifically designed for military use and were not employed in a military capacity. For instance, Cunningham’s legal dictionary gave as an example of usage: “Servants and labourers shall use bows and arrows on Sundays, &c. and not bear other arms.”

Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union (1997) {internet}, and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, e.g., Kyllo v. United States (2001) {thermal imaging device}, the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.

We turn to the phrases “keep arms” and “bear arms.” Johnson defined “keep” as, most relevantly, “[t]o retain; not to lose,” and “[t]o have in custody.” Webster defined it as “[t]o hold; to retain in one’s power or possession.” No party has apprised us of an idiomatic meaning of “keep Arms.” Thus, the most natural reading of “keep Arms” in the Second Amendment is to “have weapons.”

The phrase “keep arms” was not prevalent in the written documents of the founding period that we have found, but there are a few examples, all of which favor viewing the right to “keep Arms” as an individual right unconnected with militia service. William Blackstone, for example, wrote that Catholics convicted of not attending service in the Church of England suffered certain penalties, one of which was that they were not permitted to “keep arms in their houses.” 4 Commentaries on the Laws of England 55 (1769) (hereinafter Blackstone). Petitioners point to militia laws of the founding period that required militia members to “keep” arms in connection with militia service, and they conclude from this that the phrase “keep Arms” has a militia-related connotation. This is rather like saying that, since there are many statutes that authorize aggrieved employees to “file complaints” with federal agencies, the phrase “file complaints” has an employment-related connotation. “Keep arms” was simply a common way of referring to possessing arms, for militiamen and everyone else.

At the time of the founding, as now, to “bear” meant to “carry.” When used with “arms,” however, the term has a meaning that refers to carrying for a particular purpose—confrontation. * * * *

From our review of founding-era sources, we conclude that this natural meaning was also the meaning that “bear arms” had in the 18th century. In numerous instances, “bear arms” was unambiguously used to refer to the carrying of weapons outside of an organized militia. * * * *

Petitioners justify their limitation of “bear arms” to the military context by pointing out the unremarkable fact that it was often used in that context—the same mistake they made with respect to “keep arms.” It is especially unremarkable that the phrase was often used in a military context in the federal legal sources (such as records of congressional debate) that have been the focus of petitioners’ inquiry. Those sources would have had little occasion to use it except in discussions about the standing army and the militia. And the phrases used primarily in those military discussions include not only “bear arms” but also “carry arms,” “possess arms,” and “have arms”—though no one thinks that those other phrases also had special military meanings. The common references to those “fit to bear arms” in congressional discussions about the militia are matched by use of the same phrase in the few nonmilitary federal contexts where the concept would be relevant. * * * *

Justice Stevens {dissenting} places great weight on James Madison’s inclusion of a conscientious-objector clause in his original draft of the Second Amendment: “but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.” He argues that this clause establishes that the drafters of the Second Amendment intended “bear Arms” to refer only to military service. It is always perilous to derive the meaning of an adopted provision from another provision deleted in the drafting process. In any case, what Justice Stevens would conclude from the deleted provision does not follow. It was not meant to exempt from military service those who objected to going to war but had no scruples about personal gunfights. Quakers opposed the use of arms not just for militia service, but for any violent purpose whatsoever—so much so that Quaker frontiersmen were forbidden to use arms to defend their families, even though “[i]n such circumstances the temptation to seize a hunting rifle or knife in self-defense … must sometimes have been almost overwhelming.” * * * *Thus, the most natural interpretation of Madison’s deleted text is that those opposed to carrying weapons for potential violent confrontation would not be “compelled to render military service,” in which such carrying would be required.

Finally, Justice Stevens suggests that “keep and bear Arms” was some sort of term of art, presumably akin to “hue and cry” or “cease and desist.” (This suggestion usefully evades the problem that there is no evidence whatsoever to support a military reading of “keep arms.”) Justice Stevens believes that the unitary meaning of “keep and bear Arms” is established by the Second Amendment’s calling it a “right” (singular) rather than “rights” (plural). There is nothing to this. State constitutions of the founding period routinely grouped multiple (related) guarantees under a singular “right,” and the First Amendment protects the “right [singular] of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”* * * *

c. Meaning of the Operative Clause.

Putting all of these textual elements together, we find that they guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation. This meaning is strongly confirmed by the historical background of the Second Amendment. We look to this because it has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right. The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it “shall not be infringed.” As we said in United States v. Cruikshank (1876), “[t]his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed ….”

Between the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution, the Stuart Kings Charles II and James II succeeded in using select militias loyal to them to suppress political dissidents, in part by disarming their opponents. * * * *

And, of course, what the Stuarts had tried to do to their political enemies, George III had tried to do to the colonists. In the tumultuous decades of the 1760’s and 1770’s, the Crown began to disarm the inhabitants of the most rebellious areas. That provoked polemical reactions by Americans invoking their rights as Englishmen to keep arms. * * * *

There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms. Of course the right was not unlimited, just as the First Amendment’s right of free speech was not. Thus, we do not read the Second Amendment to protect the right of citizens to carry arms for any sort of confrontation, just as we do not read the First Amendment to protect the right of citizens to speak for any purpose. Before turning to limitations upon the individual right, however, we must determine whether the prefatory clause of the Second Amendment comports with our interpretation of the operative clause.

2. Prefatory Clause.

The prefatory clause reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State ….”

a. “Well-Regulated Militia.”

In United States v. Miller (1939), we explained that “the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense.” That definition comports with founding-era sources.

Petitioners take a seemingly narrower view of the militia, stating that “[m]ilitias are the state- and congressionally-regulated military forces described in the Militia Clauses (art. I, § 8, cls. 15–16).” Although we agree with petitioners’ interpretive assumption that “militia” means the same thing in Article I and the Second Amendment, we believe that petitioners identify the wrong thing, namely, the organized militia. Unlike armies and navies, which Congress is given the power to create (“to raise … Armies”; “to provide … a Navy,” Art. I, § 8, cls. 12–13), the militia is assumed by Article I already to be in existence. Congress is given the power to “provide for calling forth the militia,” § 8, cl. 15; and the power not to create, but to “organiz[e]” it—and not to organize “a” militia, which is what one would expect if the militia were to be a federal creation, but to organize “the” militia, connoting a body already in existence. This is fully consistent with the ordinary definition of the militia as all able-bodied men. From that pool, Congress has plenary power to organize the units that will make up an effective fighting force. That is what Congress did in the first militia Act, which specified that “each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective states, resident therein, who is or shall be of the age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia.” Act of May 8, 1792, 1 Stat. 271. To be sure, Congress need not conscript every able-bodied man into the militia, because nothing in Article I suggests that in exercising its power to organize, discipline, and arm the militia, Congress must focus upon the entire body. Although the militia consists of all able-bodied men, the federally organized militia may consist of a subset of them.

Finally, the adjective “well-regulated” implies nothing more than the imposition of proper discipline and training.

b. “Security of a Free State.”

The phrase “security of a free state” meant “security of a free polity,” not security of each of the several States as the dissent below argued. * * * * It is true that the term “State” elsewhere in the Constitution refers to individual States, but the phrase “security of a free state” and close variations seem to have been terms of art in 18th-century political discourse, meaning a “‘free country’ ” or free polity. Moreover, the other instances of “state” in the Constitution are typically accompanied by modifiers making clear that the reference is to the several States—“each state,” “several states,” “any state,” “that state,” “particular states,” “one state,” “no state.” And the presence of the term “foreign state” in Article I and Article III shows that the word “state” did not have a single meaning in the Constitution.

There are many reasons why the militia was thought to be “necessary to the security of a free state.” First, of course, it is useful in repelling invasions and suppressing insurrections. Second, it renders large standing armies unnecessary—an argument that Alexander Hamilton made in favor of federal control over the militia. The Federalist No. 29 (A. Hamilton). Third, when the able-bodied men of a nation are trained in arms and organized, they are better able to resist tyranny.

3. Relationship between Prefatory Clause and Operative Clause

We reach the question, then: Does the preface fit with an operative clause that creates an individual right to keep and bear arms? It fits perfectly, once one knows the history that the founding generation knew and that we have described above. That history showed that the way tyrants had eliminated a militia consisting of all the able-bodied men was not by banning the militia but simply by taking away the people’s arms, enabling a select militia or standing army to suppress political opponents. This is what had occurred in England that prompted codification of the right to have arms in the English Bill of Rights.

The debate with respect to the right to keep and bear arms, as with other guarantees in the Bill of Rights, was not over whether it was desirable (all agreed that it was) but over whether it needed to be codified in the Constitution. During the 1788 ratification debates, the fear that the federal government would disarm the people in order to impose rule through a standing army or select militia was pervasive in Antifederalist rhetoric. * * * * It was understood across the political spectrum that the right helped to secure the ideal of a citizen militia, which might be necessary to oppose an oppressive military force if the constitutional order broke down.

It is therefore entirely sensible that the Second Amendment’s prefatory clause announces the purpose for which the right was codified: to prevent elimination of the militia. The prefatory clause does not suggest that preserving the militia was the only reason Americans valued the ancient right; most undoubtedly thought it even more important for self-defense and hunting. But the threat that the new Federal Government would destroy the citizens’ militia by taking away their arms was the reason that right—unlike some other English rights—was codified in a written Constitution. Justice Breyer’s assertion {in his dissenting opinion} that individual self-defense is merely a “subsidiary interest” of the right to keep and bear arms, is profoundly mistaken. He bases that assertion solely upon the prologue—but that can only show that self-defense had little to do with the right’s codification; it was the central component of the right itself. * * * *

B

Our interpretation is confirmed by analogous arms-bearing rights in state constitutions that preceded and immediately followed adoption of the Second Amendment. * * * *

The historical narrative that petitioners must endorse would thus treat the Federal Second Amendment as an odd outlier, protecting a right unknown in state constitutions or at English common law, based on little more than an overreading of the prefatory clause.

C

Justice Stevens relies on the drafting history of the Second Amendment—the various proposals in the state conventions and the debates in Congress. It is dubious to rely on such history to interpret a text that was widely understood to codify a pre-existing right, rather than to fashion a new one. But even assuming that this legislative history is relevant, Justice Stevens flatly misreads the historical record. * * * *

D

We now address how the Second Amendment was interpreted from immediately after its ratification through the end of the 19th century. * * * *

1. Post-ratification Commentary

Three important founding-era legal scholars interpreted the Second Amendment in published writings. All three understood it to protect an individual right unconnected with militia service. * * * *

2. Pre-Civil War Case Law

The 19th-century cases that interpreted the Second Amendment universally support an individual right unconnected to militia service. * * * *

3. Post-Civil War Legislation

In the aftermath of the Civil War, there was an outpouring of discussion of the Second Amendment in Congress and in public discourse, as people debated whether and how to secure constitutional rights for newly free slaves. Since those discussions took place 75 years after the ratification of the Second Amendment, they do not provide as much insight into its original meaning as earlier sources. Yet those born and educated in the early 19th century faced a widespread effort to limit arms ownership by a large number of citizens; their understanding of the origins and continuing significance of the Amendment is instructive.

Blacks were routinely disarmed by Southern States after the Civil War. Those who opposed these injustices frequently stated that they infringed blacks’ constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Needless to say, the claim was not that blacks were being prohibited from carrying arms in an organized state militia. * * * *

4. Post-Civil War Commentators

Every late-19th-century legal scholar that we have read interpreted the Second Amendment to secure an individual right unconnected with militia service. The most famous was the judge and professor Thomas Cooley, who wrote a massively popular 1868 Treatise on Constitutional Limitations. * * * *

E

We now ask whether any of our precedents forecloses the conclusions we have reached about the meaning of the Second Amendment. * * * * {Extensive discussion of United States v. Cruikshank (1876); Presser v. Illinois (1886); United States v. Miller (1939) omitted.}

We conclude that nothing in our precedents forecloses our adoption of the original understanding of the Second Amendment. It should be unsurprising that such a significant matter has been for so long judicially unresolved. For most of our history, the Bill of Rights was not thought applicable to the States, and the Federal Government did not significantly regulate the possession of firearms by law-abiding citizens. Other provisions of the Bill of Rights have similarly remained unilluminated for lengthy periods. This Court first held a law to violate the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech in 1931, almost 150 years after the Amendment was ratified, and it was not until after World War II that we held a law invalid under the Establishment Clause (1948). Even a question as basic as the scope of proscribable libel was not addressed by this Court until 1964, nearly two centuries after the founding. It is demonstrably not true that, as Justice Stevens claims, “for most of our history, the invalidity of Second-Amendment-based objections to firearms regulations has been well settled and uncontroversial.” For most of our history the question did not present itself.

III

Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues. Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those “in common use at the time.” We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of “dangerous and unusual weapons.”

It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service—M-16 rifles and the like—may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.

IV

We turn finally to the law at issue here. As we have said, the law totally bans handgun possession in the home. It also requires that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock at all times, rendering it inoperable.

As the quotations earlier in this opinion demonstrate, the inherent right of self-defense has been central to the Second Amendment right. The handgun ban amounts to a prohibition of an entire class of “arms” that is overwhelmingly chosen by American society for that lawful purpose. The prohibition extends, moreover, to the home, where the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute. Under any of the standards of scrutiny that we have applied to enumerated constitutional rights, banning from the home “the most preferred firearm in the nation to ‘keep’ and use for protection of one’s home and family,” would fail constitutional muster.

Few laws in the history of our Nation have come close to the severe restriction of the District’s handgun ban. * * * *

It is no answer to say, as petitioners do, that it is permissible to ban the possession of handguns so long as the possession of other firearms (i.e., long guns) is allowed. It is enough to note, as we have observed, that the American people have considered the handgun to be the quintessential self-defense weapon. There are many reasons that a citizen may prefer a handgun for home defense: It is easier to store in a location that is readily accessible in an emergency; it cannot easily be redirected or wrestled away by an attacker; it is easier to use for those without the upper-body strength to lift and aim a long gun; it can be pointed at a burglar with one hand while the other hand dials the police. Whatever the reason, handguns are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home, and a complete prohibition of their use is invalid.

We must also address the District’s requirement (as applied to respondent’s handgun) that firearms in the home be rendered and kept inoperable at all times. This makes it impossible for citizens to use them for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional. The District argues that we should interpret this element of the statute to contain an exception for self-defense. But we think that is precluded by the unequivocal text, and by the presence of certain other enumerated exceptions {in the DC Code}. * * * *

Apart from his challenge to the handgun ban and the trigger-lock requirement respondent asked the District Court to enjoin petitioners from enforcing the separate licensing requirement “in such a manner as to forbid the carrying of a firearm within one’s home or possessed land without a license.” The Court of Appeals did not invalidate the licensing requirement, but held only that the District “may not prevent [a handgun] from being moved throughout one’s house.” * * * * Respondent conceded at oral argument that he does not “have a problem with … licensing” and that the District’s law is permissible so long as it is “not enforced in an arbitrary and capricious manner.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 74–75. We therefore assume that petitioners’ issuance of a license will satisfy respondent’s prayer for relief and do not address the licensing requirement.

* * * * Nothing about those fire-safety laws {discussed in Breyer’s dissent} undermines our analysis; they do not remotely burden the right of self-defense as much as an absolute ban on handguns. Nor, correspondingly, does our analysis suggest the invalidity of laws regulating the storage of firearms to prevent accidents.

Justice Breyer points to other founding-era laws that he says “restricted the firing of guns within the city limits to at least some degree” in Boston, Philadelphia and New York. Those laws provide no support for the severe restriction in the present case. * * * *

A broader point about the laws that Justice Breyer cites: All of them punished the discharge (or loading) of guns with a small fine and forfeiture of the weapon (or in a few cases a very brief stay in the local jail), not with significant criminal penalties. They are akin to modern penalties for minor public-safety infractions like speeding or jaywalking. And although such public-safety laws may not contain exceptions for self-defense, it is inconceivable that the threat of a jaywalking ticket would deter someone from disregarding a “Do Not Walk” sign in order to flee an attacker, or that the Government would enforce those laws under such circumstances. Likewise, we do not think that a law imposing a 5-shilling fine and forfeiture of the gun would have prevented a person in the founding era from using a gun to protect himself or his family from violence, or that if he did so the law would be enforced against him. The District law, by contrast, far from imposing a minor fine, threatens citizens with a year in prison (five years for a second violation) for even obtaining a gun in the first place.

Justice Breyer moves on to make a broad jurisprudential point: He criticizes us for declining to establish a level of scrutiny for evaluating Second Amendment restrictions. He proposes, explicitly at least, none of the traditionally expressed levels (strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, rational basis), but rather a judge-empowering “interest-balancing inquiry” that “asks whether the statute burdens a protected interest in a way or to an extent that is out of proportion to the statute’s salutary effects upon other important governmental interests.” * * * * We know of no other enumerated constitutional right whose core protection has been subjected to a freestanding “interest-balancing” approach. The very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government—even the Third Branch of Government—the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon. A constitutional guarantee subject to future judges’ assessments of its usefulness is no constitutional guarantee at all. Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or (yes) even future judges think that scope too broad. We would not apply an “interest-balancing” approach to the prohibition of a peaceful neo-Nazi march through Skokie. See National Socialist Party of America v. Skokie (1977) (per curiam). The First Amendment contains the freedom-of-speech guarantee that the people ratified, which included exceptions for obscenity, libel, and disclosure of state secrets, but not for the expression of extremely unpopular and wrong-headed views. The Second Amendment is no different. Like the First, it is the very product of an interest-balancing by the people—which Justice Breyer would now conduct for them anew. And whatever else it leaves to future evaluation, it surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.

Justice Breyer chides us for leaving so many applications of the right to keep and bear arms in doubt, and for not providing extensive historical justification for those regulations of the right that we describe as permissible. But since this case represents this Court’s first in-depth examination of the Second Amendment, one should not expect it to clarify the entire field, any more than Reynolds v. United States (1879), our first in-depth Free Exercise Clause case, left that area in a state of utter certainty. And there will be time enough to expound upon the historical justifications for the exceptions we have mentioned if and when those exceptions come before us.

In sum, we hold that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense. Assuming that Heller is not disqualified from the exercise of Second Amendment rights, the District must permit him to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home.

* * *

We are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country, and we take seriously the concerns raised by the many amici who believe that prohibition of handgun ownership is a solution. The Constitution leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns. But the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home. Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.

We affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Souter, Justice Ginsburg, and Justice Breyer join, dissenting.

The question presented by this case is not whether the Second Amendment protects a “collective right” or an “individual right.” Surely it protects a right that can be enforced by individuals. But a conclusion that the Second Amendment protects an individual right does not tell us anything about the scope of that right.

Guns are used to hunt, for self-defense, to commit crimes, for sporting activities, and to perform military duties. The Second Amendment plainly does not protect the right to use a gun to rob a bank; it is equally clear that it does encompass the right to use weapons for certain military purposes. Whether it also protects the right to possess and use guns for nonmilitary purposes like hunting and personal self-defense is the question presented by this case. The text of the Amendment, its history, and our decision in United States v. Miller (1939), provide a clear answer to that question.

The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia. It was a response to concerns raised during the ratification of the Constitution that the power of Congress to disarm the state militias and create a national standing army posed an intolerable threat to the sovereignty of the several States. Neither the text of the Amendment nor the arguments advanced by its proponents evidenced the slightest interest in limiting any legislature’s authority to regulate private civilian uses of firearms. Specifically, there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.

* * * *

Justice Breyer, with whom Justice Stevens, Justice Souter, and Justice Ginsburg join, dissenting.

We must decide whether a District of Columbia law that prohibits the possession of handguns in the home violates the Second Amendment. The majority, relying upon its view that the Second Amendment seeks to protect a right of personal self-defense, holds that this law violates that Amendment. In my view, it does not.

I

The majority’s conclusion is wrong for two independent reasons. The first reason is that set forth by Justice Stevens—namely, that the Second Amendment protects militia-related, not self-defense-related, interests. These two interests are sometimes intertwined. To assure 18th-century citizens that they could keep arms for militia purposes would necessarily have allowed them to keep arms that they could have used for self-defense as well. But self-defense alone, detached from any militia-related objective, is not the Amendment’s concern.

The second independent reason is that the protection the Amendment provides is not absolute. The Amendment permits government to regulate the interests that it serves. Thus, irrespective of what those interests are—whether they do or do not include an independent interest in self-defense—the majority’s view cannot be correct unless it can show that the District’s regulation is unreasonable or inappropriate in Second Amendment terms. This the majority cannot do.

* * * *

Check Your Understanding

577 U.S. ___ (2016)

Per Curiam

The Court has held that “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding,” District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), and that this “Second Amendment right is fully applicable to the States,” McDonald v. Chicago (2010). In this case, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts upheld a Massachusetts law prohibiting the possession of stun guns after examining “whether a stun gun is the type of weapon contemplated by Congress in 1789 as being protected by the Second Amendment.”

The court offered three explanations to support its holding that the Second Amendment does not extend to stun guns. First, the court explained that stun guns are not protected because they “were not in common use at the time of the Second Amendment’s enactment.” This is inconsistent with Heller’s clear statement that the Second Amendment “extends . . . to . . . arms . . . that were not in existence at the time of the founding.”

The court next asked whether stun guns are “dangerous per se at common law and unusual,” in an attempt to apply one “important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms,” (referring to “the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons’” {in Heller}). In so doing, the court concluded that stun guns are “unusual” because they are “a thoroughly modern invention.” By equating “unusual” with “in common use at the time of the Second Amendment’s enactment,” the court’s second explanation is the same as the first; it is inconsistent with Heller for the same reason.

Finally, the court used “a contemporary lens” and found “nothing in the record to suggest that [stun guns] are readily adaptable to use in the military.” But Heller rejected the proposition “that only those weapons useful in warfare are protected.”

For these three reasons, the explanation the Massachusetts court offered for upholding the law contradicts this Court’s precedent. Consequently, the petition for a writ of certiorari and the motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis are granted. The judgment of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

Justice Alito, with whom Justice Thomas joins, concurring in the judgment {omitted}

{includes a discussion of the domestic violence context of the case in which Caetano purchased a stun gun to protect herself from her abusive ex-boyfriend}.

Check Your Understanding

and The Connecticut Citizens’ Defense League v. Malloy

804 F.3d 242 (2nd Cir. 2015)

cert denied, sub nom Shew v. Malloy, __ U.S. __ (2016).

Before Judges Cabranes, Lohier, and Droney

José A. Cabranes, Circuit Judge {for the unanimous Second Circuit panel}:

Before the Court are two appeals challenging gun-control legislation enacted by the New York and Connecticut legislatures in the wake of the 2012 mass murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The New York and Connecticut laws at issue prohibit the possession of certain semiautomatic “assault weapons” and large-capacity magazines. Following the entry of summary judgment in favor of defendants on the central claims in both the Western District of New York (William M. Skretny, Chief Judge) and the District of Connecticut (Alfred V. Covello, Judge), plaintiffs in both suits now press two arguments on appeal. First, they challenge the constitutionality of the statutes under the Second Amendment; and second, they challenge certain provisions of the statutes as unconstitutionally vague. {Most subsequent references to vagueness are omitted}. Defendants in the New York action also cross-appeal the District Court’s invalidation of New York’s separate seven-round load limit and voiding of two statutory provisions as facially unconstitutionally vague.

We hold that the core provisions of the New York and Connecticut laws prohibiting possession of semiautomatic assault weapons and large-capacity magazines do not violate the Second Amendment, and that the challenged individual provisions are not void for vagueness. The particular provision of New York’s law regulating load limits, however, does not survive the requisite scrutiny. One further specific provision—Connecticut’s prohibition on the non-semiautomatic Remington 7615—unconstitutionally infringes upon the Second Amendment right. Accordingly, we AFFIRM in part the judgment of the District Court for the District of Connecticut insofar as it upheld the prohibition of semiautomatic assault weapons and large-capacity magazines, and REVERSE in part its holding with respect to the Remington. With respect to the judgment of the District Court for the Western District of New York, we REVERSE in part certain vagueness holdings, and we otherwise AFFIRM that judgment insofar as it upheld the prohibition of semiautomatic assault weapons and large-capacity magazines and invalidated the load limit.

BACKGROUND

I. Prior “Assault Weapon” Legislation

New York and Connecticut have long restricted possession of certain automatic and semiautomatic firearms that came to be known as “assault weapons.” In 1993, Connecticut’s General Assembly adopted the state’s first assault-weapon ban, which criminalized the possession of firearms “capable of fully automatic, semiautomatic or burst fire at the option of the user,” including 67 specifically enumerated semiautomatic firearms.

The following year, after five years of hearings on the harms thought to be caused by certain firearms, the U.S. Congress enacted legislation restricting the manufacture, transfer, and possession of certain “semiautomatic 1 assault weapons.” The 1994 federal statute defined “semiautomatic assault weapons” in two ways. First, it catalogued 18 specifically prohibited firearms, including, as relevant here, the Colt AR–15. Second, it introduced a “two-feature test,” which prohibited any semiautomatic firearm that contained at least two listed military-style features, including a telescoping stock, a conspicuously protruding pistol grip, a bayonet mount, a flash suppressor, and a grenade launcher. The federal statute also prohibited magazines with a capacity of more than ten rounds of ammunition, or which could be “readily restored or converted to accept” more than 10 rounds. The federal assault-weapons ban expired in 2004, pursuant to its sunset provision.

Following the passage of the federal assault-weapons ban, both New York, in 2000, and Connecticut, in 2001, enacted legislation that closely mirrored the federal statute, including the two-feature test for prohibited semiautomatic firearms. Unlike the federal statute, however, these state laws contained no sunset provisions and thus remained in force until amended by the statutes at issue here.

On December 14, 2012, a gunman shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and murdered twenty first-graders and six adults using a semiautomatic AR–15–type rifle with ten large-capacity magazines. This appalling attack, in addition to other recent mass shootings, provided the immediate impetus for the legislation at issue in this appeal.

II. The New York Legislation

New York enacted the Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act (SAFE Act) on January 15, 2013. The SAFE Act expands the definition of prohibited “assault weapons” by replacing the prior two-feature test with a stricter one-feature test. As the name suggests, the new test defines a semiautomatic firearm as a prohibited “assault weapon” if it contains any one of an enumerated list of military-style features, including a telescoping stock, a conspicuously protruding pistol grip, a thumbhole stock, a bayonet mount, a flash suppressor, a barrel shroud, and a grenade launcher. This statutory definition encompasses, and thereby bans, the semiautomatic weapon used by the mass-shooter at Sandy Hook. New York law makes the possession, manufacture, transport, or disposal of an “assault weapon” a felony. Pursuant to the SAFE Act’s grandfather clause, however, pre-existing lawful owners of banned assault weapons may continue to possess them if they register those weapons with the New York State Police.

The SAFE Act also bans magazines that can hold more than ten rounds of ammunition or that can be readily restored or converted to accept more than ten rounds. Although New York had restricted possession of such magazines since 2000, the SAFE Act eliminated a grandfather clause for magazines manufactured before September 1994.

The SAFE Act’s large-capacity-magazine ban contains an additional, unique prohibition on possession of a magazine loaded with more than seven rounds of ammunition. (For the purpose of this definition, a round is a single unit of ammunition.) As originally enacted, the SAFE Act would have imposed a magazine capacity restriction of seven rounds. Because very few seven-round magazines are manufactured, however, the law was subsequently amended to impose a ten-round capacity restriction coupled with a seven-round load limit. Thus, as amended, the statute permits a New York gun owner to possess a magazine capable of holding up to ten rounds, but he may not fully load it outside of a firing range or official shooting competition.

III. The Connecticut Legislation

Several months after New York passed the SAFE Act, and after extensive public hearings and legislative and executive study, Connecticut adopted “An Act Concerning Gun Violence Prevention and Children’s Safety” on April 4, 2013, and later amended the 8 on June 18, 2013. Like its New York analogue, the Connecticut legislation replaced the state’s two-feature definition of prohibited “assault weapons” with a stricter one-feature test, using a list of military-style features similar to New York’s, including a telescoping stock, a thumbhole stock, a forward pistol grip, a flash suppressor, a grenade launcher, and a threaded barrel capable of accepting a flash suppressor or silencer. Unlike its counterpart in New York, the Connecticut legislation additionally bans 183 particular assault weapons listed by make and model, as well as “copies or duplicates” of most of those firearms. The Connecticut law makes it a felony to transport, import, sell, or possess semiautomatic “assault weapons,” and it also contains a grandfather clause permitting pre-existing owners of assault weapons to continue to possess their firearms if properly registered with the state.

The June 2013 amendment to the Connecticut legislation criminalizes the possession of “[l]arge capacity magazine[s]” that can hold, or can be “readily restored or converted to accept,” more than ten rounds of ammunition. Unlike its New York counterpart, however, the Connecticut legislation contains no additional “load limit” rule.

IV. Procedural History

Plaintiffs—a combination of advocacy groups, businesses, and individual gun owners—filed suit against the governors of New York and Connecticut and other state officials, first in the Western District of New York on March 21, 2013 and then in the District of Connecticut on May 22, 2013. In both actions, plaintiffs sought declaratory and injunctive relief for alleged infringement of their constitutional rights. Specifically, plaintiffs contended that the statutes’ prohibitions on semiautomatic assault weapons and large-capacity magazines violate their Second Amendment rights, and that numerous specific provisions of each statute are unconstitutionally vague. In the New York action, plaintiffs also challenged the seven-round load limit as a violation of the Second Amendment.

Following plaintiffs’ motions for preliminary injunctions, parties in both suits cross-moved for summary judgment. On December 31, 2013, Chief Judge Skretny of the Western District of New York granted in part and denied in part the cross-motions for summary judgment. Specifically, the District Court found that New York’s ban on assault weapons and large capacity magazines burdened plaintiffs’ Second Amendment rights, but did not violate the Second Amendment upon application of so-called intermediate scrutiny. The Court also held, however, that the seven-round load limit did not survive intermediate scrutiny. * * * * In sum, Chief Judge Skretny upheld as constitutional, upon intermediate scrutiny, the core provisions of New York’s SAFE Act restricting semiautomatic assault weapons and large-capacity magazines, but struck down certain marginal aspects of the law.

On January 30, 2014, Judge Covello of the District of Connecticut granted defendants’ motion for summary judgment in its entirety. Like his counterpart in New York, Judge Covello held that the Connecticut legislation burdened plaintiffs’ Second Amendment rights, applied intermediate scrutiny, and concluded that the prohibition on semiautomatic assault weapons and large-capacity magazines was fully consistent with the Second Amendment. * * * *

Plaintiffs thereafter appealed. In the New York action only, defendants cross-appeal the District Court’s judgment insofar as it invalidated the SAFE Act’s seven-round load limit and voided as unconstitutionally vague the SAFE Act’s prohibitions on the misspelled “muzzle break” and “semiautomatic version[s]” of an automatic rifle, shotgun, or firearm.

DISCUSSION

These appeals present two questions: first, whether the Second Amendment permits the regulation of the assault weapons and large-capacity magazines at issue here; and second, whether the challenged provisions of the statutes provide constitutionally sufficient notice of the conduct proscribed {and are void for vagueness}.

We review de novo a district court’s order granting summary judgment, construing the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party. As relevant here, we also “review de novo the district court’s legal conclusions, including those interpreting and determining the constitutionality of a statute.” * * * *

V. Second Amendment Challenge

We conclude that the core challenged prohibitions of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines do not violate the Second Amendment. Guided by the teachings of the Supreme Court, our own jurisprudence, and the examples provided by our sister circuits, we adopt a two-step analytical framework, determining first whether the regulated weapons fall within the protections of the Second Amendment and then deciding and applying the appropriate level of constitutional scrutiny. Only two specific provisions—New York’s seven-round load limit, and Connecticut’s prohibition on the non-semiautomatic Remington 7615—are unconstitutional.

a. Heller and McDonald

The Second Amendment provides that “[a] well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Our analysis of that amendment begins with the seminal decision in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008). In Heller, the Supreme Court, based on an extensive textual and historical analysis, announced that the Second Amendment’s operative clause codified a pre-existing “individual right to possess and carry weapons.” Recognizing, however, that “the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited,” Heller emphasized that “the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” Instead, the Second Amendment protects only those weapons “ ‘in common use’ ” by citizens “for lawful purposes like self-defense.”

Having established these basic precepts, Heller concluded that the District of Columbia’s ban on possession of handguns was unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. The Supreme Court noted that “handguns are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home,” where, the Court observed, “the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute.”

Heller stopped well short of extending its rationale to other firearms restrictions. Indeed, Heller explicitly identified as “presumptively lawful” such “regulatory measures” as “prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, [and] laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” Most importantly here, Heller also endorsed the “historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.”

Aside from these broad guidelines, Heller offered little guidance for resolving future Second Amendment challenges. The Court did imply that such challenges are subject to one of “the standards of scrutiny that we have applied to enumerated constitutional rights,” though it declined to say which, accepting that many applications of the Second Amendment would remain “in doubt.”

That doubt persisted after McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010) in which the Supreme Court invalidated municipal statutes banning handguns in the home. McDonald was a landmark case in one respect—the Court held for the first time that the Fourteenth Amendment “incorporates” the Second Amendment against the states. Otherwise, McDonald did not expand upon Heller’s analysis and simply reiterated Heller’s assurances regarding the viability of many gun-control provisions. Neither Heller nor McDonald, then, delineated the precise scope of the Second Amendment or the standards by which lower courts should assess the constitutionality of firearms restrictions.

b. Analytical Rubric

Lacking more detailed guidance from the Supreme Court, this Circuit has begun to develop a framework for determining the constitutionality of firearm restrictions. It requires a two-step inquiry.

First, we consider whether the restriction burdens conduct protected by the Second Amendment. If the challenged restriction does not implicate conduct within the scope of the Second Amendment, our analysis ends and the legislation stands. Otherwise, we move to the second step of our inquiry, in which we must determine and apply the appropriate level of scrutiny.

This two-step rubric flows from the dictates of Heller and McDonald and our own precedents in Kachalsky and Decastro. It also broadly comports with the prevailing two-step approach of other courts, including the Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, and D.C. Circuits, and with the approach used in “other areas of constitutional law.”

c. First Step: Whether the Second Amendment Applies

As an initial matter, then, we must determine whether the challenged legislation impinges upon conduct protected by the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment protects only “the sorts of weapons” that are (1) “in common use” and (2) “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” We consider each requirement in turn.

i. Common Use

The parties contest whether the assault weapons at issue here are commonly owned. Plaintiffs argue that the weapons at issue are owned in large numbers by law-abiding Americans. They present statistics showing that nearly four million units of a single assault weapon, the popular AR–15, have been manufactured between 1986 and March 2013. Plaintiffs further assert that only 7.5 percent of assault-weapon owners are active law enforcement officers, and that most owners of assault weapons own only one or two such weapons, such that the banned firearms are not concentrated in a small number of homes, but rather spread widely among the gun-owning public. Defendants counter that assault weapons only represent about two percent of the nation’s firearms (admittedly amounting to approximately seven million guns). Moreover, defendants argue that the statistics inflate the number of individual civilian owners because many of these weapons are purchased by law enforcement or smuggled to criminals, and many civilian gun owners own multiple assault weapons.

This much is clear: Americans own millions of the firearms that the challenged legislation prohibits.

The same is true of large-capacity magazines, as defined by the New York and Connecticut statutes. Though fewer statistics are available for magazines, those statistics suggest that about 25 million large-capacity magazines were available in 1995, shortly after the federal assault weapons ban was enacted, and nearly 50 million such magazines—or nearly two large-capacity magazines for each gun capable of accepting one—were approved for import by 2000.

Even accepting the most conservative estimates cited by the parties and by amici, the assault weapons and large-capacity magazines at issue are “in common use” as that term was used in Heller. The D.C. Circuit reached the same conclusion in its well-reasoned decision in Heller II, which upheld the constitutionality of a District of Columbia gun-control act substantially similar to those at issue here.

To be sure, as defendants note, these assault weapons and large-capacity magazines are not as commonly owned as the handguns at issue in Heller, which were “the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home.” But nothing in Heller limited its holding to handguns; indeed, the Court emphasized that “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms,” not just to a small subset.

ii. Typical Possession

We must next determine whether assault weapons and large-capacity magazines are “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” While “common use” is an objective and largely statistical inquiry, “typical[ ] possess[ion]” requires us to look into both broad patterns of use and the subjective motives of gun owners.

The parties offer competing evidence about these weapons’ “typical use.” Plaintiffs suggest that assault weapons are among the safest and most effective firearms for civilian self-defense. Defendants disagree, arguing that these weapons are used disproportionately in gun crimes, rather than for lawful pursuits like self-defense and hunting.

Even if defendants are correct, however, the same could be said for the handguns in Heller. Though handguns comprise only about one-third of the nation’s firearms, by some estimates they account for 71 percent to 83 percent of the firearms used in murders and 84 percent to 90 percent of the firearms used in other violent crimes. That evidence of disproportionate criminal use did not prevent the Supreme Court from holding that handguns merited constitutional protection.

Looking solely at a weapon’s association with crime, then, is insufficient. We must also consider more broadly whether the weapon is “dangerous and unusual” in the hands of law-abiding civilians. Heller expressly highlighted “weapons that are most useful in military service,” such as the fully automatic M–16 rifle, as weapons that could be banned without implicating the Second Amendment. But this analysis is difficult to manage in practice. Because the AR–15 is “the civilian version of the military’s M–16 rifle,” defendants urge that it should be treated identically for Second Amendment purposes. But the Supreme Court’s very choice of descriptor for the AR–15—the “civilian version”—could instead imply that such guns are “traditionally have been widely accepted as lawful.”

Ultimately, then, neither the Supreme Court’s categories nor the evidence in the record cleanly resolves the question of whether semiautomatic assault weapons and large-capacity magazines are “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” Confronting this record, Chief Judge Skretny reasonably found that reliable empirical evidence of lawful possession for lawful purposes was “elusive,” beyond ownership statistics. We agree.

In the absence of clearer guidance from the Supreme Court or stronger evidence in the record, we follow the approach taken by the District Courts and by the D.C. Circuit in Heller II and assume for the sake of argument that these “commonly used” weapons and magazines are also “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” In short, we proceed on the assumption that these laws ban weapons protected by the Second Amendment. This assumption is warranted at this stage, because, the statutes at issue nonetheless largely pass constitutional muster.

d. Second Step: Level of Scrutiny

Having concluded that the statutes impinge upon Second Amendment rights, we must next determine and apply the appropriate level of scrutiny. We employ the familiar “levels of scrutiny” analysis introduced in the famous Footnote Four of United States v. Carolene Products Co., and begin by asking which level of judicial “scrutiny” applies.

Though Heller did not specify the precise level of scrutiny applicable to firearms regulations, it rejected mere rational basis review as insufficient for the type of regulation challenged there. At the same time, this Court and our sister Circuits have suggested that heightened scrutiny is not always appropriate. In determining whether heightened scrutiny applies, we consider two factors: (1) “how close the law comes to the core of the Second Amendment right” and (2) “the severity of the law’s burden on the right.” Laws that neither implicate the core protections of the Second Amendment nor substantially burden their exercise do not receive heightened scrutiny.

i. The Core of the Right

By their terms, the statutes at issue implicate the core of the Second Amendment’s protections by extending into the home, “where the need for defense of self, family and property is most acute.” Semiautomatic assault weapons and large-capacity magazines are commonly owned by many law-abiding Americans, and their complete prohibition, including within the home, requires us to consider the scope of Second Amendment guarantees “at their zenith.” At the same time, the regulated weapons are not nearly as popularly owned and used for self-defense as the handgun, that “quintessential self-defense weapon.” Thus these statutes implicate Second Amendment rights, but not to the same extent as the laws at issue in Heller and McDonald.

ii. The Severity of the Burden

In Decastro {United States v. Decastro, 2^nd Cir. 2012} we explained that heightened scrutiny need not apply to “any marginal, incremental or even appreciable restraint on the right to keep and bear arms.” Rather, “heightened scrutiny is triggered only by those restrictions that (like the complete prohibition on handguns struck down in Heller) operate as a substantial burden on the ability of law-abiding citizens to possess and use a firearm for . . . lawful purposes.” Our later decision in Kachalsky {v. Cty of Westchester, 2^nd Cir. 2012} confirmed this approach, concluding that “some form of heightened scrutiny would be appropriate” for regulations that impose a “substantial burden” on Second Amendment rights.

The practice of applying heightened scrutiny only to laws that “burden the Second Amendment right substantially” is, as we noted in Decastro, broadly consistent with our approach to other fundamental constitutional rights, including those protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. We typically require a threshold showing to trigger heightened scrutiny of laws alleged to implicate such constitutional contexts as takings, voting rights, and free speech. Though we have historically expressed “hesitan[ce] to import substantive First Amendment principles wholesale into Second Amendment jurisprudence,” we readily “consult principles from other areas of constitutional law, including the First Amendment” in determining whether a law “substantially burdens Second Amendment rights.”

The scope of the legislative restriction and the availability of alternatives factor into our analysis of the “degree to which the challenged law burdens the right.” No “substantial burden” exists—and hence heightened scrutiny is not triggered—“if adequate alternatives remain for law-abiding citizens to acquire a firearm for self-defense.”

The laws at issue are both broad and burdensome. Unlike statutes that “merely regulate the manner in which persons may exercise their Second Amendment rights,” these laws impose an outright ban statewide. The “absolute prohibition” instituted in both states thus creates a “serious encroachment” on the Second Amendment right. These statutes are not mere “marginal, incremental or even appreciable restraint[s] on the right to keep and bear arms.” They impose a substantial burden on Second Amendment rights and therefore trigger the application of some form of heightened scrutiny.

Heightened scrutiny need not, however, “be akin to strict scrutiny when a law burdens the Second Amendment”—particularly when that burden does not constrain the Amendment’s “core” area of protection. The instant bans are dissimilar from D.C.’s unconstitutional prohibition of “an entire class of ‘arms’ that is overwhelmingly chosen by American society for [the] lawful purpose” of self-defense. New York and Connecticut have not banned an entire class of arms. Indeed, plaintiffs themselves acknowledge that there is no class of firearms known as “semiautomatic assault weapons”—a descriptor they call purely political in nature. Plaintiffs nonetheless argue that the legislation does prohibit “firearms of a universally recognized type—semiautomatic.” Not so. Rather, both New York and Connecticut ban only a limited subset of semiautomatic firearms, which contain one or more enumerated military-style features. As Heller makes plain, the fact that the statutes at issue do not ban “an entire class of ‘arms’ ” makes the restrictions substantially less burdensome. In both states, citizens may continue to arm themselves with non-semiautomatic weapons or with any semiautomatic gun that does not contain any of the enumerated military-style features. Similarly, while citizens may not acquire high-capacity magazines, they can purchase any number of magazines with a capacity of ten or fewer rounds. In sum, numerous “alternatives remain for law-abiding citizens to acquire a firearm for self-defense.” We agree with the D.C. Circuit that “the prohibition of semi-automatic rifles and large-capacity magazines does not effectively disarm individuals or substantially affect their ability to defend themselves.” The burden imposed by the challenged legislation is real, but it is not “severe.”

Accordingly, we conclude that intermediate, rather than strict, scrutiny is appropriate. This conclusion coheres not only with that reached by the D.C. Circuit when considering substantially similar gun-control laws, but also with the analyses undertaken by other courts, many of which have applied intermediate scrutiny to laws implicating the Second Amendment.

e. Application of Intermediate Scrutiny

Though “intermediate scrutiny” may have different connotations in different contexts, here the key question is whether the statutes at issue are “substantially related to the achievement of an important governmental interest.” It is beyond cavil that both states have “substantial, indeed compelling, governmental interests in public safety and crime prevention.” We need only inquire, then, whether the challenged laws are “substantially related” to the achievement of that governmental interest. We conclude that the prohibitions on semiautomatic assault weapons and large-capacity magazines meet this standard.

i. Prohibition on “Assault Weapons”

To survive intermediate scrutiny, the “fit between the challenged regulation [and the government interest] need only be substantial, not perfect.” Unlike strict scrutiny analysis, we need not ensure that the statute is “narrowly tailored” or the “least restrictive available means to serve the stated governmental interest.” Moreover, we have observed that state regulation of the right to bear arms “has always been more robust” than analogous regulation of other constitutional rights. So long as the defendants produce evidence that “fairly support[s]” their rationale, the laws will pass constitutional muster.

In making this determination, we afford “substantial deference to the predictive judgments of the legislature.” We remain mindful that, “[i]n the context of firearm regulation, the legislature is ‘far better equipped than the judiciary’ to make sensitive public policy judgments (within constitutional limits) concerning the dangers in carrying firearms and the manner to combat those risks.” Our role, therefore, is only to assure ourselves that, in formulating their respective laws, New York and Connecticut have “drawn reasonable inferences based on substantial evidence.”

Both states have done so with respect to their prohibitions on certain semiautomatic firearms. At least since the enactment of the federal assault-weapons ban, semiautomatic assault weapons have been understood to pose unusual risks. When used, these weapons tend to result in more numerous wounds, more serious wounds, and more victims. These weapons are disproportionately used in crime, and particularly in criminal mass shootings like the attack in Newtown. They are also disproportionately used to kill law enforcement officers: one study shows that between 1998 and 2001, assault weapons were used to gun down at least twenty percent of officers killed in the line of duty.

The record reveals that defendants have tailored the legislation at issue to address these particularly hazardous weapons. The dangers posed by some of the military-style features prohibited by the statutes—such as grenade launchers and silencers—are manifest and incontrovertible. As for the other enumerated military-style features—such as the flash suppressor, protruding grip, and barrel shrouds—New York and Connecticut have determined, as did the U.S. Congress, that the “net effect of these military combat features is a capability for lethality—more wounds, more serious, in more victims—far beyond that of other firearms in general, including other semiautomatic guns.” Indeed, plaintiffs explicitly contend that these features improve a firearm’s “accuracy,” “comfort,” and “utility.” This circumlocution is, as Chief Judge Skretny observed, a milder way of saying that these features make the weapons more deadly.

The legislation is also specifically targeted to prevent mass shootings like that in Newtown, in which the shooter used a semiautomatic assault weapon. Plaintiffs complain that mass shootings are “particularly rare events” and thus, even if successful, the legislation will have a “minimal impact” on most violent crime. That may be so. But gun-control legislation “need not strike at all evils at the same time” to be constitutional.

Defendants also have adduced evidence that the regulations will achieve their intended end of reducing circulation of assault weapons among criminals. Plaintiffs counter—without record evidence—that the statutes will primarily disarm law-abiding citizens and will thus impair the very public-safety objectives they were designed to achieve. Given the dearth of evidence that law-abiding citizens typically use these weapons for self-defense, plaintiffs’ concerns are speculative at best, and certainly not strong enough to overcome the “substantial deference” we owe to “predictive judgments of the legislature” on matters of public safety. The mere possibility that some subset of people intent on breaking the law will indeed ignore these statutes does not make them unconstitutional.

Ultimately, “[i]t is the legislature’s job, not ours, to weigh conflicting evidence and make policy judgments.” We must merely ensure that the challenged laws are substantially—even if not perfectly—related to the articulated governmental interest. The prohibition of semiautomatic assault weapons passes this test.

ii. Prohibition on Large–Capacity Magazines

The same logic applies a fortiori to the restrictions on large-capacity magazines. The record evidence suggests that large-capacity magazines may “present even greater dangers to crime and violence than assault weapons alone, in part because they are more prevalent and can be and are used in both assault weapons and non-assault weapons.” Large-capacity magazines are disproportionately used in mass shootings, like the one in Newtown, in which the shooter used multiple large-capacity magazines to fire 154 rounds in less than five minutes. Like assault weapons, large-capacity magazines result in “more shots fired, persons wounded, and wounds per victim than do other gun attacks.” Professor Christopher Koper, a firearms expert relied upon by all parties in both states, stated that it is “particularly” the ban on large-capacity magazines that has the greatest “potential to prevent and limit shootings in the state over the long-run.”

We therefore conclude that New York and Connecticut have adequately established a substantial relationship between the prohibition of both semiautomatic assault weapons and large-capacity magazines and the important—indeed, compelling—state interest in controlling crime. These prohibitions survive intermediate scrutiny.

iii. Seven–Round Load Limit

Though the key provisions of both statutes pass constitutional muster on this record, another aspect of New York’s SAFE Act does not: the seven-round load limit, which makes it “unlawful for a person to knowingly possess an ammunition feeding device where such device contains more than seven rounds of ammunition.”

As noted above, the seven-round load limit was a second-best solution. New York determined that only magazines containing seven rounds or fewer can be safely possessed, but it also recognized that seven-round magazines are difficult to obtain commercially. Its compromise was to permit gun owners to use ten-round magazines if they were loaded with seven or fewer rounds.

On the record before us, we cannot conclude that New York has presented sufficient evidence that a seven-round load limit would best protect public safety. Here we are considering not a capacity restriction, but rather a load limit. Nothing in the SAFE Act will outlaw or reduce the number of ten-round magazines in circulation. It will not decrease their availability or in any way frustrate the access of those who intend to use ten-round magazines for mass shootings or other crimes. It is thus entirely untethered from the stated rationale of reducing the number of assault weapons and large capacity magazines in circulation. New York has failed to present evidence that the mere existence of this load limit will convince any would-be malefactors to load magazines capable of holding ten rounds with only the permissible seven.

To be sure, the mere possibility of criminal disregard of the laws does not foreclose an attempt by the state to enact firearm regulations. But on intermediate scrutiny review, the state cannot “get away with shoddy data or reasoning.” To survive intermediate scrutiny, the defendants must show “reasonable inferences based on substantial evidence” that the statutes are substantially related to the governmental interest. With respect to the load limit provision alone, New York has failed to do so.

VI.

Vagueness Challenge

{omitted}

CONCLUSION

To summarize, we hold as follows:

(1) The core prohibitions by New York and Connecticut of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines do not violate the Second Amendment.

(a) We assume that the majority of the prohibited conduct falls within the scope of Second Amendment protections. The statutes are appropriately evaluated under the constitutional standard of “intermediate scrutiny”—that is, whether they are “substantially related to the achievement of an important governmental interest.”

(b) Because the prohibitions are substantially related to the important governmental interests of public safety and crime reduction, they pass constitutional muster.

We therefore AFFIRM the relevant portions of the judgments of the Western District of New York and the District of Connecticut insofar as they upheld the constitutionality of state prohibitions on semiautomatic assault weapons and large-capacity magazines.

(2) We hold that the specific prohibition on the non-semiautomatic Remington 7615 falls within the scope of Second Amendment protection and subsequently fails intermediate scrutiny. Accordingly, we REVERSE that limited portion of the judgment of the District of Connecticut. In doing so, we emphasize the limited nature of our holding with respect to the Remington 7615, in that it merely reflects the presumption required by the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment extends to all bearable arms, and that the State, by failing to present any argument at all regarding this weapon or others like it, has failed to rebut that presumption. We do not foreclose the possibility that States could in the future present evidence to support such a prohibition.

(3) New York’s seven-round load limit does not survive intermediate scrutiny in the absence of requisite record evidence and a substantial relationship between the statutory provision and important state safety interests. We therefore AFFIRM the judgment of the Western District of New York insofar as it held this provision unconstitutional.

(4) No challenged provision in either statute is unconstitutionally vague. Accordingly, we AFFIRM the judgments of the District of Connecticut and the Western District of New York insofar as they denied vagueness challenges to provisions involving the capacity of tubular magazines, “copies or duplicates,” or a firearm’s ability to “be readily restored or converted.” We REVERSE the judgment of the Western District of New York insofar as it found language pertaining to “versions” and “muzzle breaks” to be unconstitutionally vague.

1. Be prepared to discuss the holdings of Heller and McDonald. Pay attention to the chronological sequence of cases. Why would Second Amendment advocates advance the claims in Heller before those in McDonald?

2. Like McDonald, Heller has extensive opinions totaling over 150 pages and our version is again heavily edited. Do you agree with the majority’s textual reading of the Second Amendment? Can you tell what the contrary interpretation would be?

3. Be prepared to apply the “analytic rubric” of the Second Circuit in New York State Rifle and Pistol Ass’n v. Cuomo to any regulation.

In the 2019-2020 Term, the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari to another Second Circuit opinion applying the settled “analytic framework” to a New York City gun regulation. New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. City of New York, 883 F.3d 45 (2d Cir. 2018), cert. granted New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. City of New York, N.Y., ___ U.S.___, 139 S. Ct. 939, 203 L. Ed. 2d 130 (2019).

The regulation at issue in New York State Rifle & Pistol v. City of New York was part of the New York City gun licensing scheme, Title 38, Chapter Five, Section 23 of the Rules of the City of New York (“RCNY”), under which an individual with a “premises license” for a handgun may not remove the handgun “from the address specified on the license except as otherwise provided in this chapter.” 38 RCNY § 5-23(a)(1). Under Rule 5-23 (“the Rule”), the licensee “may transport her/his handgun(s) directly to and from an authorized small arms range/shooting club, unloaded, in a locked container, the ammunition to be carried separately.” Id. § 5-23(a)(3). The New York Police Department–License Division (“License Division”) has defined “authorized” facilities, among other requirements, to be “those located in New York City.” The Plaintiffs sought to remove handguns from the licensed premises for the purposes of going to shooting ranges and engaging in target practice outside New York City as well as, in the case of one Plaintiff, transporting the handgun to a second home in upstate New York.

The Second Circuit upheld the constitutionality of the rule, applying intermediate scrutiny because the burden was not substantial, reasoning that one could obtain a gun at the firing range or obtain a license in the location of the second home for a second gun. The Second Circuit concluded that the Rule makes a contribution to an important state interest in public safety substantial enough to easily justify the insignificant and indirect costs it imposes on Second Amendment interests.

The Second Circuit also held that the New York City rule did not violate the right to interstate travel (or the Commerce Clause).

After the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari, New York City amended its rule, effective July 21, 2019, see https://rules.cityofnewyork.us/content/premise-handgun-license-amendment.

The amended rule added specific language to provide that owners of a premises license for a handgun may transport the licensed firearm to

(i) Another residence or place of business where the licensee is authorized to possess such handgun.

(ii) A small arms range/shooting club authorized by law to operate as such. Such range or club may be within or outside New York City.

(iii) A shooting competition at which the licensee is authorized to possess such handgun consistent with the law applicable at the place of such competition.

In a brief per curiam opinion, the Court held that given the New York City amended rule, the “claim for declaratory and injunctive relief with respect to the City’s old rule is therefore moot,” New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. City of New York, New York, 590 U.S. ___, 140 S. Ct. 1525, 206 L. Ed. 2d 798 (2020). The Court did remand for consideration of whether a damages claim could be added. Justice Alito dissented, joined by Justice Gorsuch and in part by Justice Thomas.