Ronald Koons v. Attorney General New Jersey

PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

_____________

Nos. 23-1900 & 23-2043

_____________

RONALD KOONS; NICHOLAS GAUDIO; JEFFREY M.

MULLER; GIL TAL; SECOND AMENDMENT

FOUNDATION INC; FIREARMS POLICY COALITION

INC; COALITION OF NEW JERSEY FIREARM

OWNERS; NEW JERSEY SECOND AMENDMENT

SOCIETY

v.

ATTORNEY GENERAL NEW JERSEY AND

SUPERINTENDENT NEW JERSEY STATE POLICE,

PRESIDENT OF NEW JERSEY STATE SENATE,

SPEAKER OF THE NEW JERSEY GENERAL

ASSEMBLY

Intervenors in District Court

(D.N.J. No. 1:22-cv-07464)

AARON SIEGEL; JASON COOK; JOSEPH DELUCA;

NICOLE CUOZZO; TIMOTHY VARGA; CHRISTOPHER

STAMOS; KIM HENRY; ASSOCIATION OF NEW

JERSEY RIFLE AND PISTOL CLUBS INC.

v.

ATTORNEY GENERAL NEW JERSEY;

SUPERINTENDENT NEW JERSEY STATE POLICE

PRESIDENT OF THE NEW JERSEY STATE SENATE,

SPEAKER OF THE NEW JERSEY GENERAL

ASSEMBLY

Intervenors in District Court

(D.N.J. No. 1:22-cv-07463)

Attorney General New Jersey and Superintendent New

Jersey State Police,

Appellants in 23-1900

Aaron Siegel; Jason Cook; Joseph Deluca; Nicole Cuozzo;

Timothy Varga; Christopher Stamos; Kim Henry and

Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Club, Inc.,

Appellants in 23-2043

_______________

On Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of New Jersey

(D.C. Nos. 1-22-cv-07464 & 1-22-cv-07643)

District Judge: Honorable Renée M. Bumb

_______________

Argued October 25, 2023

Before: KRAUSE, PORTER, and CHUNG, Circuit Judges.

(Filed September 10, 2025)

2

Angela Cai [ARGUED]

Jeremy Feigenbaum

Office of Attorney General of New Jersey

25 Market Street

Richard J. Hughes Justice Complex

P.O. Box 112

Trenton, NJ 08625

Counsel for Appellants in 23-1900

Leon J. Sokol [ARGUED]

Cullen & Dykman

433 Hackensack Avenue

Hackensack, NJ 07601

Edward J. Kologi

Kologi & Simitz

500 N Wood Avenue

Suite 4B

Linden, NJ 07036

Counsel for Intervenor-Appellants

David A. Luttinger, Jr.

Covington & Burling

The New York Times Building

620 Eighth Avenue

New York, NY 10012

Counsel for Amicus Curiae Brady Center to Prevent

Gun Violence in Support of Appellants

Gretchen A. Pickering

Jeffrey H. Sutherland

3

Cape May County Office of Prosecutor

4 Moore Road

DN-110

Cape May Court House, NJ 08210

Counsel for Amicus Curiae County Prosecutor’s

Association of New Jersey in Support of Appellants

Jeremy Girton

Office of Attorney General for the District of Columbia

Office of the Solicitor General

400 6th Street NW

Suite 8100

Washington, DC 20001

Counsel for Amicus Curiae District of Columbia in

Support of Appellants

Janet Carter

Everytown Law

450 Lexington Avenue

P.O. Box 4184

New York, NY 10163

Counsel for Amicus Curiae Everytown for Gun Safety

in Support of Appellants

Simon B. Kress

Alan E. Schoenfeld

Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr

7 World Trade Center

250 Greenwich Street

New York, NY 10007

Counsel for Amici Curiae Frederick Vars and Ian

Ayres in Support of Appellants

4

Joshua A. Matz

Hecker Fink

1050 K Street NW

Suite 1040

Washington, DC 20001

Amit Jain

Disha Verma

Hecker Fink

350 Fifth Avenue

63rd Floor

New York, NY 10118

Counsel for Amicus Curiae Giffords Law Center to

Prevent Gun Violence in Support of Appellants

Jasmeet K. Ahuja

Hogan Lovells US

1735 Market Street

23rd Floor

Philadelphia, PA 19103

Counsel for Amicus Curiae March for Our Lives

Foundation in Support of Appellants

Peter A. Patterson [ARGUED]

David H. Thompson

Cooper & Kirk

1523 New Hampshire Avenue NW

Washington, DC 20036

David D. Jensen

David Jensen PLLC

5

33 Henry Street

Beacon, NY 12508

Counsel for Appellees Koons Plaintiffs

Mariel A. Brookins

Paul D. Clement

Andrew C. Lawrence

Erin E. Murphy [ARGUED]

Clement & Murphy

706 Duke Street

Alexandria, VA 22314

Daniel L. Schmutter

Hartman & Winnicki, P.C.

74 Passaic Street

Ridgewood, NJ 07450

Counsel for Appellants in 23-2043

Bradley A. Benbrook

701 University Avenue

Suite 106

Sacramento, CA 95825

Counsel for Amici Curiae Citizens Committee for the

Right to Keep and Bear Arms and FPC Action

Foundation in Support of Appellees

Robert J. Olson

370 Maple Avenue W

Suite 4

Vienna, VA 22180

6

Counsel for Amici Gun Owners of America, Inc., Gun

Owners Foundation, Gun Owners of California, Inc.,

DC Project, Tennessee Firearms Association, Heller

Foundation, Second Amendment Law Center, and

California Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. in Support

of Appellees

Steven W. Dulan

5311 Park Lake Road

East Lansing, MI 48823

Counsel for Amici Curiae Michigan Coalition for

Responsible Gun Owners and New Jersey Firearm

Owners Syndicate in Support of Appellees

_______________

OPINION OF THE COURT

_______________

7

KRAUSE, Circuit Judge.

Today, we must decide a question of immense public

importance: whether it is likely that provisions of New Jersey

Public Law 2022, Chapter 131, which impose certain firearms-

permitting requirements and prohibit the carrying of firearms

in certain “sensitive places,” passes constitutional muster.

Challengers assert that these restrictions impermissibly

infringe upon the Second Amendment right, recognized by the

Supreme Court in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v.

Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), to carry a handgun for self-defense

outside of the home. New Jersey defends its law as “consistent

with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” as

Bruen requires. Id. at 34.

For the most part, we agree with New Jersey and join

our sister circuits that have upheld similar sensitive-places

laws. See LaFave v. Cnty. of Fairfax, —F.4th—, 2025 WL

2458491 (4th Cir. Aug. 27, 2025); Antonyuk v. James, 120

F.4th 941 (2d Cir. 2024), cert. denied, 145 S. Ct. 1900 (2025);

Wolford v. Lopez, 116 F.4th 959 (9th Cir. 2024). The Supreme

Court in Bruen recognized the authority of legislatures to

prohibit the carry and use of firearms in certain categories of

places in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including

“legislative assemblies, polling places, and courthouses,” and

instructed courts to “use analogies to those historical

regulations . . . to determine that modern regulations

prohibiting the carry of firearms in new and analogous

sensitive places are constitutionally permissible.” 597 U.S. at

30. So what principles undergird the historic regulation of

firearms in “sensitive places” to guide our analogical

reasoning? As we look through our history, a pattern emerges:

our Nation has permitted restriction of firearms in discrete

8

locations set aside for particular civic functions and where the

presence of firearms was historically regulated as jeopardizing

the peace or posing a physical danger to others. We undertake

our analysis of the particular places New Jersey has designated

as sensitive in light of that history and the principles it

embodies.1

I. Background

A. The Challenged Law

For many decades, New Jersey required anyone who

wanted to carry a handgun in public to show a “justifiable

need” for self-protection. In 2022, the Supreme Court held in

Bruen that a similar New York law violated the Second

Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In response, the New

Jersey legislature enacted a measure known as Chapter 131,

which excised the “justifiable need” requirement and added

new licensing provisions and locational restrictions. The

legislature increased the cost of a Handgun Carry Permit from

$50 to $200 and prescribed that at least some portion of that

1

Our dissenting colleague catalogues various of the locations

we discuss where restrictions were historically permitted and

then labels those locations as “principles” we espouse today.

See, e.g., Dissent at 2–4. But rhetoric cannot substitute for

reality. The principles we derive from historical examples are

distinct from the locations to which we apply them in

determining whether a given restriction today passes

constitutional muster. And as is clear from our rejection of

portions of Chapter 131, those principles impose meaningful

limits on New Jersey’s regulation of firearms.

9

fee be deposited in the state’s Victims of Crime Compensation

Office (VCCO) account. N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:58-4(c). It also

added the requirement that all Handgun Carry Permit

applicants obtain character endorsements from at least “four

reputable persons,” id. § 2C:58-4(b), and mandated that every

“private citizen” who carries a handgun in public maintain at

least $300,000-worth of liability insurance against potential

injuries, deaths, and property damage resulting from the

“ownership, maintenance, operation or use of a firearm carried

in public,” id. § 2C:58-4.3(a).

Perhaps most prominently, Chapter 131 contains

various new substantive limitations on firearm carry in New

Jersey. First, as codified in N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:58-4.6(a), it

prohibits carrying a firearm in twenty-five “sensitive places,”

including:

(6) within 100 feet of a place where a public

gathering, demonstration or event is held

for which a government permit is

required, during the conduct of such

gathering, demonstration or event;

(7) a school, college, university or other

educational institution, and on any school

bus;

(8) a child care facility, including a day care

center;

(9) a nursery school, pre-school, zoo, or

summer camp;

10

(10) a park, beach, recreation facility or area or

playground owned or controlled by a

State, county or local government unit, or

any part of such a place, which is

designated as a gun free zone by the

governing authority based on

considerations of public safety;

(11) youth sports events, as defined in

N.J.S.5:17-1, during and immediately

preceding and following the conduct of

the event, except that this provision shall

not apply to participants of a youth sports

event which is a firearm shooting

competition to which paragraph (3) of

subsection b. of section 14 of P.L.1979,

c.179 (C.2C:58-6.1) applies;

(12) a publicly owned or leased library or

museum;

...

(15) a bar or restaurant where alcohol is

served, and any other site or facility where

alcohol is sold for consumption on the

premises;

...

(17) a privately or publicly owned and

operated entertainment facility within this

State, including but not limited to a

11

theater, stadium, museum, arena,

racetrack or other place where

performances, concerts, exhibits, games

or contests are held;

(18) a casino and related facilities, including

but not limited to appurtenant hotels,

retail premises, restaurant and bar

facilities, and entertainment and

recreational venues located within the

casino property;

...

(21) a health care facility, including but not

limited to a general hospital, special

hospital, psychiatric hospital, public

health center, diagnostic center, treatment

center, rehabilitation center, extended

care facility, skilled nursing home,

nursing home, intermediate care facility,

tuberculosis hospital, chronic disease

hospital, maternity hospital, outpatient

clinic, dispensary, assisted living center,

home health care agency, residential

treatment facility, residential health care

facility, medical office, or ambulatory

care facility;

(22) a facility licensed or regulated by the

Department of Human Services,

Department of Children and Families, or

Department of Health, other than a health

12

care facility, that provides addiction or

mental health treatment or support

services;

(23) a public location being used for making

motion picture or television images for

theatrical, commercial or educational

purposes, during the time such location is

being used for that purpose; [and]

(24) private property, including but not limited

to residential, commercial, industrial,

agricultural, institutional or undeveloped

property, unless the owner has provided

express consent or has posted a sign

indicating that it is permissible to carry on

the premises a concealed handgun with a

valid and lawfully issued permit under

N.J.S.2C:58-4, provided that nothing in

this paragraph shall be construed to affect

the authority to keep or carry a firearm

established under subsection e. of

N.J.S.2C:39-6.

Subject to minor exceptions, carrying a firearm in any

of these places constitutes a crime of the third degree, which

carries a maximum sentence of five years’ imprisonment and a

presumptive sentence of four years’ imprisonment. Id.

Chapter 131 further prohibits people from carrying a loaded

and unsecured firearm “in a vehicle in New Jersey”; those who

wish to transport guns must unload their firearms and keep

them locked in a secured container or the vehicle’s trunk. Id.

§ 2C:58-4.6(b)(1).

13

B. Procedural Background

Immediately after New Jersey passed the law, two

groups of plaintiffs sued the New Jersey Attorney General and

State Police Superintendent in their official capacities under 42

U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that Chapter 131 violates their Second

Amendment rights and requesting declaratory and injunctive

relief. The first group, the “Koons Plaintiffs,” is made up of

several New Jersey residents and firearm advocacy

organizations. The second group, the “Siegel Plaintiffs,” is

comprised of additional New Jersey residents and the

Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs. The cases

were consolidated, and the District Court permitted the

President of the New Jersey Senate and Speaker of the New

Jersey General Assembly to intervene as Defendants.

Plaintiffs cumulatively challenged many of Chapter

131’s provisions, including most of its “sensitive place”

restrictions, the prohibition on carrying unsecured firearms in

vehicles, the increase in firearm permitting fees, and the

$300,000 liability insurance requirement. They also

challenged existing fish and game-related firearm regulations

codified at N.J. Admin. Code. § 7:25-5.23(a), (c), (f), (i), and

(m), which govern what type of ammunition and weapons can

be used to hunt game in the “woods, fields, marshlands, or on

the water.”2

2

Plaintiffs also challenged Chapter 131’s prohibition on the

“unjustified display of a handgun,” its exemption of judges,

14

After a hearing, the District Court preliminarily

enjoined the “sensitive place” restrictions contained in N.J.

Stat. Ann. § 2C:58-4.6(a)(6) (within 100 feet of a permitted

public gathering), (a)(9) (preschools, summer camps, and

zoos), (a)(10) (parks, beaches, and public recreation facilities),

(a)(12) (public libraries and museums), (a)(15) (sites where

alcohol is served), (a)(17) (entertainment facilities), (a)(18)

(casinos), (a)(21) (hospitals and other healthcare facilities),

(a)(23) (public movie and television sets), and (a)(24) (private

property held open to the public, unless the owner has

expressly consented to gun carry), in addition to the prohibition

on guns in vehicles and the liability insurance requirement.

The State Defendants and Siegel Plaintiffs appealed.3 This

prosecutors, and attorneys general from certain requirements,

and its ban on issuing a firearm purchase permit “[t]o any

person where the issuance would not be in the interest of the

public health, safety or welfare because the person is found to

be lacking the essential character of temperament necessary to

be entrusted with a firearm” or to any person “known in the

community in which the person lives as someone who has

engaged in acts or made statements suggesting the person is

likely to engage in conduct, other than justified self-defense,

that would pose a danger to self or others,” N.J. Stat. Ann.

§§ 2C:39-6(a)(12), 2C:58-3(c), 2C:58-4.4(a)(5).

3

On appeal, the Siegel Plaintiffs appear to abandon their

challenges to § 2C:58-4.6(a)(7) (schools and colleges), (a)(8)

(child care facilities), and (a)(20) (airports and public

transportation hubs). They also abandon their challenges to

15

Court granted a partial stay of the District Court’s injunction,

thereby allowing the law to take effect in most of the identified

“sensitive places.”4

II. Jurisdiction and Standard of Review

The District Court had jurisdiction pursuant to 28

U.S.C. §§ 1331 and 1343, and we have appellate jurisdiction

under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1). We review the District Court’s

grant or denial of a preliminary injunction for abuse of

discretion, but we review de novo the underlying legal

question—whether the New Jersey law violates the Second

Amendment. See ADP, LLC v. Rafferty, 923 F.3d 113, 119 (3d

Cir. 2019).

To obtain a preliminary injunction, Plaintiffs must show

that (1) they are “likely to succeed on the merits,” (2) they are

“likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary

portions of § 2C:58-4.6(a)(9) (preschools and summer camps),

in addition to their challenges to the law’s prohibition on the

unjustifiable display of a handgun, § 2C:58-4.4(a)(5), the

exemption of judges, prosecutors, and attorneys general,

§ 2C:39-6(a)(12), and the character-based disqualifications for

firearm purchase permits, § 2C:58-3(c).

4

The preliminary injunction remains in effect for §

2C:58-4.6(a)(23) (public movie and television sets) and (a)(24)

(private property held open to the public, unless the owner has

expressly consented to firearm carry), in addition to the

prohibition on unsecured firearms in vehicles and the liability

insurance requirement.

16

relief,” (3) “the balance of equities tips in [their] favor,” and

(4) “an injunction is in the public interest.” Ferring Pharms.,

Inc. v. Watson Pharms., Inc., 765 F.3d 205, 210 (3d Cir. 2014)

(quoting Winter v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, Inc., 555 U.S. 7, 20

(2008)). Plaintiffs must establish the existence of the first two

elements; once those two requirements are satisfied, we may

balance all the factors in deciding whether to issue an

injunction. See Reilly v. City of Harrisburg, 858 F.3d 173, 176

(3d Cir. 2017).

III. Existing Second Amendment Doctrine

In the absence of a “comprehensive[] defin[ition]” from

the Supreme Court of what constitutes “sensitive places”

where the government may restrict the right to bear arms,

Bruen, 597 U.S. at 30, this case requires us to navigate the

“unchartered frontiers,” Drummond v. Robinson Twp., 9 F.4th

217, 222 (3d Cir. 2021), of the Second Amendment. An

overview of the state of Second Amendment law guides that

journey.

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.” U.S. Const. amend. II. In District of Columbia v.

Heller, the Supreme Court recognized for the first time an

individual right to keep and bear arms “in defense of hearth and

home.” 554 U.S. 570, 635 (2008). The Court reached that

conclusion by consulting “both text and history”—from the

English and colonial origins of the “pre-existing right” the

Second Amendment “codified,” to interpretations of the

Amendment “immediately after its ratification through the end

of the 19th century”—to “determine the public understanding”

17

of that right. Id. at 592, 595, 605. Accordingly, the Heller

Court employed an interpretive method rooted in history and

tradition, assessing the validity of modern regulations by

comparing them to practices that had developed over the

preceding centuries.

Applying that history-and-tradition framework, the

Heller Court struck down a District of Columbia law that

“totally ban[ned] handgun possession in the home.” Id. at 628.

While breaking new ground in Second Amendment

jurisprudence, the Court emphasized the limits of its holding,

noting that “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast

doubt on longstanding . . . laws forbidding the carrying of

firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government

buildings[.]” Id. at 626. The Court further clarified: “We

identify these presumptively lawful regulatory measures only

as examples; our list does not purport to be exhaustive.” Id. at

627 n.26.

Soon after Heller, the Court held that the individual

right to keep and bear arms applied against the states in

McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010). Reasoning

that the right to keep and bear arms is “fundamental,” the Court

decided that “the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth

Amendment incorporates the Second Amendment right

recognized in Heller.” Id. at 791 (plurality opinion). Yet the

Court “repeat[ed Heller’s] assurances” that its holding “did not

cast doubt on such longstanding regulatory measures as . . .

‘laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitives places

such as schools and government buildings[.]’” Id. at 786

(quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 626–27).

McDonald spawned a host of Second Amendment

challenges to state laws restricting the ability of law-abiding

18

Americans to bear arms beyond the “hearth and home.” In one

such suit, a group of New Jersey plaintiffs sought to invalidate

a state statute that required an individual to demonstrate a

“justifiable need” in order to obtain a license to carry a

handgun in public. Drake v. Filko, 724 F.3d 426, 428 (3d Cir.

2013). We rejected that challenge under the two-part

constitutional test we discerned from Heller, asking whether

the challenged law “impose[d] a burden on conduct falling

within the scope of the Second Amendment’s guarantee,” and

if so, whether the law satisfied “some form of means-end

scrutiny.” United States v. Marzzarella, 614 F.3d 85, 89 (3d

Cir. 2010).

More than a decade later, in Bruen, the Supreme Court

resolved a Second Amendment challenge to the New York

“proper cause” licensing statute. See Bruen, 597 U.S. at 11

(quoting 1913 N.Y. Laws ch. 608, § 1, p. 1629). In its most

extensive exegesis of the Second Amendment since Heller, the

Supreme Court observed that the Courts of Appeals “ha[d]

coalesced around a ‘two-step’ framework . . . that combines

history with means-end scrutiny” and rejected that approach as

“one step too many.” Id. at 17, 19. Instead, the Court

explained, “[w]hen the Second Amendment’s plain text covers

an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively

protects that conduct. The government must then justify its

regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the

Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Id. at 24.

That inquiry is sometimes “fairly straightforward”:

“[W]hen a challenged regulation addresses a general societal

problem that has persisted since the 18th century, the lack of a

distinctly similar historical regulation addressing that problem

is relevant evidence that the challenged regulation is

19

inconsistent with the Second Amendment.” Id. at 26. But

when a contemporary regulation “implicat[es] unprecedented

societal concerns or dramatic technological changes,” courts

must apply “a more nuanced approach.” Id. at 27. Namely,

courts must assess whether the contemporary regulation is

“relevantly similar” to a historical restriction, id. at 29 (quoting

Cass Sunstein, On Analogical Reasoning, 106 Harv. L. Rev.

731, 773 (1993)), by considering “how and why the

regulation[] burden[s] a law-abiding citizen’s right to armed

self-defense,” id. The Court stressed that this approach “is

neither a regulatory straightjacket nor a regulatory blank

check.” Id. at 30. As the government must “identify a well-

established and representative historical analogue, not a

historical twin,” a contemporary regulation that “is not a dead

ringer for historical precursors . . . still may be analogous

enough to pass constitutional muster.” Id.

To illustrate the flexibility of its analogical method, the

Court examined “Heller’s discussion of ‘longstanding’ ‘laws

forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as

schools and government buildings.’” Id. (quoting Heller, 554

U.S. at 626). According to the Court, while “the historical

record yields relatively few 18th- and 19th-century ‘sensitive

places’ where weapons were altogether prohibited—e.g.,

legislative assemblies, polling places, and courthouses,” it also

knew “of no disputes regarding the lawfulness of such

prohibitions.” Id. (citing David B. Kopel & Joseph G.S.

Greenlee, The “Sensitive Places” Doctrine, 13 Charleston L.

Rev. 205, 229–36, 244–47 (2018)). The Court thus deemed it

“settled that these locations were ‘sensitive places’ where arms

carrying could be prohibited consistent with the Second

Amendment” and authorized courts to “use analogies to those

historical regulations of ‘sensitive places’ to determine that

20

modern regulations prohibiting the carry of firearms in new and

analogous sensitive places are constitutionally permissible.”

Id. It cautioned, however, that those analogies could not be

stretched to the point of “eviscerat[ing] the general right to

publicly carry arms for self-defense” because the Court

rejected the view that the government could “expand[] the

category of ‘sensitive places’ simply to all places of public

congregation that are not isolated from law enforcement.” Id.

at 31.

Having clarified the governing test, the Court turned to

New York’s proper-cause licensing law. First, the Court

observed that the text of the Second Amendment covered the

challengers’ “proposed course of conduct—carrying handguns

publicly for self-defense.” Id. at 32. So the Court considered

whether the historical restrictions put forward by New York

demonstrated that the “proper-cause requirement is consistent

with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

Id. at 34.

Although New York “appeal[ed] to a variety of

historical sources from the late 1200s to the early 1900s,” the

Court explained that “when it comes to interpreting the

Constitution, not all history is created equal.” Id. Because

“[c]onstitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were

understood to have when the people adopted them,” the key

periods are when “[t]he Second Amendment was adopted in

1791 [and] the Fourteenth in 1868.” Id. (quoting Heller, 554

U.S. at 634–35). However, “English practices that ‘prevailed

up to the period immediately before and after the framing of

the Constitution’” can help illuminate the traditions our

forebearers ratified. Id. (quoting Sprint Commc’ns Co. v.

APCC Servs., Inc., 554 U.S. 269, 311 (2008) (Roberts, C.J.,

21

dissenting)). Likewise, interpretations of the Second

Amendment “from immediately after its ratification through

the end of the 19th century” offer a “critical tool of

constitutional interpretation,” so long as they do not contradict

the original meaning of the right to keep and bear arms. Id. at

35 (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 605). Finally, the Court

declined to resolve whether courts should look to the Founding

era or Reconstruction era for the prevailing understanding of

the Second Amendment, acknowledging the “ongoing

scholarly debate” on the subject. Id. at 37 (citing Akhil Amar,

The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction xiv, 223, 243

(1998)). The Court concluded it did not make a difference in

Bruen because “the public understanding of the right to keep

and bear arms in both 1791 and 1868 was, for all relevant

purposes, the same with respect to public carry.” Id. at 38.

The Bruen Court proceeded to survey historical sources

from medieval England through the early-twentieth century to

identify the historical tradition of public carry. See id. at 39–

70. That exercise proved illuminating, as it enabled the Court

to discern which restrictions were “late-in-time outliers” that

deviated from the otherwise-prevailing norm of “the right to

bear commonly used arms in public subject to certain

reasonable, well-defined restrictions.” Id. at 70; see also id. at

67–68 (“[W]e will not stake our interpretation on a handful of

temporary territorial laws that . . . ‘contradic[t] the

overwhelming weight’ of other, more contemporaneous

historical evidence.” (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 632)). Apart

from those outliers, the Court found a robust tradition of

general public carry, so the Court struck down New York’s

proper-cause statute as inconsistent with the Second

Amendment. Id. at 70.

22

Two terms ago, in United States v. Rahimi, the Supreme

Court elaborated on Bruen. 602 U.S. 680 (2024). There, the

Court rejected a challenge to the constitutionality of 18 U.S.C.

§ 922(g)(8), which bars a person subject to a domestic violence

restraining order from possessing a firearm if he is found to

pose a credible threat to his partner. In doing so, the Court

clarified the methodology for evaluating Second Amendment

challenges under Bruen. Contrary to how some Courts of

Appeals had interpreted it, the Court eschewed the notion that

Bruen’s test portends “a law trapped in amber.” Rahimi, 602

U.S. at 691. Instead, the “why and how” analysis operates at

the level of “principles underlying the Second Amendment.”

Id. at 692. As such, whether a modern regulation comports

with the Second Amendment turns on “whether the challenged

regulation is consistent with the principles that underpin our

regulatory tradition.” Id. (emphasis added).

The Court went on to identify historical surety statutes

requiring “individuals suspected of future misbehavior” to post

a bond before “going armed” and affray laws preventing

people from “going armed” when doing so would “disrupt[]

the public order,” reading from these dissimilar measures the

general principle that, “[w]hen an individual poses a clear

threat of physical violence to another, the threatening

individual may be disarmed.” Id. at 695–98 (citation omitted).

Having distilled this principle, the Court had little difficulty

concluding that § 922(g)(8)—which “is by no means identical

to these founding era regimes”—“fits neatly within the

tradition” of firearm regulation in this country. Id. at 698.

* * *

23

From this line of cases, we distill the following legal

precepts.

First, our analysis of modern regulations and their fit

and justification in light of historical principles does not bind

legislatures in a “regulatory straightjacket.” Bruen, 597 U.S.

at 30; see also Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 739 (Barrett, J., concurring)

(“To be consistent with historical limits, a challenged

regulation need not be an updated model of a historical

counterpart.”). Our society has evolved considerably since the

Nation’s earliest days. Many of the “general societal

problem[s]” that contemporary firearm regulations aim to

address did not exist during the Founding and Reconstruction

eras.5 See Antonyuk, 120 F.4th at 970 (“[C]ourts must be

particularly attuned to the reality that the issues we face today

are different than those faced in medieval England, the

Founding Era, the Antebellum Era, and Reconstruction. To put

it plainly, our era does not resemble those.”). And as Rahimi

5

As firearm technology has advanced and population density

increased, gun violence has risen, as has the scale of fatalities.

The “first known mass shooting resulting in ten or more

deaths”—a phenomenon that now happens tragically on a near-

daily basis, see Past Summary Ledgers, Gun Violence Archive,

https://perma.cc/B9UY-6SDR—“did not occur in this country

until 1949.” Ocean State Tactical, LLC v. Rhode Island, 95

F.4th 38, 44 (1st Cir. 2024) (quotation omitted); see also Range

v. Att’y Gen., 124 F.4th 218, 250 (3d Cir. 2024) (en banc)

(Krause, J., concurring in the judgment) (collecting sources

detailing the “brutal gun deaths and horrific mass

shootings . . . [that] are a daily occurrence in our schools, our

streets, and our places of worship” (footnotes omitted)).

24

makes clear, our search for historical analogues calls for an

inquiry into “principles” that justify modern regulations, not

“historical twin[s]” or “dead ringer[s].” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 30.

So “we cannot look at history through a pinhole,” United States

v. Veasley, 98 F.4th 906, 912 (8th Cir. 2024), and instead we

analogize to principles distilled from our Nation’s history and

tradition as a whole.

Second, in our quest to understand the Second

Amendment “according to its public meaning in 1791” and

“the understandings of those who ratified it,” post-ratification

authorities “can be ‘a critical tool of constitutional

interpretation’ because they can be evidence of a historical

tradition and shed important light on the meaning of the

Amendment as it was originally understood.”6 Lara v. Comm’r

6

Several Justices have also espoused this view, see, e.g.,

Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 728 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) (“The

Court has repeatedly employed post-ratification history to

determine the meaning of vague constitutional text.”); id. at

738 (Barrett, J., concurring) (explaining that “postenactment

history can be an important tool”); see also Heller, 554 U.S. at

605–19 (Scalia, J., joined by Roberts, C.J., and Kennedy,

Thomas, and Alito, JJ.) (surveying sources “from immediately

after [the Second Amendment’s] ratification through the end

of the 19th century”); McDonald, 561 U.S. at 778 (Alito, J.,

joined by Roberts, C.J., and Scalia and Kennedy, JJ.)

(extensively analyzing the views of both the “Framers” and the

“ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment”), and several of our

sister circuits have done the same, see Wolford v. Lopez, 116

25

Pa. State Police (Lara II), 125 F.4th 428, 441 (3d Cir. 2025)

(quoting Bruen, 597 U.S. at 28, 35); see also United States v.

Quailes, 126 F.4th 215, 222 & n.8 (3d Cir. 2025); United States

v. Moore, 111 F.4th 266, 271 (3d Cir. 2024). Accordingly,

where it aids in our understanding of, and does not conflict

with, the original meaning, our survey of history will look to

post-ratification history, as well as the Founding era, to identify

relevant principles.7 Even a comparatively rare post-Founding

F.4th 959, 980 (9th Cir. 2024); Antonyuk v. James, 120 F.4th

941, 973–74 (2d Cir. 2024); Hanson v. District of Columbia,

120 F.4th 223, 236–40 (D.C. Cir. 2024) (per curiam).

7

The dissent asserts that we rely “heav[ily] and

indiscriminate[ly] . . . on questionable Gilded-Age evidence.”

Dissent at 12. But we rely on 19th century history only where

“it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm

regulation.” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 24. And our targeted reliance

on such authorities to “provide ‘confirmation of [what the

Founding-era laws] established,’” United States v. Quailes,

126 F.4th 215, 222 (3d Cir. 2025) (quoting Bruen, 597 U.S. at

37), is entirely consistent with Lara v. Comm’r Pa. State Police

(Lara II), in which we held that post-ratification authorities

indeed “can be ‘a critical tool of constitutional interpretation’”

where such authority does not contradict Founding-era

authority. 125 F.4th 428, 441 (3d Cir. 2025) (quoting Bruen,

597 U.S. at 35). So though our dissenting colleague would

reject consideration of all post-ratification history that he

deems “questionable,” Dissent at 12, that is not the law of our

Circuit.

26

practice may shed light on the meaning of the right to keep and

bear arms if it is part of a longstanding legal tradition.

While we consider Reconstruction-era history, we

nonetheless remain vigilant not to “giv[e] postenactment

history more weight than it can rightly bear.” Bruen, 597 U.S.

at 35. Late-nineteenth century departures from practices at the

Founding are the kinds of “outliers” upon which courts may

not “stake [their] interpretation[s] of the Second

Amendment[.]” Id. at 65 (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 632).

Thus, when we look to statutory analogues from the late 1800s,

we exercise caution to evaluate them in their historical context,

relying on them to the extent they do not “contradict[] earlier

evidence.” Lara II, 125 F.4th at 441.

Finally, we are mindful that legislatures do not always

legislate up to the constitutional line. See Rahimi, 602 U.S. at

739–40 (Barrett, J., concurring) (highlighting the flaws in the

assumption “that founding-era legislatures maximally

exercised their power to regulate”); Antonyuk, 120 F.4th at 969

(“Legislatures past and present have not generally legislated to

their constitutional limits.”). So while the lack of a historical

twin is of course relevant to our distillation of principles under

Bruen and Rahimi, it is not dispositive.8

8

Our dissenting colleague suggests that the party-presentation

principle forbids courts from conducting “independent judicial

research” on historical sources and considering relevantly

similar historical analogues not cited by the parties. Dissent at

27

This case presents our first occasion to answer the

“where” question, that is, in which locations the government

can permissibly proscribe carrying firearms. We therefore

follow the Supreme Court’s example in Heller, Bruen, and

Rahimi, examining the history of relevant firearm restrictions

to discern the principles underlying the traditional scope of

11 n.10, 86. That misunderstands both Supreme Court and our

own precedent. The Court in Bruen observed that courts “are

not obliged to sift the historical materials for evidence to

sustain [a state’s] statute,” 597 U.S. at 60 (emphasis added),

not that they are prohibited from doing so, see id. at 25 n.6

(explaining that courts are “entitled,” not obligated, “to decide

a case based on the historical record compiled by the parties”).

Indeed, after observing in Bruen that both parties had

“ignore[d] the ‘outpouring of discussion of the [right to keep

and bear arms]’” in the Reconstruction era, the Court

proceeded to conduct its own “review of the public discourse.”

Id. at 60 (second alteration in original).

We and other Courts of Appeals have likewise held that

“we have the discretion”—though not the obligation—“to

conduct independent legal research and consider past laws and

judicial decisions, regardless of whether they were raised

below,” Quailes, 126 F.4th at 221 n.6 (citing Bruen, 597 U.S.

at 60); see also United States v. Williams, 113 F.4th 637, 645

n.2 (6th Cir. 2024); Wolford, 116 F.4th at 976. In short, while

it is no doubt Defendants’ burden to show that the challenged

regulations are consistent with our historical tradition, Bruen,

597 U.S. at 60, it is ultimately the obligation of this Court to

interpret the Second Amendment accurately.

28

carry restrictions, their application, and assessing possible

analogues to each challenged provision of New Jersey law.

IV. The History and Tradition of Carry Restrictions

That history, as it turns out, is long. For centuries,

individuals’ right to carry arms has been subject to a variety of

well-defined restrictions. Over time, these carry restrictions

have protected discrete locations set aside for specific civic

purposes and addressed breaches of the peace or physical

safety. To understand the metes and bounds of those historical

laws and the correlative scope of the right to bear arms, we

survey the historical record from: (A) early England, (B) the

American colonies, (C) the Founding and Early Republic,

(D) the antebellum period, and (E) Reconstruction through the

fin de siècle. That overview confirms that governments have

long limited the carrying of guns in specific kinds of venues

commensurate with their peculiar needs and functions.

A. British Antecedents

As early as the Anglo-Saxon period, English monarchs

ensured the orderly functioning of government by enforcing

“the king’s peace,” a concept that had a location-based

component; such laws originally forbade assailing a member

of the king’s household or drawing “a weapon in the king’s

house.”9 While disturbing the king’s peace was a particularly

serious transgression, English custom recognized that a

9

David Feldman, The King’s Peace, the Royal Prerogative and

Public Order: The Roots and Early Development of Binding

over Powers, 47 Cambridge L.J. 101, 105 (1988).

29

number of other sites also enjoyed their own “peace,” from

manors and homesteads to churches.10 Eventually, as part of

the general expansion of royal authority over local powers, the

“king’s peace” absorbed “the ‘peace’ of the various customary

jurisdictions[.]”11 These early obligations to respect order and

refrain from violent disruption demonstrate that the protection

of government functions was an important—but by no means

exclusive—goal of arms regulation, as households and

congregations similarly demanded peacefulness.

Preserving the peace and safety at discrete venues

performing government functions remained a core focus in

ensuing years. In 1313, to preserve their function,12 Parliament

enacted a statute commanding that, “in all parliaments,

treatises, and other assemblies, which should be made in the

realm of England for ever, that every man shall come without

all force and armour, well and peaceably, to the honour of us,

and the peace of us and our realm.”13

Fifteen years later, during a period of “turmoil,”

Parliament enacted the Statute of Northampton. Bruen, 597

U.S. at 40 (quoting Norman Maclaren Trenholme, The Risings

10

A.H.F. Lefroy, Anglo-Saxon Period of English Law, Part II,

26 Yale L.J. 388, 388–89 (1917).

11

Id. at 389; see also Young v. Hawaii, 992 F.3d 765, 788 n.8

(9th Cir. 2021) (en banc), vacated and remanded, 142 S. Ct.

2895 (2022).

12

See Kopel & Greenlee, supra, at 209–10.

13

7 Edw. 2 c. 170 (1313).

30

in the English Monastic Towns in 1327, 6 Am. Hist. Rev. 650,

651 (1901)). The Statute provided:

That no Man . . . be so hardy to come before the

King’s Justices, or other of the King’s Ministers

doing their office, with force and arms, nor bring

no force in affray of the peace, nor to go nor ride

armed by night nor by day, in Fairs, Markets, nor

in the presence of the Justices or other Ministers,

nor in no part elsewhere, upon pain to forfeit

their Armour to the King, and their Bodies to

Prison at the King’s pleasure.14

14

2 Edw. 3 c. 3 (1328). The first portion of the Statute echoes

its predecessor, safeguarding “the King’s peace,” by

forbidding “force and arms” when in the presence of the King

or the King’s Ministers. The Statute appears to distinguish this

first offense from the separate offenses of bringing “force in

affray of the peace” (a prohibition that applied everywhere)

and traveling armed in fairs, markets, in the presence of justices

or ministers, or in similar places. That is, a person could not

bear arms anywhere that the King or his Ministers were

physically present; going armed offensively was prohibited in

fairs, markets, in the presence of justices or ministers, or in

similar places. This greater restriction in the presence of the

King and the representatives of his authority, preceding the

restrictions on affray set forth in the Statute, suggest that

criminal culpability in this first context required no “intent to

terrify” or other specific evil intent. Merely using force or

31

The Supreme Court has concluded that the Statute of

Northampton was limited to armor and weapons like lances

that were “generally worn or carried only when one intended

to engage in lawful combat or—as most early violations of the

Statute show—to breach the peace.” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 41. At

common law, affray was considered more serious when

“officers of justice [were] disturbed in the due execution of

their office” or “where a respect to the particular place ought

to restrain and regulate men’s behavior, more than in common

ones; as in the king’s court, and the like.” 4 William

Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 145

(1769). Similarly, “affrays in a church or church-yard [were]

esteemed very heinous offenses, as being indignities to him to

whose service those places are consecrated.” Id. In such

circumstances, “mere quarrelsome words, which are neither an

affray nor an offense in any other place, are penal.”15 Id.

carrying arms in a place where the King or his Ministers were

present, and presumably engaged in governing, was

sufficiently disruptive and undermining of the King’s authority

as to warrant punishment under the Statute.

15

See also David. B. Kopel & Joseph G.S. Greenlee, The

Sensitive Places Doctrine: Locational Limits on the Right to

Bear Arms, 13 Charleston L. Rev. 203, 205, 212 (2018)

(concluding that “[p]rotecting government deliberation from

violent interference is the core of the sensitive places

tradition,” beginning with the Statute of Northampton whose

“preeminent purpose was to prohibit arms carrying around the

32

The second portion of the Statute of Northampton added

new locations, like fairs and markets, and in the presence of

justices or other ministers, and it proscribed bringing force in

affray of the peace and going armed. In discussing the going

armed portion of this statute, the Supreme Court has concluded

that violating the Statute required both “terrify[ing] the King’s

subjects” and “evil intent or malice.” Id. at 44.

Consistent with the principle of restricting arms to

protect deliberations in places of civic importance, in 1351,

English law prohibited “go[ing] armed” in “the parliaments

and councils of our lord the king” as “broils, riots and disputes,

have arisen and been moved, for that people have gone to the

places . . . armed” within London and the Palace of

Westminster.16 These disturbances resulted in “[impeding] the

business of our Lord the King and of his realm” and “the great

king’s officials” and describing the Statute of Northampton as

“serv[ing] several purposes: preventing powerful criminals

from armed attacks on the functioning of courts; preventing

criminal attacks on other government officials; and preventing

armed overthrow of the Queen and her consort.”).

16

25 Edw. III A.D. 1351, Royal proclamation as to the wearing

of Arms in the City and at Westminster; and as to playing at

games in the Palace at Westminster, reprinted in London and

London Life, in the XIIIth, XIVth, and XVth Centuries being a

Series of Extracts, Local, Social, and Political from the Early

Archives of the City of London, A.D. 1276-1419.

33

people and others who have come there . . . have been alarmed

thereat.”17

Subsequent versions of the Statute of Northampton

similarly reveal the kinds of locations that implicated concerns

about maintaining peace such that the government restricted

arms-bearing. During Owain Glyndŵr’s uprising for Welsh

independence,18 King Henry IV extended to Wales a modified

version of the Statute that “ordained and established, that from

henceforth no Man [shall] be armed nor bear defensible armor

to Merchant Towns, Churches, nor Congregations in the same,

nor in the Highways, in affray of the Peace or the King’s Liege

people[.]”19 Although the English ultimately quelled

Glyndŵr’s revolt, seventy years later—in a remarkable twist of

history—the Welsh-born Harri Tudur deposed King Richard

III and became King Henry VII, the first of the Tudor

dynasty.20 His son, the notorious Henry VIII, sought to

integrate Wales into England through a series of statutes,21

including a revised Statute of Northampton.22 That law banned

17

Id.

18

See Kopel & Greenlee, supra note 15, at 216 n.42.

19

4 Hen 4 c. 29 (1403).

20

See A Welsh King of England, Cadw (2023),

https://perma.cc/62CQ-WASG.

21

See id.

22

See Patrick J. Charles, The Faces of the Second Amendment

Outside the Home: History Versus Ahistorical Standards of

34

the Welsh from bringing weapons to “any sessions or court to

be holden within Wales . . . or to any place within the distance

of two miles from the same sessions or court, nor to any town,

church, fair, market, or other congregation . . . nor in the

highways, in affray of the King’s peace or the King’s liege

people[.]”23 Much like the enactment a century prior, this

version of the Statute of Northampton evinced a traditional

principle of maintaining peace and order in a variety of

communal forums.

These location-based restrictions were also adopted to

address breaches of the peace in other contexts, such as by

hunting with firearms. A 1485 law was prompted by

“unlawful[] hunting . . . with painted faces, some with visors,

and otherwise disguised . . . riotously, and in manner of War

arrayed . . . by night as by day [in] forests, parks, and warren”

which led to “great and heinous rebellions, insurrections, riot,

robberies, murders and other inconvenience, to the

provocacion and example of riotous and evil disposed

persons.”24 Because such offenders “could not be duly

Review, 60 Clev. St. L. Rev. 1, 20 (2012) (“The tenets of the

Statute were even extended to Wales in preparation of its

England annexation as one of the bas[e]s of its new legal

system.”).

23

26 Hen. 8 c. 6 (1534); see also Clayton E. Cramer & Joseph

Edward Olson, What Did “Bear Arms” Mean in the Second

Amendment?, 6 Geo. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 511, 513 (2008)

(emphasizing the “problem that the statute sought to correct

was not even Welsh rebellion”).

24

1 Hen. VII c. 7.

35

punished before this Time” due to their disguises, the law

punished as felonious breaches of the peace “unlawful hunting

in any legal forest, park, or warren, not being the king’s

property, by night, or with painted faces”. Id.; see also 4

Blackstone, Commentaries *143.

Parliament passed a similar statute in 1723—the Black

Act— which tightened restrictions by prohibiting, among other

things, “being armed with swords, fire-arms, or other offensive

weapons, and having his or their faces blacked, or being

otherwise disguised, [and] appear[ing] in any forest, chase,

park, paddock, or grounds inclosed . . . wherein any deer have

been or shall be usually kept ... or in any high road, open heath,

common or down[.]”25 While the Black Act sought to curtail

poaching by organized gangs, it also made this practice an

offense against the public peace because “the manner in which

that [property] damage is committed . . . with the face blacked

or with other disguise, and being armed with offensive

weapons, [is] to the breach of the public peace and the terror of

his majesty’s subjects.” 4 Blackstone, Commentaries at 143.26

Locational restrictions were not the only limitations on

arms-bearing. Another line of statutes, relied upon by the

25

9 Geo. I. c. 22 (1723).

26

See also 9 Geo. 1. c. 22 (seeking to “prevent[ the] wicked

and unlawful practices,” of people in disguise going “armed

with swords, fire-arms, and other offensive weapons,”

“unlawfully hunt[ing] in forests belonging to his Majesty, and

in the parks of divers of his Majesty’s subjects . . . to the great

terror of his Majesty's peaceable subjects.”).

36

Supreme Court in Rahimi, reflects that, at common law,

sureties were used to disincentivize future breaches of the

peace.27 Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 695. Blackstone explained that a

justice of the peace who witnessed an individual “make an

affray” or was approached by an individual who demonstrated

“just cause to fear” that another would injure him or his

property could “demand surety of the peace against such

person.”28 The justice of the peace could then require the

accused to identify “members of the community who would

pledge responsibility for the defendant and risk losing their

bond if the defendant failed to ‘keep the peace.’”29 If the

accused failed to “find such sureties,” the justice of the peace

could order him “committed till he [did.]”30

B. Colonial America

The settlers who founded the thirteen colonies brought

with them the British notion of a right to bear arms that was

27

See Eric M. Ruben & Saul Cornell, Firearm Regionalism

and Public Carry: Placing Southern Antebellum Case Law in

Context, 125 Yale L.J.F. 121, 131 (2015).

28

4 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of

England *252 (1769); Michael Dalton, The Country Justice 37

(1690) (“If an Affray or Assault shall be made upon a Justice

of Peace or a Constable, they may not only defend themselves,

but may also apprehend and commit the Offenders, until they

have found Sureties for the Peace.”).

29

Ruben & Cornell, supra note 27, at 131.

30

4 Blackstone, Commentaries *252.

37

not unlimited, including with respect to certain locations.31

Maryland—following the example of Parliament’s 1313

statute—forbade individuals from carrying firearms in

legislative assemblies.32 Virginia continued to enforce the

British prohibition on “rid[ing], or go[ing], offensively armed,

in Terror of the People,”33 whereas Massachusetts and New

Hampshire enacted their own versions of the Statute of

Northampton and codified the authority of justices of the peace

to impose sureties.34

31

See Joseph Blocher & Reva B. Siegel, When Guns Threaten

the Public Sphere: A New Account of Public Safety Regulation

Under Heller, 116 Nw. U. L. Rev. 139, 167 (2021).

32

See 1647 Md. Laws 216; 1650 Md. Laws 273; 63

proceedings and Acts of the Maryland General Assembly 338,

§ 5 (“[N]o Person [shall] come into the House of Assembly,

while the same is sitting, with Sword or other Weapon.”).

33

George Webb, The Office and Authority of a Justice of Peace

92 (1736); see also Bruen, 597 U.S. at 49 n.14.

34

An Act for the Punishment of Criminal Offenders, reprinted

in 1 Acts and Resolves, Public and Private, of the Province of

the Massachusetts Bay 52–53 (1869) [hereinafter Mass. Act of

1692] (“[E]very justice of the peace in the county where the

offence is committed, may cause to be staid and arrested all

affrayers, rioters, disturbers, or breakers of the peace, and such

as shall ride or go armed offensively before any of their

majesties’ justices, or other their officers or ministers doing

38

The colonies also began to innovate, imposing novel

restrictions tailored to the exigencies of the New World. In

response to breaches of the peace and the danger caused by

celebratory and drunken shooting, Virginia banned “shoot[ing]

any guns at drinking (marriages and funerals only excepted)”

upon pain of “forfeit[ing] 100 lb. of tobacco.”35 Likewise,

their office or elsewhere[;] . . . and upon view of such justice

or justices, confession of the party or other legal conviction of

any such offence, shall commit the offender to prison until he

find sureties for the peace and good behaviour, and seize and

take away his armour or weapons, and shall cause them to be

apprized and answered to the king as forfeited[.]”); An Act for

Establishing and Regulating Courts of Public Justice Within

this Province, reprinted in Acts and Laws of His Majesty’s

Province of New Hampshire: In New England; with Sundry

Acts of Parliament 1–2 (1759) [hereinafter N.H. Act of 1701]

(“[E]very justice of the peace within this province, may cause

to be stayed and arrested, all affrayers, rioters, disturbers or

breakers of the peace, or any other who shall go armed

offensively, or put his Majesty’s subjects in fear, by menaces

or threatening speeches: And upon view of such justice,

confession of the offender, or legal proof of any such offence,

the justice may commit the offender to prison, until he or she

find such sureties for the peace and good behaviour, as is

required, according to the aggravations of the offence.”).

35

Act of March 10, 1656, act XII [hereinafter Va. Act of 1656],

reprinted in 1 The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All

the Laws of Virginia 401-02 (William W. Hening ed., 1823)

39

citing the “[d]runkenness and other insolence [that] prevail[s]

on New Year’s and May Days” and the “deplorable accidents

such as wounding, which frequently arise” from the “firing of

Guns” on those holidays, New Netherland “expressly forb[ade]

from this time forth all firing of Guns . . . within this

Province . . . . on New Years or May days[.]”36 In response to

nighttime shooting, New Jersey enacted even tighter controls

banning, not the shooting, but the carrying of a gun within two-

hundred yards of roads or paths while “watching” for deer at

night.37

[hereinafter Va. Acts]. During Colonial times, “the traditional

method of raising the alarm of an attack after dark involved the

firing of several guns in succession.” Robert H. Churchill, Gun

Regulation, the Police Power, and the Right to Keep Arms in

Early America: The Legal Context of the Second Amendment,

25 L. & Hist. Rev. 139, 162 (2007). Shooting unnecessarily

breached the peace as “the only means for the discovery of

[Native American] plotts [to attack] is by allarms, of which no

certainty can be had in respect of the frequent shooting of

gunns in drinking.” Va. Act of 1656, at 401–02.

36

Act of Dec. 31, 1655, reprinted in Laws and Ordinances of

New Netherland, 1638–1674: Compiled and Translated from

the Original Dutch Records in the Office of the Secretary of

State, Albany, N.Y. 205 (E.B. O’Callaghan ed., 1868)

[hereinafter N.Y. Act of 1655].

37

An Act for the More Effectual Preservation of Deer in this

Colony, reprinted in Laws of the Royal Colony of New Jersey

40

To address concerns raised by armed trespass, the

colonies enacted a suite of laws codifying a presumption that

one had to obtain consent from the property owner before

carrying weapons on their property. While some early laws

prohibited shooting on others’ land,38 subsequent enactments

also restricted carrying weapons on others’ property.39 At first,

those shooting and carry restrictions required a prior warning

1760–1769, at 585 (Bernard Bush ed., 1982) [hereinafter N.J.

Act of 1769] (prohibiting “watch[ing] with a gun . . . within

two hundred Yards of any Road or Path . . . for shooting at

Deer driven by Dogs”); An Act to Continue and Amend an Act,

entitled, An Act for Better Settling and Regulating the Militia

of the Colony of New Jersey for the Repelling Invasion, and

Suppressing Insurrections and Rebellions, reprinted in Acts of

the General Assembly of New Jersey 347 (Samuel Allinson ed.,

1776) (enacted 1771) [hereinafter N.J. Act of 1771] (same).

38

Acts of General Assembly, Jan. 6, 1639, reprinted in Va.

Acts 228 [hereinafter Va. Act of 1639]; Acts of General

Assembly, Mar. 2, 1642, reprinted in Va. Acts 248 [hereinafter

Va. Act of 1642]; Acts of General Assembly, Mar. 9, 1657,

reprinted in Va. Acts at 437 [hereinafter Va. Act of 1657].

39

An Act for the Speedy Trial of Criminals, and Ascertaining

their Punishment, in the County-courts, when Prosecuted there;

and for Payment of Fees due from Criminal persons, reprinted

in Acts of Assembly, Passed in the Province of Maryland, from

1692, to 1715, at 90 (J. Baskett ed., 1723) [hereinafter Md. Act

of 1715] (imposing that restriction on individuals convicted of

certain crimes or those “that shall be of evil fame, or a vagrant,

or dissolute liver”).

41

from the landowner.40 But that requirement eventually gave

way, as several colonies mandated that individuals obtain an

owner’s permission before bearing firearms on his lands,

whether enclosed or not.41 Locationally, these were similar to

40

Va. Act of 1642, at 248 (hunting or shooting punishable if

person failed to get permission from the owner, as well as

received a warning not to hunt); Va. Act of 1657, at 437

(same); Md. Act of 1715, at 90.

41

The specific lands to which these restrictions applied varied.

An Act to Prevent the Killing of Deer Out of Season, and

against Carrying of Guns or Hunting By Persons Not

Qualified, reprinted in 3 The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania

from 1682–1801, at 255 (James T. Mitchell & Henry Flanders

eds., 1896) [hereinafter Pa. Act of 1721] (“improved or

inclosed lands of any plantation” and, unless an “owner of fifty

acres of land and otherwise qualified,” “in the woods or

uninclosed lands”); An Act to prevent the Killing of Deer out

of Season, and against Carrying of Guns or Hunting by Persons

not Qualified, reprinted in The Acts of the General Assembly

of the Province of New Jersey 123 (W. & A. Bradford eds.,

1732) (enacted 1722) [hereinafter N.J. Act of 1722]

(“Improved or Inclosed Lands in any Plantation” and, unless

an “owner of one Hundred Acres of land or otherwise

Qualified,” in the “Woods or Uninclosed Lands”); A

Supplementary Act to the Act entitled, an Act to prevent the

killing of deer out of season, and against carrying of Guns, and

hunting by Persons not qualified, reprinted in The Acts of the

General Assembly of the Province of New Jersey 453 (W.

42

the English hunting laws noted above. They also shared the

recognition that hunting on the lands of others could both harm

the owner’s property rights and breach the peace.42

Bradford ed., 1752) [hereinafter N.J. Act of 1752] (same); Act

of Apr. 9, 1760, reprinted in A Digest of the Laws of

Pennsylvania from the Year One Thousand Seven Hundred to

the Sixteenth Day of June, One Thousand Eight Hundred and

Thirty-Six 495 (5th ed. 1837) [hereinafter Pa. Act. of 1760]

(“any enclosed or improved lands of any of the inhabitants of

this province”); An Act to Prevent Hunting with Fire-Arms in

the City of New-York, and the Liberties Thereof, reprinted in

2 Laws of New York 1691–1773, at 441–42 (Gaine ed. 1774)

[hereinafter N.Y. Act of 1763] (“any Orchard, Garden, Corn-

Field, or other inclosed Land whatsoever, within the City of

New-York, or the Liberties thereof”); N.J. Act of 1769, at 582

(“Lands not his own, (and for which the Owners pay Taxes) or

is in his lawful Possession”); id. at 585 (“uninclosed land,

within two hundred Yards of any Road or path in the Night-

time, whether the said Road is laid out by Law or not”); N.J.

Act of 1771, at 344 (“any Lands not his own, and for which the

Owner pays Taxes, or is in his lawful Possession”); and id. at

347 (“uninclosed Land within two Hundred Yards of any Road

or Path in the Night Time, whether the said Road is laid out by

Law or not”).

N.Y. Act of 1763, at 441 (banning firearms due to “the great

42

Danger of the Lives of his Majesty’s Subjects, the Ruin and

Destruction of the most valuable Improvement, the grievous

43

C. The Founding and Early Republic

As the colonies coalesced into the United States,

legislatures struck a delicate balance between continuity in

regulation of the right to bear arms and necessary adaptations

of those regulations to new, emerging circumstances. Several

states relied on English legal roots by enacting versions of the

Injury of the Proprietors, and the great Discouragement of their

Industry”; Va. Act of 1642, at 248 (“Whereas the rights and

interests of the inhabitants are very much infringed by hunting

and shooting of diverse men upon their neighbors lands and

dividends contrary to the privileges granted to them by their

patents, whereby many injuries do daily happen to the great

damage of the owners of the land whereon such hunting or

shooting is used, It is therefore enacted and confirmed that if

any planter or person shall hunt or shoot upon or within the

precincts or limits of his neighbor or other dividend without

leave first obtained for his so doing, and having been warned

by the owner of the land to forbear hunting and shooting as

aforesaid, he or they so offending shall forfeit for every such

offence four hundred pounds of tobacco.”); N.J. Act of 1722,

at 123 (“[W]hereas divers abuses have been committed, and

great Damages and Inconveniencies arisen by Persons carrying

of Guns and presuming to hunt [and] for Remedy whereof for

the future.”); Churchill, Gun Regulation, supra note 35, at 162

(“Colonial governments expressed particular concern over the

firing of guns after dark” due to false alarms and the “dangers

to lives and property.”).

44

Statute of Northampton;43 indeed, North Carolina’s 1792

statute was so traditional that it retained references to the

43

An Act forbidding and punishing Affrays, reprinted in Acts

Passed at a General Assembly of the Commonwealth of

Virginia Begun and Held at the Public Buildings in the City of

Richmond, on Monday the Sixteenth Day of October in the

Year of Our Lord, One Thousand Seven Hundred and Eighty-

Six, at 35 (Dixon, et al. eds., 1786) [hereinafter Va. Act of

1786]; No Man Shall come Before the Justice, or Go or Ride

Armed, reprinted in A Collection of Statutes of Parliament of

England in Force in the State of North Carolina 60–61

(Francois-Xavier Martin ed., 1792) [hereinafter N.C. Statute of

Northampton]; An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes

and Offences, Within the District of Columbia, reprinted in

Code of Laws for the District of Columbia 235, 254 (Davis &

Force eds., 1819); An Act for repealing an Act, made and

passed in the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and

ninety-two, entitled, “An Act for punishing Criminal

Offenders,” and for re-enacting certain Provisions therein,

reprinted in 1 The General Laws of Massachusetts 454 (T.

Metcalf ed., 1823) [hereinafter Mass. Act of 1795] (prohibiting

going “armed offensively, to the fear or terror” without

reference to fairs and markets); An Act for the restraint of idle

and disorderly persons, reprinted in 1 Laws of the State of

Tennessee: Including Those of North Carolina Now in Force

in This State: From the Year 1715 to the Year 1820, Inclusive

710 (Heiskell & Brown eds., 1821) (enacted 1801) [hereinafter

Tenn. Act of 1801] (same); An Act describing the power of

45

King.44 These laws, which originally protected the integrity of

“fairs and markets,”45 extended to a significant portion of the

American public. See Antonyuk v. Chiumento, 89 F.4th 271,

358 (2d Cir. 2023) (describing how Virginia and North

Carolina alone accounted for over a quarter of the Nation’s

population at the Founding). For instance, the City of New

Orleans passed an ordinance in 1817 that promoted the Statute

of Northampton’s longstanding goal of preserving the peace in

locations akin to the “Fairs” of prior centuries by decreeing it

unlawful “for any person to enter into a public ball-room with

any cane, stick, sword, or any other weapon[.]”46 This

ordinance, however, said nothing of dangerousness, offensive

use of arms, affray, or to the terror, suggesting that the intent

of the arms-bearer was irrelevant to his culpability.

Justices of the Peace in Civil and Criminal Cases, reprinted in

1 Laws of the State of Maine 352–53 (J. Griffin ed., 1821)

[hereinafter Me. Act of 1821] (same).

44

See Bruen, 597 U.S. at 122 (Breyer, J., dissenting).

45

In some states, the going-armed laws no longer included a

location-based element. See Mass. Act of 1795, at 454

(prohibiting “going armed offensively, to the fear or terror”

without reference to fairs and markets); Tenn. Act of 1801, at

710 (same); Me. Act of 1821, at 285 (same).

46

An Ordinance respecting public Balls, reprinted in A

General Digest of the Ordinances and Resolutions of the

Corporation of New-Orleans 371 (1831) [hereinafter 1817

New Orleans Ordinance].

46

Most of these going armed laws also codified the state’s

ability to impose sureties, adding to the general context of

affray the specific context of open or concealed arms carry to

the terror of the people.47 These new statutes maintained peace

47

Mass. Act of 1795, at 454 (providing that a justice of the

peace “may cause to be staid and arrested, all affrayers, rioters,

disturbers, or breakers of the peace, and such as shall ride or

go armed offensively, to the fear or terror of the good citizens

of this Commonwealth, . . . and upon view of such Justice,

confession of the delinquent, or other legal conviction of any

such offence, shall require of the offender to find sureties for

his keeping the peace, and being of the good behaviour; and in

want thereof, to commit him to prison until he shall comply

with such requisition”); Tenn. Act of 1801, at 710 (providing

that “[i]f any person or persons shall publicly ride or go armed

to the terror of the people or privately carry any dirk, large

knife, pistol or any other dangerous weapon, to the fear or

terror of any person, it shall be the duty of any judge or justice,

on his own view, or upon the information of any other person

on oath, to bind such person or persons to their good behaviour,

and if he or they fail to find securities, commit him or them to

jail, and if such person or persons shall continue so to offend,

he or they shall not only forfeit their recognizance, but be liable

to an indictment, and be punished as for a breach of the peace,

or riot at common law); Me. Act of 1821, at 285 (justices of the

peace had power and duty “to cause to be staid and arrested, all

affrayers, rioters, disturbers or breakers of the peace, and such

as shall ride or go armed offensively, to the fear or terror of the

good citizens of this State”).

47

by requiring an individual “to post bond before carrying

weapons in public.” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 55.

Colonial legislatures extended these location-based

carry restrictions to new contexts. In keeping with traditional

English custom and Colonial-era practice of protecting

peaceful operations at locations important to governmental

function,48 New York,49 Delaware,50 and Maryland51

proscribed bearing arms at polling places.

The Nation’s new public universities—including the

University of Virginia, in a decision rendered by a Board of

Visitors that counted Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and

James Breckenridge among its six members52—enacted

locational restrictions forbidding their students from

48

See Darrell A.H. Miller, Constitutional Conflict and

Sensitive Places, 28 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 459, 473 (2019).

49

Act of Jan. 26, 1787, ch. 1, 1787 N.Y. Laws 345 (“[N]o

person by force of arms nor by malice or menacing or

otherwise presume to disturb or hinder any citizen of this State

to make free election.”).

50

Del. Const. art. 28 (1776).

51

Proceedings of the Conventions of the Province of Maryland,

Held at the City of Annapolis in 1774, 1775, & 1776, at 185

(1836).

52

University of Virginia Board of Visitors Minutes 6–7

(October 4–5, 1824).

48

possessing firearms.53 While the predecessors to these statutes

were enacted by private universities,54 and hence, not state

action for purposes of the Second Amendment, the Supreme

Court has recognized schools as traditional sensitive places.

Heller, 554 U.S. at 626. It also has noted that a paucity of

historical analogues does not foreclose a finding that a tradition

of regulation in recognized sensitive places, given the lack of

objection to such laws. See Bruen, 597 U.S. at 30 (no noted

objections to sensitive place laws).

53

Id.; see also The Minutes of the Senatus Academicus 1799–

1842, at 86 (Univ. Ga. Libraries 1976) (setting forth the

University of Georgia’s 1810 ban).

54

A Copy of the Laws of Harvard College, 1655, at 10 (1876)

(“[N]oe students shall be suffered to have a gun in his or theire

chambers or studies, or keepeing for theire use any where else

in the town.”); 2 Franklin Bowditch Dexter, Biographical

Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College with Annals of the

College History May 1745–May 1763, at 8 (1896) (“If any

Scholar Shall keep a Gun or Pistol, or Fire one in the College-

Yard or College, or Shall Go a Gunning . . . he Shall be fined

not exceeding Two Shillings.”).

49

Finally, a number of jurisdictions imposed blanket bans

on concealed carry;55 these laws, however, generally exempted

travelers.56

D. The Antebellum Period

In the decades leading up to the Civil War, Americans

carried on the tradition of imposing carry restrictions to keep

peace in important civic forums analogous to fairs, markets,

and places of government deliberation, and they did so in

analogous contexts that were new to the era. We can discern

from these early nineteenth century statutes a continuation of

the sorts of proscriptions set forth in the Statute of

Northampton, excluding arms from sensitive places that

facilitated governmental functions as well as new places

analogous to fairs and markets. For example, the 1817 New

Orleans Ordinance, discussed above, barred carrying firearms

in “a public ball-room;” mere entry into a “public ball-room

with any cane, stick, sword or any other weapon” was

unlawful, irrespective of the arms-bearer’s intent. 57 This

suggests that the threat of breached peace and physical danger

that could occur in a crowded space like “a public ball-room”

was sufficiently obvious as to not require further indicia of evil

55

See, e.g., 1813 Ky. Acts 100; 1813 La. Acts 172; 1819 Ind.

Acts 39.

56

See 1813 Ky. Acts 100 (restricting concealed carry “unless

when travelling on a journey”); 1819 Ind. Acts 39 (“[T]his act

shall not be so construed as to affect travellers.”).

57

1817 New Orleans Ordinance.

50

intent or malice aforethought.58 New Mexico enacted a law

that, like the New Orleans ordinance, banned weapons in “balls

or Fandangos.”59 Like its predecessors, the statute restricted

the use of firearms by individuals under the influence of

alcohol, and it also proscribed carrying firearms in any “room

adjoining said ball where Liquors are sold.”60 And as the

Nation’s first public parks emerged,61 Central Park proscribed

“carry[ing] firearms” within its confines to preserve the

58

Joseph Blocker, Firearm Localism, 123 Yale L.J. 82, 144

(2013) (“[C]oncealed carry laws were often tailored to heavily

populated areas, either in the state laws giving cities and towns

the power to restrict concealed carrying (and, sometimes,

carrying of any kind), or directly in the acts incorporating

municipalities.”).

59

1852 N.M. Laws 67, 69.

60

Id.

61

See Frank Clark, Nineteenth-Century Public Parks from

1830, 1 Garden Hist. 31, 31 (1973) (explaining “[c]ity parks as

we know them today first evolved in this country in the

nineteenth century,” and tracing the development of public

parks from the “hygienic and humanitarian” concerns of

industrialized Victorian Britain); see also Robert Lee & Karen

Tucker, “It’s My Park”: Reinterpreting the History of

Birkenhead Park Within the Context of an Education Outreach

Project, 32 Garden Hist. 64, 65 (2010) (noting Birkenhead

Park in England, opened in 1847, was “the world’s first public

park”).

51

peace.62 Public universities likewise continued to forbid

students from keeping or bearing weapons.63 While concealed

carry bans proliferated into new jurisdictions, they continued

to exempt travelers.64

62

Fourth Annual Report of the Board of Commissioners of the

Central Park 106 (1861) (“All persons are forbidden . . . [t]o

carry firearms or to throw stones or other missiles within it.”);

see also Tricia Kang, 160 Years of Central Park: A Brief

History, Central Park Conservancy Mag. (June 1, 2017),

https://perma.cc/85Y2-UZY5 (“[Frederick Law] Olmsted

believed Central Park should be a democratic space, a place

where people of all backgrounds, rich and poor, women and

men, could congregate and enjoy leisurely activities.”).

63

See Laws and Regulations of the College of William &

Mary 4, 19 (1830); Acts of the General Assembly and

Ordinances of the Trustees, for the Organization and

Government of the University of North Carolina 15–16 (1838).

64

See An act to prevent any Person in this Territory from

carrying Arms secretly (1835), reprinted in Compilation of the

Public Acts of the Legislative Council of the Territory of

Florida, Passed Prior to 1840, at 423 (John P. Duval ed.,

1839); 1837 Ark. Acts 280; Act Effective 1856, reprinted in

A Digest of the Statutes of Arkansas 381–82 (Josiah Gould ed.,

1858) [hereinafter 1856 Ark. Law]; 1841 Ala. Acts 148–49;

see also Bruen, 597 U.S. at 52 (“In the early to mid-19th

century, some States began enacting laws that proscribed the

concealed carry of pistols and other small weapons.”); 1861

52

The antebellum period also witnessed the humble

beginnings of a revolution in American transportation. Local

railroad networks with tracks of “no more than a few miles”

emerged, presaging the explosive growth of train connectivity

that would follow in the ensuing decades.65 Indiana responded

to this novel technology by adopting the country’s first law

governing firearm safety on trains. The law forbade

“shoot[ing] a gun, pistol, or other weapon . . . against any

locomotive, or car, or train of cars containing persons, on any

railroad in this State[.]”66

Surety regimes continued to bind a person to act

peaceably to prevent “all forms of violence,” including the

“misuse of firearms.” Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 695–96.

Massachusetts’s surety law, and the many statutes that

emulated it, permitted government officials “on complaint of

any person having reasonable cause to fear an injury, or breach

of the peace,” to require the accused “to find sureties” in order

to “go armed with a dirk, dagger, sword, pistol, or other

offensive and dangerous weapon, without reasonable cause to

fear an assault or other injury, for violence to his person, or to

Ga. Laws 859 (excepting “horseman’s pistols”). But see 1838

Ark. Law 280 (prohibiting concealed carry without travel

exception); 1838 Va. Acts 76 (same); 1859 Ohio Acts 56

(same).

65

Rise of Monopolies: History of American Railroads, Stan.

Univ., https://perma.cc/JJ7E-2X77.

66

1855 Ind. Acts 153.

53

his family or property[.]”67 This was in contrast to

Massachusetts’s prior surety law which authorized sureties for

those who “ride or go armed offensively, to the fear or terror

of the good citizens.”68 As before, not all of these statutes

required a complaint before government authorities could

demand sureties for those who publicly carried dangerous and

deadly weapons.69

E. Reconstruction and the Fin de Siècle

Following the bloodshed of the Civil War, the country

grappled with how to secure both liberty and order in a deeply

divided, modernizing society. Amid the tumult and triumphs

of our Second Founding, Americans not only turned to

longstanding restrictions on carrying firearms but continued to

apply traditional frameworks to emerging, but analogous,

contexts.

Legislatures continued to enact well-established carry-

restriction statutes covering discrete, historically protected

locations. For example, Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia,

Missouri, Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, and Montana prohibited

carrying firearms at places of important governmental

67

Mass. Rev. Stat. ch. 134, § 16 (1836); see also 1838 Terr. of

Wis. Stat. 381; Me. Rev. Stat. ch. 169, § 16 (1840); Mich. Rev.

Stat. ch. 162, § 16 (1846); Terr. of Minn. Rev. Stat., ch. 112,

§ 18 (1851); 1854 Or. Laws 220; D.C. Rev. Code ch. 141, § 16

(1857); 1860 Pa. Laws 432.

68

Mass. Act of 1795, at 454.

69

1847 Va. Acts 127, 129; W. Va. Code, ch. 153, § 8 (1868).

54

functions such as polling locations, courts, and public

assemblies,70 for example, to “regulate the conduct and to

maintain the purity of elections” and to “prevent, fraud,

violence, intimidation, riot, tumult, bribery or corruption at

elections.”71 Similarly, four states enacted trespass laws

70

1870 La. Acts 159–60; 1870 Tex. Gen. Laws 68; Art. 320,

Tex. Act of April 12, 1871, reprinted in 2 A Digest of the Laws

of Texas, Containing the Laws in Force, and the Repealed Law

on Which Rights Rest, from 1754 to 1874, Carefully Annotated

1322, 1323 (George W. Paschal ed., 4th ed. 1874) [hereinafter

Tex. Act of 1871]; 1869 Tenn. Acts 23–24; 1870 Ga. Acts 285;

1874 Mo. Laws 43 (for concealed weapons); 1875 Mo. Laws

50 (revised to eliminate “concealed”); Mo. Rev. Stat. § 1274

(1879); 1883 Mo. Laws 76; 1889 Ariz. Sess. Laws 16–17; 1890

Okla. Acts 496; 1903 Mont. Laws 49 (concealed or partially

concealed firearm, except as permitted by a judge upon a

showing of “good moral character and peaceable disposition”).

71

1870 La. Acts 159–60; see also 1870 Ga. Laws 421; 1870

Tex. Gen. Laws 63; Riots and Unlawful Assemblies at

Elections, Violence Used Towards Electors, Art. 6490,

reprinted in 3 A Digest of the Laws of Texas 1317–18 (G.

Paschal ed., 1873) (prohibiting carrying of any gun, pistol or

other dangerous weapon “on any day of election, during the

hours the polls are open, within a distance of one half mile of

any place of election”); 1871 Tex. Gen. Laws 25–27 (banning

carry of firearms in certain locations as an “Offense[] Against

Public Peace”); 1889 Ariz. Sess. Laws 16; 4 Blackstone,

Commentaries *145 (breaches of peace include riot,

55

requiring individuals to secure consent prior to carrying

firearms onto the lands of another.72

tumultuous petition, and affray that “disturbs” officers of

justice “in due execution of their office” and conduct that

terrorizes in a place “where a respect to the particular place

ought to restrain and regulate men’s behavior”).

72

See 1865 La. Acts 14 (prohibiting “carry[ing] fire-arms on

the premises or plantations of any citizen, without the consent

of the owner or proprietor”); 1865 Fla. Laws 27 (forbidding

“rang[ing] with a gun within the enclosed land or premises of

another without the permission of the owner, tenant, or person

having control thereof”); An Act to Prohibit the Discharging of

Firearms in Certain Places Therein Named, Art. 6508a,

reprinted in 4 A Digest of the Laws of Texas 1321 (G. Paschal

ed., 1873) (enacted 1867) (proscribing “carry[ing] firearms in

the enclosed premises or plantation of any citizen, without the

consent of the owner or proprietor, other than in the lawful

discharge of a civil or military duty”); 1876 Iowa Acts 142

(making it a misdemeanor to “enter [an] enclosure [where

cattle, hogs, or sheep are being fed] with fire arms,” unless with

permission from the owner); 1893 Or. Laws 79 (“It shall be

unlawful for any person other than an officer on lawful

business, being armed with a gun, pistol, or other firearm, to

go or trespass upon any enclosed premises or lands without the

consent of the owner or possessor thereof.”); see also 1895 N.J.

Law (changing prior requirement that person carrying firearm

obtain permission to prohibiting carrying of firearm anytime

56

Largescale urbanization resulted in a rearranging of the

social order and the creation of new physical and technological

landscapes.73 Parks sprung up across the country and,

following Central Park’s lead, forbade visitors from carrying

firearms.74 Travel likewise assumed a recognizably modern

owner provides notice not to trespass: prohibiting “trespassing

on any lands, carrying a gun, after public notice on the part of

the owner, forbidding such trespassing”).

73

See David Schuyler, The New Urban Landscape: The

Redefinition of City Form in Nineteenth-Century America 2

(1986) (describing urbanization as “perhaps the most

fundamentally dislocating experience in all of American

history”).

74

E.g., San Francisco Municipal Reports for the Fiscal Year

1874–5, Ending June 30, 1875, at 887 (1875) (enacted 1872);

Laws and Ordinances Governing the Village of Hyde Park

Together with Its Charter and General Laws 310 (Consider H.

Willett ed., 1876); David H. MacAdam, Tower Grove Park of

the City of St. Louis 117 (1883); Comprising the Laws of

Illinois Relating to the City of Chicago and the Ordinances of

the City Counsel 391 (Egbert Jamieson & Francis Adams eds.,

1881) [hereinafter Chi. Mun. Code]; The Revised Ordinances

of the City of Danville 83 (Mann et al. eds., 1883); Annual

Reports of the City Officers and City Boards of the City of Saint

Paul 689 (1888); The Revised Ordinances of Salt Lake City

with the City Charter and Amendments Thereto 248 (1888);

Ordinances and Resolutions of the Borough and City of

Williamsport, Pa. 91 (1891) (enacted 1890); Compiled

57

Ordinances of the City of Grand Rapids 163 (Colin P.

Campbell ed., 1906) (enacted 1891); Third Annual Report of

the Park Commissioners of the City of Lynn, for the Year

Ending December 20, 1891, at 23 (1891); Park

Commissioners’ Report, Springfield, Massachusetts 82 (1897)

(enacted 1891); Laws and Ordinances of the City of Peoria,

Illinois 667 (Wilbert I. Slemmons, et al. eds., 1892); Municipal

Code of the City of Spokane, Washington Together With the

City Charter and Amendments, Rules of the City Council, and

List of Franchise Ordinances 123 (E.O. Connor ed., 1903)

(enacted 1892); The Charter of the City of Wilmington 571

(1893); Revised Ordinances of the City of Canton, Illinois 240

(B.M. Chiperfield ed., 1895); The Local Acts of the Legislature

of the State of Michigan Passed at the Regular Session of 1895

With an Appendix 596 (1895) [hereinafter 1895 Mich. Local

Acts]; The General Ordinances of the City of Indianapolis,

Containing, Also, Acts of the Indiana General Assembly So Far

as They Control Said City, to Which Is Prefixed a

Chronological Roster of Officers from 1832 to 1904, and Rules

Governing the Common Council 648 (Edgar A. Brown &

William W. Thornton eds., 1904) (enacted 1896); A Digest of

the Laws and Ordinances for the Government of the Municipal

Corporation of the City of Reading, Pennsylvania 240 (1897)

(enacted 1887); A Digest of the Acts of Assembly Relating to,

and the General Ordinances of the City of Pittsburgh From

1804 to Jan. 1, 1897, with References to Decisions

Thereon 496 (W.W. Thomson ed., 1897) (enacted 1893);

Revised Ordinances of the City of Boulder 157 (Oscar F.A.

58

form during this period. After the completion of the

transcontinental railroad in 1869,75 railroad construction

“increased dramatically,” ushering in an era of unprecedented

connectivity.76 To accommodate the needs of crowded

passenger trains, numerous jurisdictions forbade firing at trains

or recklessly handling a firearm while onboard.77 Iowa’s

statute went further by also criminalizing “present[ing] . . . any

gun, pistol, or other fire arm at any railroad train, car, or

Greene ed., 1899); City of Trenton, New Jersey, Charter and

Ordinances 390 (1903) (enacted 1890); 1905 Minn. Laws 620

(prohibiting firearms in state parks unless unloaded and sealed

by the park commissioner); Amendments to “The Revised

Municipal Code of Chicago of 1905” and New General

Ordinances 40 (1906). While we remain vigilant not to place

more weight on municipal codes than they can rightly bear, we

agree with the Ninth Circuit that because “the first modern

parks were regulated, as parks are regulated today, primarily

by municipalities rather than by States,” those historical

regulations provide relevant insight despite the fact that “many

of the ordinances were local.” Wolford, 116 F.4th at 983.

75

See Completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, Libr.

Cong., https://perma.cc/3QUM-RNTD.

76

Railroads in the Late 19th Century, Libr. Cong.,

https://perma.cc/3DNP-H87Z.

77

1876 Iowa Acts 142; 1879 Wyo. Terr. Sess. Laws 97; 1 Rev.

Stat. Ind. 338 (1881); 1889 Tex. Gen. Laws 36; 1891 Nev. Stat.

78; 1895 Ga. Laws 147; 1899 Ala. Acts 154; 1899 Fla. Laws

93.

59

locomotive engine[.]”78 Finally, Americans continued to

police the dangerous relationship between firearms and

alcohol. Some statutes focused on intoxicated individuals and

forbade them from carrying weapons,79 while other laws

emulated New Mexico’s location-based regime by prohibiting

weapons in areas that served alcohol.80

The most comprehensive carry statutes of this period

applied the centuries-old principle of preserving order in the

fairs and markets of the day by regulating firearm possession

and banning weapons from communal venues, including fairs,

race courses, ball rooms, churches, public halls, picnic

78

1876 Iowa Acts 142.

79

1867 Kan. Sess. Laws 25 (prohibiting “any person under the

influence of intoxicating drink” from carrying weapons); 1873

Mo. Laws 328 (proscribing carry in the town of Moberly while

“intoxicated”); 1879 Mo. Laws 224 (criminalizing carrying

weapons “when intoxicated or under the influence of

intoxicating drinks”); 1883 Wis. Sess. Laws 290 (prohibiting

“any person in a state of intoxication” from carrying guns).

80

1889 Ariz. Sess. Laws 17 (requiring “drinking saloon[s]” to

“keep posted up in a conspicuous place in his bar room . . . a

plain notice to travelers to divest themselves of their

weapons”); The Laws and Ordinances of the City of New

Orleans 1 (Edwin L. Jewell ed., 1882) (enacted 1879)

[hereinafter 1879 New Orleans Ordinance] (“tavern[s]”); 1890

Okla. Laws 495 (“any place where intoxicating liquors are

sold”); see also 1881 Nev. Stat. 19–20 (prohibiting firing a gun

in any “saloon”); 1883 Wis. Sess. Laws 841 (proscribing firing

a gun in “any saloon”).

60

grounds, theatres and other places of public entertainment or

amusement, and circuses.81 Like the New Orleans ordinance

discussed above, prohibitions on carrying arms in discrete

81

See 1869–70 Tenn. Pub. Acts 23–24 (“any fair [or] race

course”); 1870 Tex. Gen. Laws 63 (“a ball room, social party,

or other social gathering, composed of ladies and gentleman”);

1879 New Orleans Ordinance, at 1 (“any theatre, public

hall, . . . picnic ground, place for shows or exhibitions, house

or other place of public entertainment or amusement”); 1889

Ariz. Sess. Laws 17 (any “place where persons are assembled

for amusement . . . any circus, show or public exhibition of any

kind, or into a ball room, social party or social gathering”);

1890 Okla. Laws 495 (any “place where persons are assembled

. . . for amusement . . . any circus, show or public exhibition of

any kind, or into any ball room, or to any social party or social

gathering”); 1903 Mont. Laws 49 (any “place where persons

are assembled for amusement . . . any circus, show, or public

exhibition of any kind, or into a ball room, social party, or

social gathering”). Other jurisdictions prohibited brandishing

or firing weapons in certain recreational spaces. See Act of

1869, reprinted in The General Laws of New Mexico 312–13

(B. Prince ed., 1882) (prohibiting “draw[ing] or us[ing] any

deadly weapon in any ball [or] dance”) [hereinafter 1869 N.M.

Law]; 1881 Nev. Stat. 19–20 (“any theater”).

61

locations akin to fairs and markets banned carrying in and of

itself as a terror to the people.82

Extending the logic of universities’ firearm restrictions,

several statutes also disallowed weapons in schools and other

places with educational or scientific purposes.83 Additionally,

82

See, e.g., 1871 Tex. Gen. Laws 25–27 (“If any person shall

go into any church or religious assembly, any school room, or

other place where persons are assembled for amusement or for

educational or scientific purposes, or into any circus, show, or

public exhibition of any kind, or into a ball room, social party,

or social gathering, or to any election precinct on the day or

days of any election, where any portion of the people of this

State are collected to vote at any election, or to any other place

where people may be assembled to muster, or to perform any

other public duty, (except as may be required or permitted by

law,) or to any other public assembly, and shall have or carry

about his person a pistol or other firearm, dirk, dagger, slung

shot, sword cane, spear, brass-knuckles, bowie-knife, or any

other kind of knife manufactured and sold for the purposes of

offense and defense, unless an officer of the peace, he shall be

guilty of a misdemeanor[.]”).

83

1870 Tex. Gen. Laws 63 (“any school-room or other place

where persons are assembled for educational, literary, or

scientific purposes”); 1883 Mo. Laws 76 (“any school room or

place where people are assembled for educational, literary or

social purposes”); Stockton, Kan. Ordinances, no. 76, § 1,

reprinted in 8 Stockton Review and Rooks County Record

62

numerous statutes outlawed public carry at any public

assembly.84 In upholding these laws, state supreme courts

(1887) (“any school room or place where people are assembled

for educational, literary or social purposes”); 1889 Ariz. Sess.

Laws 17 (“any school room, or other place where persons are

assembled . . . for educational or scientific purposes”); 1890

Okla. Laws 495 (“any school room or other place where

persons are assembled . . . for educational or scientific

purposes”); Columbia, Mo. Gen. Ordinances ch. XVII, § 163

(1890) (“any school room or place where people are assembled

for educational, literary or social purposes”); 1903 Mont. Laws

49 (“any school room or other place where persons are

assembled . . . for educational or scientific purposes”); see also

1883 Wis. Sess. Laws 841 (forbidding firing a gun in any

“school house”).

84

1869–70 Tenn. Pub. Acts 23–24 (“any election in this State,

or for any person attending any fair, race course, or other public

assembly of the people other public assembly of the people”);

1870 Ga. Laws 421 (“any court of justice or any election

ground or precinct, or any place of public worship, or any other

public gathering in this State”); 1870 Tex. Gen. Laws 63 (“any

election precinct on the day or days of any election, where any

portion of the people of this State or collected to vote at any

election, or to any other place where people may be assembled

to muster or to perform any other public duty, or any other

public assembly”); 1874 Mo. Laws 76 (“any election precinct

on any election day, or into any court room during the sitting

of court, or into any other public assemblage of persons met

63

emphasized the power of the state to regulate firearm carry and

use.85

for other than militia drill”); 1879 Mo. Laws. 224 (same and

“other public assemblage of other persons met for any lawful

purpose, other than for militia drill”); 1883 Mo. Laws 76

(same) (“any other public assemblage of persons”); Stockton,

Kan. Ordinances, no. 76, § 1 (1887) (“any election on any

election day, or into any court room during the sitting of court,

or into any other public assemblage of persons not met for any

unlawful purpose”); 1889 Ariz. Sess. Laws 17 (“any election

precinct on the day or days of any election, where any portion

of the people of this Territory are collected to vote at any

election, or to any other place where people may be assembled

to minister or to perform any other public duty, or to any other

public assembly”); Columbia, Mo. Gen. Ordinances ch. XVII,

§ 163 (1890) (“any court room, during the sitting of court, or

to any election precinct on any election day; or into any other

public assemblage of persons met for any lawful purpose, other

than for military drill”); 1890 Okla. Laws 495 (“any election,

or to any place where intoxicating liquors are sold, or to any

political convention, or to any other public assembly”); 1903

Mont. Laws 49 (“any public assembly”).

85

E.g., Andrews v. State, 50 Tenn. (3 Heisk.) 165, 182 (1871)

(“Therefore, a man may well be prohibited from carrying his

arms to church, or other public assemblage, as the carrying

them to such places is not an appropriate use of them, nor

necessary in order to his familiarity with them, and his training

64

* * *

and efficiency in their use.”); id. at 187–88 (“If the Legislature

think proper, they may by a proper law regulate the carrying of

this weapon publicly, or abroad, in such a manner as may be

deemed most conducive to the public peace, and the protection

and safety of the community from lawless violence.”); English

v. State, 35 Tex. 473, 478–79 (1871) (“We confess it appears

to us little short of ridiculous, that any one should claim the

right to carry upon his person any of the mischievous devices

inhibited by the statute, into a peaceable public assembly, as,

for instance into a church, a lecture room, a ball room, or any

other place where ladies and gentlemen are congregated

together.”); Hill v. State, 53 Ga. 472, 475 (1874) (“The practice

of carrying arms at courts, elections and places of worship, etc.,

is a thing so improper in itself, so shocking to all sense of

propriety, so wholly useless and full of evil, that it would be

strange if the framers of the constitution have used words broad

enough to give it a constitutional guarantee.”); id. at 479 (“To

suppose that the framers of the constitution ever dreamed, that

in their anxiety to secure to the state a well regulated militia,

they were sacrificing the dignity of their courts of justice, the

sanctity of their houses of worship, and the peacefulness and

good order of their other necessary public assemblies, is

absurd. To do so, is to assume that they took it for granted that

their whole scheme of law and order, and government and

protection, would be a failure, and that the people, instead of

depending upon the laws and the public authorities for

protection, were each man to take care of himself, and to be

always ready to resist to the death, then and there, all

opposers.”).

65

From this extensive historical review, and consistent

with Bruen’s and Rahimi’s instruction, we discern the

following principles that underlie our Nation’s regulatory

tradition that are relevant to this case: First, legislatures have

long enjoyed the authority to restrict the carry of firearms in

specific locations central to the operation of government. And

the historical record demonstrates that legislatures may also

restrict the carry of weapons to protect against misuse in

discrete locations set aside for particular civic functions—like

the fairs, markets, parliaments, and polling places of old.86 For

example, firearms were deemed inappropriate for educational

institutions not only because they can be dangerous, but also

because they distracted from the civic mission of educating

“responsible public citizens.”87 Likewise, statutes barring

firearms from parliament-like locations protected peaceful

government functions and the ability of citizens to freely

86

The Supreme Court has similarly noted that carry restrictions

in similar sensitive places are within the regulatory tradition of

the Second Amendment. Bruen, 597 U.S. at 30 (“We therefore

can assume it settled that these locations”—specifically,

legislative assemblies, polling places, and courthouses—“were

‘sensitive places’ where arms carrying could be prohibited

consistent with the Second Amendment.”).

87

Miller, supra note 48, at 470; Joseph Blocher & Reva B.

Siegel, Guided by History: Protecting the Public Sphere from

Weapons Threats Under Bruen, 98 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1795, 1807

(2023) (“Education is an activity, like voting and legislating,

in which the bonds that constitute democratic community are

formed and reproduced. This link between education and

democracy was one that the founding generation recognized.”).

66

associate and deliberate without fear of violent reprisal.88 At

bottom, history demonstrates that carry restrictions served to

protect against physical danger and alarm in discrete fora

historically designated for important civic purposes.

Second, legislatures may impose conditions on the carry

of weapons outside the home that are designed to ensure that

those who choose to carry such weapons do so safely. The

sources surveyed in Rahimi itself provide ample support for

this principle. There, the Court found support for § 922(g)(8)

in historical surety laws, a “form of ‘preventive justice’” that

“could be invoked to prevent all forms of violence.” Rahimi,

602 U.S. at 695. These laws authorized officials to impose

bonds on individuals who decided to carry arms as a condition

of such carry and as security “for his keeping the peace.” Id.

at 696 (quoting 1795 Mass. Acts ch. 2, in Acts and Resolves of

Massachusetts, 1794–1795, ch. 26, pp. 66–67 (1896)).

We also take this opportunity to respond to the dissent’s

criticism of both our historical survey and methodology. The

dissent begins by complaining of a purported “source error”

that pervades our opinion. Dissent at 19. As the dissent sees

it, we “blithely assume[] that the fact an ordinance was

promulgated somewhere automatically makes it historically

and legally relevant.” Id. at 20. But the real problem is the

dissent’s unwillingness to consider historic regulations

inconsistent with its pre-existing assumptions. As an example,

it takes issue with our reference to a Texas statute because, by

not aligning with the dissent’s own views, “[t]he legislature

88

Miller, supra note 48, at 478; Blocher & Siegel, supra note

31, at 198.

67

and Texas Supreme Court ignored the Constitution,” when

interpreting the state law.89 Id. at 15. But for all the dissent’s

professed adherence to Heller, McDonald, Bruen, and Rahimi,

it rejects their teachings when they prove inconvenient for its

ahistorical vision of the Second Amendment. A prime

example of this dissonance is the dissent’s rejection of the

Statute of Northampton and its progeny as “provid[ing] little

insight into the meaning of the constitutional right to public

carry” because they “did not result from any kind of

constitutional deliberation.” Dissent at 31. That conclusion is

hard to square with binding Supreme Court precedent that

relies on this line of history, see, e.g., Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 694–

98, and our sister circuits’ recognition of the Statute’s enduring

importance, see, e.g., United States v. Allam, 140 F.4th 289,

296–99 (5th Cir. 2025) (relying almost exclusively on the

89

The dissent also casts our approach as “a fine example of

Second Amendment exceptionalism” before marshalling a list

of hypothetical reasons for why any particular historical

regulation might not be legally probative. Dissent at 15–16

(“Perhaps, as in 1870s Texas, the legislature ignored or

misconstrued constitutional constraints. Perhaps the law could

not be, or never was, subject to constitutional scrutiny. Perhaps

the law was rarely or never enforced, . . . .” (footnotes

omitted)). Apparently, under the dissent’s novel—and

insurmountable—Second Amendment test, a historical

analogue must refute all these possibilities (and, perhaps,

others) to retain its value. Even more problematic, those

objections would apply equally to arms regulations from the

colonial era, preventing us from being able to rely on any

historical analogue.

68

Statute of Northampton to reject constitutional challenge to 18

U.S.C. § 922(q)(2)(A), which proscribes possession of a

firearm within 1,000 feet of school grounds).

Likewise, neither the Supreme Court nor we have ever

instructed that we may consider only those laws that were

actually subjected to Second Amendment scrutiny. Rather, the

Supreme Court’s and our precedent refute this contention and

routinely rely on laws from jurisdictions not subject to the

Second Amendment or state equivalents. See, e.g., Rahimi,

602 U.S. 694–95 (relying on English history to uphold

§ 922(g)(8)); Quailes, 126 F.4th at 221 (relying on colonial era

estate forfeiture laws); United States v. Harris, 144 F.4th 154,

158–61 (3d Cir. 2025) (relying on colonial era statutes banning

drinking and common law authorities incapacitating the

mentally ill). And under Bruen’s methodology, we must

determine whether relevantly similar historical regulations

reflect a historic tradition with which a modern-day regulation

is consistent. See 597 U.S. at 28–29. Excluding from

consideration all historical regulations not subjected to Second

Amendment scrutiny would distort the baseline of historic

referents and misconstrue the accepted scope of legislative

authority at the time of the Founding.

Courts overlook the manifold goals of historical carry

restrictions at their peril.90 One cannot assess “why . . .

90

See Blocher & Siegel, supra note 31, at 178 (“[C]ourts are

likely to ask the wrong questions and demand the wrong types

of evidence if they only recognize the government interest in

69

regulations burden a law-abiding citizen’s right to armed self-

defense,” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 29, unless one appreciates the

ends our forebearers pursued in limiting where individuals

could bear arms.91 With these principles—and the diverse aims

they serve—guiding our analysis, we address each of

Plaintiffs’ challenges.

V. Constitutionality of the Challenged Provisions

Below we address the insurance and permitting aspects

of the statute before turning to its description of sensitive

places. Our disposition of the Plaintiffs’ first three

challenges—to the liability insurance requirement, payment to

the Victims of Crime Compensation Office, and the four-

reputable-persons requirement—turns on the factual and

historical record pertaining to each claim.

protecting individuals from physical injury and fail to

recognize the government interest in securing public safety as

protecting both the individual’s and society’s ability to engage

in valued activities—from child-rearing to education,

commerce, worship, voting, and governing—free from

weapons threats and intimidation.”).

91

See Joseph Blocher & Eric Ruben, Originalism-by-Analogy

and Second Amendment Adjudication, 133 Yale L.J. 99, 147

(2023) (discussing the numerous ends served by sensitive place

restrictions).

70

A. Permitting Restrictions and Insurance

Requirements

1. Liability Insurance

The Siegel Plaintiffs challenge the constitutionality of

N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:58-4.3, which requires anyone who

publicly carries a handgun in New Jersey to “maintain [at least

$300,000 in] liability insurance coverage insuring against loss

resulting from liability imposed by law for bodily injury, death,

and property damages sustained by any person arising out of

the ownership, maintenance, operation or use of a firearm

carried in public.”

As a threshold matter, we reject Defendants’ contention

that § 2C:58-4.3 falls outside the scope of the Second

Amendment’s text. Plaintiffs seek to carry handguns in public

for self-defense. Section 2C:58-4.3 forbids them from doing

so unless they procure liability insurance. Accordingly,

§ 2C:58-4.3 burdens their right to bear arms. See Nat’l Ass’n

for Gun Rts., Inc. v. City of San Jose, 618 F. Supp. 3d 901,

915–16 (N.D. Cal. 2022).

We turn, then, to the relevant history and tradition.

While the general dangers attendant to unsafe firearm use have

existed since the Founding, liability insurance as a medium to

motivate safe use did not exist in eighteenth-century America.

First-party insurance, which covers losses to the policyholder,

dates back to the dawn of the Renaissance in the city-states of

71

Northern Italy.92 By contrast, liability insurance, which covers

the policyholder against claims by third parties, “was first

marketed in the United States in the 1880s, having been

imported from Great Britain, where it was also a very recent

invention.”93 Because the Founding generation could not have

implemented the type of insurance mandate challenged here,

we must analogize to other historical regulations that

functioned to address the risk of damage to person and property

posed by publicly carrying a firearm. See Bruen, 597 U.S at

27 (unless the regulation is one that “Founders themselves

could have adopted to confront that problem,” a “more

nuanced approach” is appropriate).

The Defendants posit that surety statutes and

nineteenth-century strict liability regimes together establish a

tradition of firearms regulation and assert that the insurance

mandate is consistent with that tradition. See N.J. Att’y Gen.

Opening Br. 10–11. Specifically, they argue that the surety

statutes are relevantly similar to the insurance mandate in that

they both require handgun carriers to post financial security to

protect against the future danger of harm, while strict liability

regimes are relevantly similar to the insurance mandate in that

92

See W.R. Vance, The Early History of Insurance Law, 8

Colum. L. Rev. 1, 6–7 (1908).

93

Kenneth S. Abraham, Liability Insurance and Accident

Prevention: The Evolution of an Idea, 64 Md. L. Rev. 573, 580

(2005); Brief for Brady Ctr. to Prevent Gun Violence as

Amicus Curiae Supporting Defendants-Appellants 17.

72

they both protect against handgun-inflicted harm without any

finding of fault on the part of the firearm bearer. Id. at 52–53.

But these proposed analogues fall well short of

establishing a sufficiently similar regulatory tradition. First,

they differ with how they burden the right to bear arms. Strict

liability regimes do not impose an ex ante condition on an

individual’s right to bear arms. While they do pre-apportion

fault to the one with the firearm, a resulting financial burden,

if any, is imposed ex post and only when actual harm from the

public carrying of firearms has been realized. In contrast, the

insurance mandate requires all licensed individuals to purchase

insurance as a condition to their public carry of a handgun.

Surety statutes come closer, but still miss the mark. Broadly

speaking, these statutes and the insurance mandate are both a

form of “preventive justice,” Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 695 (citation

omitted), which require individuals to fulfill ex ante financial

burdens in order to carry firearms in public.94 The temporal

scope of the burden imposed by the surety statutes, however,

is far more limited than that imposed by the insurance mandate,

which requires perpetual maintenance of liability insurance.

N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:58-4.3(a); Bruen, 597 U.S. at 55–57 (once

a judicial determination of dangerousness was no longer in

effect, the surety statute’s restriction was lifted); Rahimi, 602

U.S. at 699. Thus, neither analogy shares an analogous means

as the insurance mandate.

These analogues also differ in their purpose—the

“why,” as Bruen put it. Historical laws required sureties of

people when they were “reasonably accused of intending to

94

See supra notes 67–69.

73

injure another or breach the peace,” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 57,

meaning they presented a credible threat of future harm to

others. Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 688–90. The insurance mandate,

on the other hand, imposes a condition on all individuals

simply due to New Jersey’s perception that carrying a firearm

in public presents an unacceptable general threat of future harm

to others. See N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:58-4.3(a) (requiring

insurance to compensate for the injuries, deaths, and property

damage “sustained by any person arising out of the ownership,

maintenance, operation or use of a firearm carried in public”).

As for the strict liability laws, they imposed a financial burden

on some individuals due to the realization of the general risk of

harm to person and property posed by a firearm. The insurance

mandate, as the Siegel Plaintiffs concede, is driven by a similar

concern in that it addresses the same risk but as posed by any

handgun carrier. See Siegel Plaintiffs’ Answering Br. at 23

(the strict liability decisions cited by Defendants “demonstrate

that earlier generations certainly understood that the

‘unintentional misuse’ of a firearm can cause ‘harm’—which

is the raison d’être for the insurance mandate”). But a similar

purpose alone cannot support a regulatory tradition under

Bruen.

Read together, the surety statutes and strict liability

regimes impose a narrower burden on the right to bear arms

than the insurance mandate, both in how the mandate burdens

that right and the reasons for which it does so. Thus, these

historical laws do not establish a historical principle akin to

that undergirding the insurance mandate—namely, imposing

ex ante financial requirements to address the general risk of

future harm to others posed by any individual’s publicly

carrying a handgun for self-defense. Plaintiffs are likely to

succeed on the merits of this challenge because New Jersey has

74

not carried its burden of demonstrating the insurance mandate

is consistent with our Nation’s regulatory tradition.

2. Victims of Crime Compensation Fund

Plaintiffs also challenge the application fee associated

with obtaining a Handgun Carry Permit as an “obnoxious

exaction” on their Second Amendment rights. Siegel

Plaintiffs’ Answering Br. 24 (citation modified) (quoting

Follett v. Town of McCormick, 321 U.S. 573, 577 (1944)).

Under Chapter 131, applicants for a Handgun Carry Permit

must pay a $200 application fee, $150 of which is used “to

defray the costs of investigation, administration, and

processing of the permit to carry handgun applications.” N.J.

Stat. Ann. § 2C:58-4(c). The remaining $50 portion, which

Plaintiffs here object to, is “deposited into the Victims of

Crime Compensation Office [(VCCO)] account.” Id. We

agree with Plaintiffs that the fee implicates the text of the

Second Amendment—it imposes a condition on the

“individual right to possess and carry weapons” that the

Second Amendment plainly protects. Bruen, 597 U.S. at 20

(quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 592). So we proceed to consider

whether the fee accords with our Nation’s tradition of firearms

regulation.

Drawing on First Amendment principles, Plaintiffs

argue that at least the portion of the $200 fee allocated toward

the VCCO account offends the Constitution because a state

“may not impose a charge” for “the enjoyment of a right

granted by the federal constitution” when that charge is used

for something other than to “meet the expense incident to the

administration of the act” and “maint[ain] public order in the

matter licensed.” Siegel Plaintiffs’ Answering Br. 25–26 (first

75

quoting Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U.S. 105, 113 (1943);

then quoting Cox v. New Hampshire, 312 U.S. 569, 577

(1941)). In other words, Plaintiffs contend, because part of the

permit application fee is not used to defray the cost of the

permitting scheme itself, the fee is unconstitutional.

We agree with Defendants, and Plaintiffs do not

dispute, that determining the constitutionality of permitting

fees does not require an assessment of historical analogues

because shall-issue licensing regimes and their associated fees,

like New Jersey’s, remain presumptively constitutional. See

N.J. Att’y Gen. Answering Br. 67; Siegel Plaintiffs’ Reply Br.

14. But we are otherwise unpersuaded by their arguments.

In the First Amendment context, licensing fees do not

infringe upon the regulated right when the purpose is “to meet

the expense incident to the administration of the [licensing] Act

and to the maintenance of public order in the matter licensed.”

Cox v. New Hampshire, 312 U.S. 569, 577 (1941). Cox

concerned a license for “perform[ing] or exhibit[ing]” a

“theatrical or dramatic representation,” holding a “parade or

procession upon any public street or way,” and hosting a

“public meeting upon any ground abutting thereon,” Id. at 571

(quotation omitted), and the fees imposed were linked to the

costs caused by licensed conduct, id. at 577. Costs associated

with unlicensed conduct were addressed through the penalty

for non-compliance. Id. at 571, n. 1. In that scenario, the

Supreme Court concluded that “[t]here is nothing contrary to

the Constitution in the charge of a fee limited to the purpose

stated.” Id. at 577.

But it is by now pellucid that “[a] state may not impose

a charge for the enjoyment of a right granted by the federal

constitution.” Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U.S. 105, 113

76

(1943). Thus, following Cox, the inquiry becomes whether the

fee at issue is a reasonable “expense incident to the

administration of the Act and to the maintenance of public

order in the matter licensed.” 312 U.S. at 577. Here, it is not.

New Jersey charges a fee of $50 to be “deposited into

the Victims of Crime Compensation Office account.” N.J.

Stat. Ann. § 2C:58-4(c). The statute does not connect that fee

to either the administration of the permitting scheme itself or

maintenance of public order created by the licensed conduct.

Contra N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:58-4(c) (designating $150 “to

defray the costs of investigation, administration, and

processing of the permit to carry handgun applications.”).

Accordingly, New Jersey’s VCCO fee charges applicants for

costs neither incidental to nor necessarily caused by their

bearing arms. Cox, 312 U.S. at 577. For this reason, the Siegel

Plaintiffs are likely to succeed in their challenge to it.

3. Endorsements from Four Reputable Persons

The Siegel Plaintiffs next challenge N.J. Stat. Ann.

§ 2C:58-4(b)’s requirement that Handgun Carry Permit

applicants submit endorsements from “four reputable persons

who are not related by blood or by law to the applicant and

have known the applicant for at least three years preceding the

date of application . . . who shall certify . . . that the applicant

has not engaged in any acts or made any statements that

suggest the applicant is likely to engage in conduct, other than

lawful self-defense, that would pose a danger to the applicant

or others.” Plaintiffs assert that this provision, which also

requires the “reputable persons” to “provide relevant

information . . . including the nature and extent of their

relationship with the applicant and information concerning

77

their knowledge of the applicant’s use of drugs or alcohol,” §

2C:58-4(b), constitutes a “formula for selective disarmament”

and an “ill-disguised effort to reintroduce . . . discretion into

New Jersey’s permitting system,” Siegel Plaintiffs’ Answering

Br. 29.

First, we address whether Plaintiffs have standing to

bring this challenge. To sue in federal court, Plaintiffs must

show they suffered an injury in fact that is traceable to the

challenged law and that would be redressed by a favorable

decision. Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560–61

(1992). Generally, a plaintiff who challenges the lawfulness of

an application process without first submitting herself to that

process can establish standing only by showing that she was

“able and ready” to apply for a benefit, but that application

“would be futile.” Ellison v. Am. Bd. of Orthopaedic Surgery,

11 F.4th 200, 205–06 (3d Cir. 2021) (quoting Carney v. Adams,

592 U.S. 53, 66 (2020)). Plaintiffs here allege plans to apply

for a Handgun Carry Permit, but they do not suggest that they

would be unable to satisfy the challenged requirement. They

claim to possess standing anyway because “[i]n order to

exercise their Second Amendment rights, plaintiffs must

affirmatively do something that they maintain the state cannot

require them to do—namely, supply the ‘endorse[ment]’ of at

least ‘four reputable persons.’” Siegel Plaintiffs’ Reply Br. 12

(quoting N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:58-4(b)).

In Antonyuk v. James, the Second Circuit confronted

nearly identical circumstances and determined that the plaintiff

had standing to challenge an allegedly unconstitutional firearm

permitting process. The plaintiff in that case had not yet

applied for a firearm carry license because he felt

uncomfortable providing the relevant information required by

78

New York law. 120 F.4th at 977. Acknowledging that the

plaintiff’s failure to obtain a carry license “stem[med] from his

own unwillingness to comply with the challenged

requirements,” the Second Circuit nonetheless concluded the

plaintiff had standing, explaining that the allegedly unlawful

application requirements impaired the plaintiff’s interest in

carrying a firearm “by deterring the plaintiff due to his

individual, but reasonable, sensibilities.” Id. We find

Antonyuk’s analysis persuasive and conclude it applies with

equal force here. If the four-reputable-persons requirement

unlawfully impairs Plaintiffs’ rights under the Second

Amendment, they should not have to subject themselves to its

strictures in order to challenge it. See id.

As to the merits of Plaintiffs’ argument, we agree with

the District Court that the four-reputable-persons requirement

implicates the text of the Second Amendment, and like the

District Court, we find it constitutionally permissible. As we

stated at the outset, a longstanding principle of our Nation’s

tradition of firearm regulation is that legislatures may impose

conditions on the carry of firearms designed to ensure the safe

use of those arms. New Jersey’s requirement merely continues

this deeply rooted tradition. From the beginning of the Nation,

jurisdictions limited the ownership and use of guns to those

who were not considered dangerous by their communities. See

Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 693–98 (summarizing that history). For

example, a 1699 New Hampshire law authorized “every justice

of the peace within this province” to “stay[] and arrest[] . . .

any other who shall go armed offensively, or put his Majesty’s

subjects in fear, by menaces or threatening speeches.”95 These

95

1699 N.H. Laws 1.

79

justices could “commit the offender to prison” until he

produced “sureties for the peace and good behaviour.”96

Massachusetts enacted a similar law,97 as did several other

states in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War.98 States later

expanded these surety requirements to apply to people who

were the subject of a “complaint” from “any person having

reasonable cause to fear an injury, or breach of peace.”99 The

four-reputable-persons requirement is simply a modern-day

analogue to these historic laws.

Bruen confirms as much. There, the Supreme Court

addressed laws with provisions akin to the four-reputable-

persons requirement and concluded that they passed

constitutional muster. Contrasting constitutionally

impermissible “may issue” gun laws with constitutionally

permissible “shall issue” gun laws, the Bruen Court spoke

approvingly of states that grant firearm permits based on a

circumscribed range of “discretionary criteria.” Bruen, 597

U.S. at 13 n.1. For example, Connecticut permits the issuance

of a firearm permit only to someone deemed to be “a suitable

person to receive such permit.”100 Rhode Island has a similar

“suitable person” standard.101 Delaware requires applicants to

submit a certificate signed by five local citizens confirming

96

Id.

97

Mass. Act of 1692, at 52-53.

98

Tenn. Act of 1801, at 709; Me. Act of 1821, at 285.

99

See supra note 67.

100

Conn. Gen. Stat. § 29-28(b).

101

11 R.I. Gen. Laws § 11-47-11(a).

80

“that the applicant bears a good reputation for peace and good

order in the community in which the applicant resides.”102 The

Bruen Court cited each provision with apparent approval. Id.

Of course, such provisions, including New Jersey’s,

may not be used by local authorities to mask invidious

discrimination like that which plagued this country’s historical

disarming of groups that included Native Americans, Black

people, and Catholics.103 Thus, should it come to pass that the

four-reputable-persons provision results in a discriminatory

licensure regime, an appropriate plaintiff would be well within

her rights to bring an as-applied challenge to the law. But we

will not invalidate the provision based on facts not presented

102

Del. Code Ann. tit. 11, § 1441(a)(2).

103

E.g., An Act to Prohibit the Selling of Guns, Gunpowder,

or Other Warlike Stores, to the Indians, Pa. Territory Laws,

reprinted in Anno Regni Georgii III, Regis, Magnæ Britanniæ,

Franciæ & Hiberniæ, Tertio 306-07 (B. Franklin ed., 1763)

(prohibiting the sale of guns to Native Americans); An Act

Concerning Slaves, &c. (1694), reprinted in Grants,

Concessions, and Original Constitutions of the Province of

New Jersey 341–42 (Aaron Leaming & Jacob Spicer eds., 2d

ed. 1881) (disarming enslaved people); 52 Archives of

Maryland 454 (J. Hall Pleasants ed., 1935) (1756 Maryland

law disarming Catholics); An Act for Disarming Papists, and

Reputed Papists, Refusing to Take the Oaths to the

Government, reprinted in 7 The Statutes at Large: A Collection

of All the Laws of Virginia 35–39 (William W. Hening ed.,

1820) (1756 Virginia law disarming Catholics); 7 Del. Laws

125 (1827) (disarming enslaved people).

81

in this case. As it exists, New Jersey’s permitting requirement

is a neutral, generally applicable law designed to ensure that

firearms end up only with those whom their communities deem

to be safe to carry them. Cf. Antonyuk, 120 F.4th at 976 (“A

reasoned denial of a carry license to a person who, if armed,

would pose a danger to themselves, others, or to the public is

consistent with the well-recognized historical tradition of

preventing dangerous individuals from possessing weapons.”).

We conclude that New Jersey’s four-reputable-persons

provision fits squarely within the principles underlying our

Nation’s history of firearm regulation, as supported by the

legion of relevantly similar historical laws cited above. As

such, Plaintiffs cannot demonstrate a likelihood of success on

the merits of this claim.

B. Sensitive Places

We now turn to Plaintiffs’ challenges to New Jersey’s

“sensitive places” regulations. Below, we address each of the

challenged locational firearm restrictions and conclude, in light

of our history and the principles it embodies, that most—

though not all—of those restrictions comport with traditional

firearms regulation.

1. Public Property

Before subjecting each “sensitive place” to the Second

Amendment inquiry required by Bruen and Rahimi, we first

address Defendants’ contention that several of the challenged

restrictions are constitutional, independent of any “historical

grounds,” when “the State acts as proprietor rather than as

sovereign.” N.J. Att’y Gen. Opening Br. 34.

82

According to Defendants, New Jersey, as a proprietor,

may, like any private landowner, forbid firearms on state-

owned property without triggering Bruen’s analogical inquiry.

The District Court rejected “the sweeping proposition that

carrying for self-defense in public does not extend to any

location in which the government owns the land” and affirmed

that whether a firearm restriction in a state-owned location

comports with the right to keep and bear arms “will turn on

whether analogies to historical regulation can justify the

challenged law.” Koons v. Platkin, 673 F. Supp. 3d 515, 605–

06 (D.N.J. 2023).

We agree with the District Court that Bruen’s

framework applies to firearm restrictions even when New

Jersey acts as a proprietor. The handful of opinions to which

Defendants cite to support their position does not convince us;

indeed, half of those opinions support the contrary

proposition—that states qua proprietors still “must comply

with the Constitution.” Bonidy v. U.S. Postal Serv., 790 F.3d

1121, 1126 (10th Cir. 2015); see also GeorgiaCarry.org, Inc.

v. U.S. Army Corps of Eng’rs, 212 F. Supp. 3d 1348, 1367–68

(N.D. Ga. 2016). The remaining cases rely on Heller’s

assurances that it did not cast doubt on certain longstanding

prohibitions. See United States v. Class, 930 F.3d 469, 464

(D.C. Cir. 2019); Nordyke v. King, 681 F.3d 1041, 1044 (9th

Cir. 2012) (en banc). True, Heller described “laws forbidding

the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such

as . . . government buildings” as “presumptively lawful.” 554

U.S. at 626–27 & n.26. But Bruen clarified this statement,

observing that “the historical record yields relatively few 18th-

and 19th-century ‘sensitive places’ where weapons were

altogether prohibited—e.g., legislative assemblies, polling

places, and courthouses.” 597 U.S. at 30. The Court’s

83

approach indicates that carry restrictions affecting government

property are subject to the same historical inquiry as other

firearm regulations, rather than a categorical carveout.

In so concluding, we respectfully part ways with the

Ninth Circuit which held, in evaluating similar “sensitive

places” laws from California and Hawai’i, “the State, too, may

exercise its proprietary right to exclude [the carry of firearms],

just as a private property owner may.” Wolford, 116 F.4th at

970–71. We read Bruen to foreclose this argument for the

above reasons. But we also recognize that the prospect of

enabling the government, in its proprietary capacity, to prohibit

the possession or carry of firearms on property it owns would

work great damage to individuals’ Second Amendment rights.

Just as New York’s attempt to define the entire island of

Manhattan as a “sensitive place” in Bruen, permitting the

government to end-run the Second Amendment when it acts as

a proprietor brings with it the prospect of “eviscerate[ing] the

general right to publicly carry arms for self-defense” that

Bruen articulated.104 597 U.S. at 31.

104

In applying Bruen’s framework to state-owned property, we

do not suggest that the government’s role “as proprietor rather

than as sovereign” is irrelevant to our analysis. N.J. Att’y Gen.

Opening Br. 34. To the contrary, Bruen accommodates

questions of state versus private property ownership within its

principles-based test by asking whether excluding weapons

from a particular locale comports with “the Nation’s historical

tradition of firearm regulation,” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 24,

84

2. Private Property

Section 2C:58-4.6(a)(24) proscribes knowingly

carrying a firearm on “private property, including but not

limited to residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural,

institutional or undeveloped property, unless the owner has

provided express consent or has posted a sign indicating that it

is permissible to carry on the premises a concealed handgun.”

The District Court ruled that this restriction “impermissibly

burdens Plaintiffs’ Second Amendment right to carry for self-

defense in public as applied to private property that is held

open to the public and for which an implied invitation to enter

is extended, but not on private property not held open to the

public.” Koons, 673 F. Supp. 3d at 607. Plaintiffs do not

challenge the District Court’s conclusion, while Defendants

challenge the District Court’s conclusion as to privately-owned

places held open to the public.

Defendants and amici contend that the Second

Amendment’s plain text does not reach carrying a firearm on

another’s private property, as opposed to in public or in one’s

own home. But the Supreme Court has held that “the right to

‘bear arms’ refers to the right to ‘wear, bear, or carry . . . for

the purpose . . . of being armed and ready for offensive or

defensive action in a case of conflict with another person.”

Bruen, 597 U.S. at 32 (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 584). That

meaning we must consider whether a regulation in each

location is analogous to laws protecting sovereign functions

and officials. What we decline to do is treat simple

governmental ownership of property as a shield against Second

Amendment scrutiny.

85

interpretation reaches outside the gunowner’s own home. Id.

at 33 (“After all, the Second Amendment guarantees an

‘individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of

confrontation,’ and confrontation can surely take place outside

the home.” (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 592)). Even though

“the need for armed self-defense” may be greater at home, that

does “not suggest that the need [i]s insignificant elsewhere.”

Id. Accordingly, where New Jersey seeks to regulate the carry

of firearms on private property held open to the public, its

regulation implicates the Amendment’s plain text. Accord

Wolford, 116 F.4th at 993; Antonyuk, 120 F.4th at 1044.

Alternatively, Defendants and amici suggest

§ 2C:58-4.6(a)(24) is not a state-imposed restriction at all, as it

merely “effectuate[s]” private landowners’ decisions regarding

guns on their property. N.J. Att’y Gen. Opening Br. 38–39.

But we cannot characterize § 2C:58-4.6(a)(24) as nothing more

than a conduit for private decision-making without altering the

default public access to privately-owned places held open to

the public and “construing the sound of silence” differently

than the law had previously. Koons, 673 F. Supp. 3d at 613.

Instead, § 2C:58-4.6(a)(24) constitutes state action and thus

falls within the scope of the Second Amendment.

Accordingly, we must decide whether Defendants can

“justify [that] regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent

with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

Bruen, 597 U.S. at 24. Section 2C:58-4.6(a)(24) “addresses a

general societal problem that has persisted since the 18th

century”—namely, the threat to persons and belongings from

individuals carrying firearms on the property of others opened

to the public—so Defendants must identify “a distinctly similar

historical regulation addressing that problem.” Id. at 26.

86

As discussed above, the historical record contains

several laws regulating the carrying of arms on another’s land

without the owner’s permission. In the eighteenth century,

Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts all

enacted statutes requiring an individual to procure a

landowner’s consent before carrying firearms on his land.105

And after the Civil War, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, and Oregon

enacted similar measures.106 So just like § 2C:58-4.6(a)(24),

these statutes altered the default rule on private property to a

presumption against carrying on another’s land.

But § 2C:58-4.6(a)(24) sweeps far broader than New

Jersey’s proffered historical analogues, as it encompasses all

“private property, including but not limited to residential,

commercial, industrial, agricultural, institutional or

undeveloped property.” Historical examples were seemingly

105

Pa. Act of 1721, at 255–56; N.J. Act of 1722, at 123; 1751

N.J. Laws 448, 451; Pa. Act. of 1760, at 495; N.Y. Act of 1763,

at 441–42; N.J. Act of 1769, at 582; 1771 N.J. Laws 343, 344;

An Act for the Protection and Security of the Sheep and Other

Stock on Tarpaulin Cove Island, Otherwise Called Naushon

Islands, and on Nennemesset Island; and Several Small Islands

Contiguous, Situated in the County of Dukes County, in Acts

and Laws Passed by the General Court of Massachusetts 437–

38 (1789). Moreover, these statutes represented a logical

evolution of even earlier laws forbidding armed trespass after

neglecting to obtain permission and receiving a warning from

a landowner. See Va. Act of 1642, at 248; Va. Act of 1657, at

437; Md. Act of 1715, at 90.

106

See supra note 72.

87

limited to private property that was not impliedly held open to

the public, such as plantations and estates. Otherwise, “it was

standard practice for landowners to give the public formal

notice in local newspapers that firearms were not permitted on

their property.”107 This distinct “how” precludes us from

finding that New Jersey’s proffered historical analogues are

“relevantly similar” to subsection (a)(24)’s application to

privately-owned spaces held open to the public. The

Defendants offer no other analogues that establish a historic

principle of firearm regulation protecting against the manner

of physical encroachment and appropriation of private property

that owners have held open to the public.

Section 2C:58-4.6(a)(24) certainly resembles

regulations of old, but its “how” and “why”—its broad scope

to include property held open to the public and particular

purpose—are not sufficiently rooted in the principles

underlying this Nation’s history and tradition to pass

constitutional muster. We therefore conclude that Plaintiffs are

likely to succeed on the merits of this claim and will affirm the

preliminary injunction as to its enforcement.

3. Permitted Public Gatherings

Plaintiffs challenge § 2C:58-4.6(a)(6)’s ban on carrying

firearms “within 100 feet of a place where a public gathering,

demonstration or event is held for which a government permit

107

Patrick J. Charles, The Second Amendment and Heller’s

“Sensitive Places” Carve-Out Post-Rahimi: A

Historiography, Analysis, and Basic Framework, 58 UIC L.

Rev. 813, 865 (2025).

88

is required, during the conduct of such gathering,

demonstration or event.” The District Court concluded that

provision was not sufficiently rooted in the American tradition

of firearm regulation to withstand scrutiny under Bruen.

Plaintiffs’ desire to bear arms at public gatherings falls

within the plain text of the Second Amendment. And the

“general societal problem” that § 2C:58-4.6(a)(6) addresses—

the risks posed by firearms at public assemblies—has been a

concern since the colonial period, albeit not to the same extent

as today.108 As a result, Defendants must offer analogous

historical regulations to justify § 2C:58-4.6(a)(6)’s strictures.

After the Civil War, Tennessee, Georgia, Texas,

Missouri, Arizona, Oklahoma, and Montana all forbade

firearms at public assemblies and gatherings.109 These

historical prohibitions are strikingly similar to

§ 2C:58-4.6(a)(6). And although they emerged in the latter

half of the nineteenth century, these regulations are not outliers

that undermine prior understandings of the right to bear arms.

To the contrary, these statutes represent a more recent

application of the centuries-old practice of proscribing

weapons at discrete locations—from courts to legislative

108

See infra Part VI.

109

See supra note 84. Additionally, New Mexico imposed a

similar, though less restrictive, prohibition on “draw[ing] or

us[ing] any deadly weapon in any . . . public gathering of the

people[.]” 1869 N.M. Law 313.

89

bodies to polling places110—set aside for the purposes of

governmental services and peaceful assembly. The permitted

public gatherings, demonstrations, and events that § 2C:58-

4.6(a)(6) protects fit comfortably within these historically

designated locations.

In reaching the opposite conclusion, the District Court

deemed the Georgia, Texas, and Missouri statutes inapt.

Observing that the Georgia law proscribed public carry at “any

court of justice, or any election ground or precinct, or any place

of public worship, or any other public gathering,”111 the

District Court applied the interpretive canon of ejusdem

generis—construing a general term by reference to the specific

terms that precede it—and ruled that the statute reached

gatherings related to “the performance of a civic duty, such as

voting, or exercising First Amendment religious rights, such as

attending religious services, or accessing the courts,” but did

not extend to “other types of public gatherings, such as political

conventions or protests.” Koons, 673 F. Supp. 3d at 631.

The first issue with this reasoning comes from history:

The Supreme Court of Georgia rejected the restrictive

interpretation given to the statute by the District Court in

Wynne v. State, explaining “[t]he wholesome purpose of this

110

See 7 Edw. 2 c. 170 (1313); 26 Hen. 8 c. 6 (1534); 1647 Md.

Laws 216; 1650 Md. Laws 273; 1776 Del. Const. art. 28;

Proceedings of the Conventions of the Province of Maryland,

supra note 51, at 185; 1870 La. Acts 159–60; Tex. Act of 1871,

at 1322.

111

1870 Ga. Laws 421.

90

statute would be much limited by putting a narrow construction

upon the expression ‘any public gathering.’ A barbecue on the

4th of July, at which the public is assembled in considerable

numbers constitutes a public gathering within the meaning of

the statute.” 51 S.E. 636, 637 (Ga. 1905). While the District

Court’s reading of the Georgia law might be plausible absent

contrary evidence, it is untenable in light of Wynne. Second,

the District Court fell prey to a common misunderstanding of

Bruen that Rahimi clarified: “our inquiry into principles that

underlie our regulatory tradition does not reduce historical

analogizing to an exercise in matching elements of modern

laws to those of their historical predecessors.” Pitsilides v.

Barr, 128 F.4th 203, 210 (3d Cir. 2025). Instead, we look to

the tradition of firearm regulation as a whole, evaluating

historical analogues and their “how” and “why,” to distill the

animating principles from that history and to consider whether

a modern law fits within those principles. In light of Rahimi,

the District Court employed a far too exacting test to determine

whether proffered historical analogues were relevantly similar.

Given the plain text of the statute that covers “any other public

gathering,” coupled with the Georgia Supreme Court’s

interpretation of the statute, we have little difficultly

concluding that Georgia’s public gathering statute is indeed

“distinctly similar” to § 2C:58-4.6(a)(6). Bruen, 597 U.S. at

26.

As for both the Georgia and the Texas law, the District

Court emphasized that those state supreme courts endorsed a

militia-based interpretation of the right to bear arms in

upholding the statute. See Koons, 673 F. Supp. 3d at 629–30

(discussing Hill v. State, 53 Ga. 472 (1874)); id. at 632

(discussing English v. State, 35 Tex. 473 (1871)). But the

District Court’s reading of the Georgia law is untenable as

91

Nunn v. Georgia, 1 Ga. (1 Kel.) 243 (1846) was decided

decades before Hill and held that the right to bear arms was an

individual right. And for Texas, any error in the Texas

Supreme Court’s reading of the Second Amendment does not

wholly undermine the probative value of the statute, which

demonstrates that the Texas legislature believed it could ban

firearms from public gatherings,112 offering another historical

data point that such prohibitions comport with our Nation’s

tradition.

The District Court also reasoned that the Missouri

statute was not a “reliable historical analogue” based on its

view that the Missouri Supreme Court suggested the statute

violated Missouri’s state constitution. Koons, 673 F. Supp. 3d

at 633. However, that decision concerned a prior version of

the statute that forbade only concealed carry at public

assemblies. State v. Reando (Mo. 1878). The Missouri

Supreme Court upheld the concealed-carry law under the

state’s right to bear arms. Id. In doing so, the Court warned

that an absolute ban on keeping and bearing arms would violate

the state constitution, but the Court stressed that it was not

addressing the validity of a ban on carrying firearms, whether

concealed or openly, at a public assembly or any other sensitive

location:

112

The carry restriction was not included in the chapter

addressing the militia, see 1870 Tex. Gen. Laws 11–16, but in

a separate chapter; furthermore, the statute’s carve-out,

allowing arms possession at gatherings in “locations subject to

Indian depredations,” suggests the legislature recognized an

individual right to carry for self-defense, id. at 63.

92

We do not say nor do we wish to be understood

as saying that the legislature might not prohibit a

person from bearing arms, even openly, in such

places as are mentioned in the statute, without

such prohibition to constitutional objections. No

such enactment as this is before us and, we

apprehend, never will be, for the moral sense of

every well-regulated community would be so

shocked by any one who would so far disregard

it, as to invade such places with fire arms and

deadly weapons exposed to public view on his

person that it would very rarely, if even, occur.

Id. The Reando Court did not face a challenge to the open carry

statute and explicitly underscored that fact. We therefore

disagree with the District Court’s inference that the Missouri

legislature defied the state constitution when enacting the open

carry statute after Reando. Instead, that statute offers probative

evidence of the American tradition of firearm regulation.

Finally, the District Court remarked that several

colonial-era statutes required colonists to bring firearms to

church services.113 Koons, 673 F. Supp. 3d at 628. Yet an

113

As the District Court recognized, these laws were enacted

to ensure colonists were ready for violent clashes with Native

Americans and enslaved people. Accordingly, some courts

have concluded “these statutes are rooted in racism not the

Second Amendment.” Goldstein v. Hochul, 680 F. Supp. 3d

370, 396 (S.D.N.Y. 2023); see also Range., 124 F.4th at 229

93

obligation to bear arms in certain locations is distinct from a

license to do so at will in any. Indeed, one can easily draw the

opposite conclusion from these colonial statutes—that “[w]hen

the government imposes such a duty it assumes that it has the

power to regulate the public carrying of weapons; whether it

forbids them or commands them, the government is regulating

the practice of public carrying.” Young v. Hawaii, 992 F.3d

765, 819 (9th Cir. 2021) (en banc), vacated and remanded, 142

S. Ct. 2895 (2022). Given the ambiguity inherent in statutory

duties to bear arms, we decline to treat those laws as evincing

a limitless license to carry weapons.

These historical examples offer persuasive evidence of

the principles underlying our Nation’s regulatory tradition of

firearm regulation. As we articulated at the outset, we read

history—including the historical laws proffered by New

Jersey—to include a principle that legislatures may

constitutionally prohibit the carry of firearms at and around

discrete locations set aside for civic and government functions.

Armed with this historical pedigree, modern-day legislatures,

consistent with the Second Amendment, may enact analogous

laws proscribing the carry of firearms at locations set aside for

the same historically protected functions. New Jersey’s

regulation prohibiting the carry of firearms within 100 feet of

any gathering for which a governmental permit is required

carries on this deeply rooted history by protecting locations of

public gathering and demonstration from the historically

recognized disruptive presence of firearms. As such,

(Hardiman, J.) (expressing concerns with relying on historical

practices “based on race and religion” to discern the scope of

the Second Amendment).

94

Defendants have shown that § 2C:58-4.6(a)(6) comports with

our national tradition of bearing arms and thus complies with

the Second Amendment.

4. Public Parks, Beaches, Recreation Facilities,

Playgrounds, Zoos, and Youth Sports Events

According to the District Court, Defendants failed to

establish that parts of § 2C:58-4.6(a)(9) (prohibiting carrying

firearms at zoos) and most of § 2C:58-4.6(a)(10) (prohibiting

carrying firearms at “a park, beach, [or] recreation facility . . .

owned or controlled by a State, county or local government

unit”) are consistent with our national tradition of firearm

regulation. It did hold, however, that public playgrounds,

§ 2C:58-4.6(a)(10), as well as at youth sports events,

§ 2C:58-4.6(a)(11), “fall within the sphere of schools,” and are

thus valid sensitive locations. Koons, 673 F. Supp. 3d at 643

(quotation omitted).

As with the other regulations, we conclude carrying a

firearm for self-defense at these locations falls within the plain

text of the right to keep and bear arms. As a result, Defendants

bear the burden of demonstrating that the relevant portions of

§ 2C:58-4.6(a)(9)–(11) satisfy Bruen’s history-and-tradition

test. To decide what level of analogy is appropriate, we must

determine if the risks posed by guns at public parks, beaches,

recreation facilities, playgrounds, zoos, and youth sports

events have “persisted since the 18th century” or represent a

modern concern. Bruen, 597 U.S. at 26.

Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, the concept of a

park referred to privately owned, enclosed lands where wild

95

game roamed.114 What communal green space did exist, like

the Boston Common, was devoted primarily to grazing

cattle.115 The public parks we know today did not emerge until

after the onset of mass urbanization and were developed to

provide a reprieve from industrialization and foster democratic

solidarity across social classes.116 Crucially, these parks were

created in response to the increasing alienation of urban

dwellers, designed in part to sustain the existing “social order”

and “promote the highest potential of civilization in

America.”117 They also housed the country’s first zoos, which

opened in the 1870s in New York and Philadelphia.118 Simply

114

See Park, Noah Webster’s Am. Dictionary of the English

Language (1828) (“A large piece of ground inclosed and

privileged for wild beasts of chase, in England, by the king’s

grant or by prescription. To constitute a park three things are

required; a royal grant or license; inclosure by pales, a wall or

hedge; and beasts of chase, as deer, etc.”).

See Nadav Shoked, Property Law’s Search for a Public, 97

115

Wash. U. L. Rev. 1517, 1556–57 (2020).

116

See supra notes 61–62 and accompanying text; see also

Frederick Law Olmsted, The Justifying Value of a Public Park

7 (1881) (“Twenty-five years ago we had no parks, park-like

or otherwise, which might not better have been called

something else.”); Shoked, supra note 115, at 1557 (describing

the advent of parks in the nineteenth century); Schuyler, supra

note 73, at 1–10 (same).

117

Schuyler, supra note 73, at 6.

118

See History of Zoos in Parks, NYC Parks,

https://perma.cc/E3LB-XC46.

96

put, “examples [of parks] from the Founding were not

relevantly similar to parks in their modern form.” Wolford,

116 F.4th at 982. We therefore agree with the Second and

Ninth Circuits that the “relative novelty of public parks as

institutions . . . justifies a flexible approach under Bruen.”

Antonyuk, 120 F.4th at 1022 n.86; accord Wolford, 116 F.4th

at 982; cf. LaFave, 2025 WL 2458491, at *4 (rejecting facial

challenge to ordinance banning firearm possession in public

parks where it would be constitutional in at least some

applications).

Similarly, although America has always enjoyed a

magnificent coastline, the modern notion of a recreational

beach first appeared in the nineteenth century. Whereas the

coast was “synonymous with dangerous wilderness” in the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Europeans and

Americans began to view the beach as a salutary escape from

industrial urban centers during the mid-to-late-nineteenth

century.119 Public recreation facilities—such as gymnasia,

pools, and athletics fields—likewise originated in the latter half

119

Daniela Blei, Inventing the Beach: The Unnatural History

of a Natural Place, Smithsonian Mag. (June 23, 2016),

https://perma.cc/46EG-MR6U; see also Karl F. Nordstrom,

Beaches and Dunes of Developed Coasts 8 (2000) (“There was

little or no interest in direct use of the exposed part of the

coastal zone in many countries up to the mid nineteenth century

due to the difficulty of traversing lagoons and marshes and the

occurrence of malaria. The second half of the nineteenth

century saw the beginning of relatively large-scale coastal

tourism and development of seaside resorts in many locations.”

(citations omitted)).

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of the nineteenth century,120 as organized sport spread from the

aristocratic traditions of the upper class to the American people

as whole.121 These locations, too, lack a relevantly similar

Founding-era analogue, calling for the same flexible approach

under Bruen and Rahimi that we afford regulations governing

parks.

Sections 2C:58-4.6(a)(9)–(11) seek to maintain peace

and curb disturbances posed by firearms at New Jersey’s public

parks, beaches, zoos, and recreation facilities, with an

additional, more specific goal of protecting the children who

frequent these locations. These legislative goals find support

in the historic principle, established through several analogous

historical laws, which forbade guns from centers of community

120

See Steven A. Reiss, Sport in Industrial America 1850–

1920, at 6 (2d ed. 2013) (“Social reformers and boosters

pressured municipalities to secure and develop public space for

recreation. Cities, led by the example of New York’s Central

Park in 1858, established beautiful suburban public parks after

the Civil War. By the early 1900s, municipalities also

developed inner-city sites for small parks and playgrounds,

baths, recreational piers, and schoolyards.”); Miriam A.

Cherry, Exercising the Right to Public Accommodations: The

Debate over Single-Sex Health Clubs, 52 Me. L. Rev. 97, 114

(2000) (“Gymnasiums were not common in the United States

until the middle of the nineteenth century.”).

121

America at Leisure, Libr. Cong., https://perma.cc/GJT9-

PVM9 (describing the rise of sports as a leisure activity and the

opening of public gymnasia, courts, and fields after the Civil

War).

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life, such as fairs and markets, to ensure visitors could

participate without the risks and anxieties associated with

deadly weapons. Further support can be found in the later

application of this historic principle to new contexts such as

recreational areas and places of amusements, particularly in

natural settings. Throughout the second half of the nineteenth

century, parks and the recreation facilities within them—

including zoos—banned firearms.122 Indeed, the emergence of

the modern park brought with it virtually instantaneous

prohibition of firearms in those spaces. See Wolford, 116 F.4th

at 982–83; Antonyuk, 120 F.4th at 1022–26.

Examples abound. As the Ninth Circuit observed, New

York City’s Central Park is a prime example. “[P]erhaps the

Nation’s first modern public park,” when it opened “[i]n 1858

. . . New York prohibited the carrying of firearms in Central

Park.” Wolford, 116 F.4th at 982. The Second Circuit recently

marshaled additional evidence of legislatures “regulating

firearms in public forums and quintessentially crowded

places,” of which parks are but one example. Antonyuk, 120

F.4th at 1019. That court traced the lineage of regulation of

weapons in public fora to the Statute of Northampton, passed

in 1328, and found that “at least two states—Virginia and

North Carolina—passed statutes at the Founding that

replicated the medieval English law prohibiting firearms in

fairs and markets, i.e., the traditional, crowded public forum.”

Id. at 1018–20 (footnotes omitted). At the time of their

122

See supra note 74; Fourth Annual Report of the Board of

Commissioners of the Central Park 106 (1861); Acts of

Assembly Relating to Fairmount Park 18 (1870); Chi. Mun.

Code 391.

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passage, these Virginia and North Carolina statutes “applied to

over a quarter of the Nation’s population,” with “an additional

three states and two territories” enacting similar laws by 1891

which, combined, regulated over 10 million Americans. Id. at

1021–22. And while parks and firearm prohibitions in them

flourished throughout the mid- to late-nineteenth century, “the

constitutionality of those laws was not in dispute.” Wolford,

116 F.4th at 983; see also Antonyuk, 120 F.4th at 1022.

In addition to parks, legislatures extended this historical

principle by applying several of those prohibitions to public

beaches.123 Other laws proscribed guns in locations dedicated

to amusement,124 and they treated sites of education and youth

presence with particular sensitivity.125 Although some of these

analogues appeared between the 1860s and the first decade of

the twentieth century, they are nevertheless probative of the

American tradition of firearm restrictions, as they developed

out of earlier statutes regulating the carrying of arms in bucolic

123

E.g., San Francisco Municipal Reports for the Fiscal Year

1874–5, Ending June 30, 1875, at 887 (1875) (enacted 1872)

(Golden Gate Park); Chi. Mun. Code 391 (Chicago’s parks,

including Lincoln Park); 1895 Mich. Local Acts 596 (Belle Isle

Park); Amendments to “The Revised Munici

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