Edward PERUTA; Michelle Laxson; James Dodd; Leslie Buncher, Dr.; Mark Cleary; California Rifle and Pistol Association Foundation, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. COUNTY OF SAN DIEGO; William D. Gore, individually and in his capacity as Sheriff, Defendants-Appellees.
No. 10-56971.
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
Argued and Submitted Dec. 6, 2012. Filed Feb. 13, 2014.
1144
AFFIRMED.
James M. Chapin, Senior Deputy Attorney for County of San, San Diego, CA, argued the cause and filed the brief for the defendant-appellee William D. Gore. With him on the brief was Thomas E. Montgomery, County Counsel for County of San Diego, San Diego, CA.
Stephen P. Halbrook, Fairfax, VA, filed the brief on behalf of amicus curiae Congress of Racial Equality, Inc. in support of the plaintiffs-appellants.
Paul D. Clement, Bancroft PLLC, Washington, D.C., filed the brief on behalf of amicus curiae National Rifle Association of America, Inc. in support of plaintiffs-appellants.
David B. Kopel, Independence Institute, Golden, CO, filed the brief on behalf of amici curiae International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association and the Independence Institute.
Alan Gura, Gura & Possessky, PLLC, Alexandria, VA, filed the brief on behalf of amici curiae Second Amendment Foundation, Inc., Calguns Foundation, Inc., Adam Richards, and Brett Stewart in support of plaintiffs-appellants.
John C. Eastman, Chapman University School of Law, Orange, CA, filed the brief on behalf of amici curiae Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, and Law En
Don B. Kates, Battle Ground, WA, filed the brief on behalf of amici curiae Gun Owners of California and Senator H.L. Richardson (Ret.) in support of plaintiffs-appellants.
Neil R. O‘Hanlon, Hogan Lovells US LLP, Los Angeles, CA, filed the brief on behalf of amici curiae Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, and the Police Foundation. With him on the brief were Adam K. Levin, S. Chartey Quarcoo, and Samson O. Asiyanbi, Hogan Lovells US LLP, Washington, D.C., and Jonathan E. Lowy and Daniel R. Vice, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Washington, D.C.
Paul R. Coble, Law Offices of Jones & Mayer, Fullerton, CA, filed the brief on behalf of amici curiae California State Sheriffs Association, California Police Chiefs Association, and California Peace Officers Association in support of defendants-appellees. With him on the brief was Martin J. Mayer, Law Offices of Jones & Mayer, Fullerton, CA.
Simon J. Frankel, Covington & Burling LLP, San Francisco, CA, filed the brief on behalf of amici curiae Legal Community against Violence, Major Cities Chiefs Association, Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, and San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón in support of defendants-appellees. With him on the brief were Samantha J. Choe, Steven D. Sassaman, and Ryan M. Buschell, Covington & Burling LLP, San Francisco, CA.
Before: O‘SCANNLAIN, THOMAS, and CALLAHAN, Circuit Judges.
OPINION
O‘SCANNLAIN, Circuit Judge:
We are called upon to decide whether a responsible, law-abiding citizen has a right under the Second Amendment to carry a firearm in public for self-defense.
I
A
California generally prohibits the open or concealed carriage of a handgun, whether loaded or unloaded, in public locations.1 See
California law delegates to each city and county the power to issue a written policy setting forth the procedures for obtaining a concealed-carry license.
The power to grant concealed-carry licenses in San Diego County is vested in the county sheriff‘s department. Since 1999, the sheriff‘s department has required all applicants to “provide supporting documentation” in order to “demonstrate and elaborate good cause.” This “required documentation, such as restraining orders, letters from law enforcement agencies or the [district attorney] familiar with the case, is discussed with each applicant” to determine whether he or she can show a sufficiently pressing need for self-protection. If the applicant cannot demonstrate “circumstances that distinguish [him] from the mainstream,” then he will not qualify for a concealed-carry permit.
B
Wishing to carry handguns for self-defense but unable to document specific threats against them, plaintiffs Edward Peruta, Michelle Laxson, James Dodd, Leslie Buncher, and Mark Cleary (collectively “the applicants“), all residents of San Diego County, were either denied concealed-carry licenses because they could not establish “good cause” or decided not to apply, confident that their mere desire to carry for self-defense would fall short of establishing “good cause” as the County defines it. An additional plaintiff, the California Rifle and Pistol Association Foundation, comprises many San Diego Country residents “in the same predicament as the individual Plaintiffs.” No plaintiff is otherwise barred under federal or state law from possessing firearms.
C
On October 23, 2009, after the County denied his application for a concealed-carry license, Peruta sued the County of San Diego and its sheriff, William Gore (collectively “the County“), under
About a year later, the applicants and the County filed dueling motions for summary judgment. The district court denied the applicants’ motion and granted the County‘s. Assuming without deciding that the Second Amendment “encompasses Plaintiffs’ asserted right to carry a loaded handgun in public,” the district court upheld the County policy under intermediate scrutiny. As the court reasoned, California‘s “important and substantial interest in
II
As in the district court, on appeal the applicants place one argument at center stage: they assert that by defining “good cause” in San Diego County‘s permitting scheme to exclude a general desire to carry for self-defense, the County impermissibly burdens their Second Amendment right to bear arms.
The Supreme Court‘s opinions in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 128 S.Ct. 2783, 171 L.Ed.2d 637 (2008), and McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 130 S.Ct. 3020, 177 L.Ed.2d 894 (2010), direct our analysis of this claim. In Heller, the Court confronted a Second Amendment challenge to a District of Columbia law that “totally ban[ned] handgun possession in the home” and “require[d] that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock.” 554 U.S. at 603, 628-29. The validity of the measures depended, in the first place, on whether the Second Amendment codified an individual right, as plaintiff Dick Heller maintained, or a collective right, as the government insisted. Id. at 577.
Consulting the text‘s original public meaning, the Court sided with Heller, concluding that the Second Amendment codified a pre-existing, individual right to keep and bear arms and that the “central component of the right” is self-defense. Id. at 592, 599. It further held that, because “the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute in the home,” the D.C. ban on the home use of handguns—“the most preferred firearm in the nation“—failed “constitutional muster” under any standard of heightened scrutiny. Id. at 628-29 & n. 27 (rejecting rational-basis review). The same went for the trigger-lock requirement. Id. at 635. The Court had no need to “undertake an exhaustive historical analysis ... of the full scope of the Second Amendment” to dispose of Heller‘s suit. Id. at 626-27. Nor had it reason to specify, for future cases, which burdens on the Second Amendment right triggered which standards of review, or whether a tiered-scrutiny approach was even appropriate in the first place. Id. at 628-29. By any measure, the District of Columbia law had overreached.
Two years later, the Court evaluated a similar handgun ban enacted by the City of Chicago. The question presented in McDonald, however, was not whether the ban infringed the city residents’ Second Amendment rights, but whether a state government could even be subject to the strictures of the Second Amendment. That depended on whether the right could be said to be “deeply rooted in this Nation‘s history and tradition” and “fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty.” 130 S.Ct. at 3036. To these questions, the McDonald Court declared, “[o]ur decision in Heller points unmistakably to the answer.” Id. After all, self-defense, recognized since ancient times as a “basic right,” is the “central component” of the Second Amendment guarantee. Id. Consequently, that right restricted not only the federal government but, under the Fourteenth Amendment, also the states. Id. at 3026. Having so concluded, the Court remanded the case to the Seventh Circuit for an analysis of whether, in light
It doesn‘t take a lawyer to see that straightforward application of the rule in Heller will not dispose of this case. It should be equally obvious that neither Heller nor McDonald speaks explicitly or precisely to the scope of the Second Amendment right outside the home or to what it takes to “infringe” it. Yet, it is just as apparent that neither opinion is silent on these matters, for, at the very least, “the Supreme Court‘s approach ... points in a general direction.” Ezell v. City of Chicago, 651 F.3d 684, 700 (7th Cir. 2011) (noting that Heller does not leave us “without a framework for how to proceed“). To resolve the challenge to the D.C. restrictions, the Heller majority described and applied a certain methodology: it addressed, first, whether having operable handguns in the home amounted to “keep[ing] and bear[ing] Arms” within the meaning of the Second Amendment and, next, whether the challenged laws, if they indeed did burden constitutionally protected conduct, “infringed” the right. We apply that approach here, as we have done in the past, United States v. Chovan, 735 F.3d 1127, 1136 (9th Cir. 2013), and as many of our sister circuits have done in similar cases. See, e.g., Nat‘l Rifle Ass‘n of Am., Inc. v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, & Explosives, 700 F.3d 185, 194 (5th Cir. 2012) (“A two-step inquiry has emerged as the prevailing approach.“); United States v. Greeno, 679 F.3d 510, 518 (6th Cir. 2012); Heller v. District of Columbia (Heller II), 670 F.3d 1244, 1252 (D.C. Cir. 2011); Ezell, 651 F.3d at 701-04; United States v. Chester, 628 F.3d 673, 680 (4th Cir. 2010); United States v. Reese, 627 F.3d 792, 800-01 (10th Cir. 2010); United States v. Marzzarella, 614 F.3d 85, 89 (3d Cir. 2010).
A
The first question goes to the scope of the guarantee: Does the restricted activity—here, a restriction on a responsible, law-abiding citizen‘s2 ability to carry a gun outside the home for self-defense—fall within the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense? Ezell, 651 F.3d at 701; see also Kachalsky v. Cnty. of Westchester, 701 F.3d 81, 96 (2d Cir. 2012). Concerning the precise methods by which that right‘s scope is discerned, the Heller and McDonald Courts were hardly shy: we must consult “both text and history.” Heller, 554 U.S. at 595; see also McDonald, 130 S.Ct. at 3047 (reiterating that “the scope of the Second Amendment right” is determined by historical analysis and not interest balancing).
The analysis begins—as any interpretive endeavor must—with the text. “Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or (yes) even future judges think that scope too broad.” Heller, 554 U.S. at 634-35. To
Since the goal is to arrive at a fair, not a hyper-literal, reading of the Constitution‘s language, Heller‘s analysis is necessarily a contextual—and therefore a historical—one. See Chester, 628 F.3d at 680 (“This historical inquiry seeks to determine whether the conduct at issue was understood to be within the scope of the right....“). It begins with the pre-ratification “historical background of the Second Amendment,” since “the Second Amendment ... codified a preexisting right.” Heller, 554 U.S. at 592 (emphasis omitted). Next, it turns to whatever sources shed light on the “public understanding [of the Second Amendment] in the period after its enactment or ratification,” see id. at 605-10, such as nineteenth-century judicial interpretations and legal commentary. See id. at 605 (“We now address how the Second Amendment was interpreted from immediately after its ratification through the end of the 19th century.“); id. at 610-19 (surveying “Pre-Civil War Case Law,” “Post-Civil War Legislation,” and “Post-Civil War Commentators“).
Of course, the necessity of this historical analysis presupposes what Heller makes explicit: the Second Amendment right is “not unlimited.” Id. at 595. It is “not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” Id. at 626. Rather, it is a right subject to “traditional restrictions,” which themselves—and this is a critical point—tend “to show the scope of the right.” McDonald, 130 S.Ct. at 3056 (Scalia, J., concurring); see also Kachalsky, 701 F.3d at 96; Nat‘l Rifle Ass‘n of Am., 700 F.3d at 196 (“For now, we state that a longstanding presumptively lawful regulatory measure ... would likely [burden conduct] outside the ambit of the Second Amendment.“); United States v. Skoien, 614 F.3d 638, 640 (7th Cir. 2010) (en banc) (“That some categorical limits are proper is part of the original meaning.“).
In short, the meaning of the Second Amendment is a matter not merely of abstract dictionary definitions but also of historical practice. As “[n]othing but conventions and contexts cause [language] to convey a particular idea,” we begin our analysis of the scope of the Second Amendment right by examining the text of the amendment in its historical context. See Antonin Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts xxvii (2012).
1
The Second Amendment secures the right not only to “keep” arms but also to “bear” them—the verb whose original meaning is key in this case. Saving us the trouble of pulling the eighteenth-century dictionaries ourselves, the Court already has supplied the word‘s plain meaning: “At the time of the founding, as now, to ‘bear’ meant to ‘carry.‘” Heller, 554 U.S. at 584.3 Yet, not “carry” in
Speakers of the English language will all agree: “bearing a weapon inside the home” does not exhaust this definition of “carry.” For one thing, the very risk occasioning such carriage, “confrontation,” is “not limited to the home.” Moore v. Madigan, 702 F.3d 933, 936 (7th Cir. 2012). One needn‘t point to statistics to recognize that the prospect of conflict—at least, the sort of conflict for which one would wish to be “armed and ready“—is just as menacing (and likely more so) beyond the front porch as it is in the living room. For that reason, “[t]o speak of ‘bearing’ arms within one‘s home would at all times have been an awkward usage.” Id. To be sure, the idea of carrying a gun “in the clothing or in a pocket, for the purpose ... of being armed and ready,” does not exactly conjure up images of father stuffing a six-shooter in his pajama‘s pocket before heading downstairs to start the morning‘s coffee, or mother concealing a handgun in her coat before stepping outside to retrieve the mail. Instead, it brings to mind scenes such as a woman toting a small handgun in her purse as she walks through a dangerous neighborhood, or a night-shift worker carrying a handgun in his coat as he travels to and from his job site.
More importantly, at the time of the Second Amendment‘s enactment, the familiar image that “bear arms” would have painted is one of an eighteenth-century frontiersman, who “from time to time [would] leave [his] home to obtain supplies from the nearest trading post, and en route one would be as much (probably more) at risk if unarmed as one would be in one‘s home unarmed.” Id. at 936. Indeed, it was this spirit of the arms-bearing settler that Senator Charles Sumner invoked (and the Heller Court cited as instructive of the scope of the right) in the (in)famous “Crime against Kansas” speech in 1856: “The rifle has ever been the companion of the pioneer and, under God, his tutelary protector against the red man and the beast of the forest. Never was this efficient weapon more needed in just self-defence, than now in Kansas, and at least one article in our National Constitution must be blotted out, before the complete right to it can in any way be impeached.” 4 The Works of Charles Sumner 211-12 (1875); see also Heller, 554 U.S. at 609.
Other passages in Heller and McDonald suggest that the Court shares Sumner‘s view of the scope of the right. The Second
These passages alone, though short of dispositive, strongly suggest that the Second Amendment secures a right to carry a firearm in some fashion outside the home. Reading those lines in light of the plain-meaning definition of “bear Arms” elucidated above makes matters even clearer: the Second Amendment right “could not rationally have been limited to the home.” Moore, 702 F.3d at 936. Though people may “keep Arms” (or, per Heller‘s definition, “have weapons,” 554 U.S. at 582) in the home for defense of self, family, and property, they are more sensibly said to “bear Arms” (or, Heller‘s gloss: “carry [weapons] upon the person or in the clothing or in a pocket,” id. at 584) in nondomestic settings. Kachalsky, 701 F.3d at 89 n. 10 (“The plain text of the Second Amendment does not limit the right to bear arms to the home.“); see also Drake v. Filko, 724 F.3d 426, 444 (3d Cir. 2013) (Hardiman, J., dissenting) (“To speak of ‘bearing’ arms solely within one‘s home not only would conflate ‘bearing’ with ‘keeping,’ in derogation of the Court‘s holding that the verbs codified distinct rights, but also would be awkward usage given the meaning assigned the terms by the Supreme Court.“).
2
In addition to a textual analysis of the phrase “bear Arms,” we, like the Court in Heller, look to the original public understanding of the Second Amendment right as evidence of its scope and meaning, rely
The commonsense reading of “bear Arms” previously discussed finds support in several important constitutional treatises in circulation at the time of the Second Amendment‘s ratification. See id. at 582-83, 592-93 (treating such sources as instructive of the clause‘s original meaning). Writing on the English right to arms, William Blackstone noted in his Commentaries on the Laws of England that the “the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defence” had its roots in “the natural right of resistance and self-preservation.” Heller, 554 U.S. at 594 (internal citations and quotations omitted). It was this inherited right of armed self-defense, according to Heller, that “by the time of the founding [was] understood to be an individual right protecting against both public and private violence.” Id. (emphasis added). Although Blackstone elsewhere described a fourteenth-century English statute that forbad the “riding or going armed with dangerous or unusual weapons,” that prohibition was understood to cover carriage of uncommon, frightening weapons only. Indeed, Justice James Wilson, an early American legal commentator and framer, confirmed this narrower reading, see 2 James Wilson, The Works of James Wilson 654 (Robert McCloskey ed.1967), citing an English commentator for the proposition that wearing ordinary weapons in ordinary circumstances posed no problem. See Eugene Volokh, The First and Second Amendments, 109 Colum. L.Rev. Sidebar 97, 101 (2009) (“American benchbooks for justices of the peace echoed [Wilson‘s observation].“); Joyce Lee Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right 105 (1994) (quoting an English case recognizing “a general Connivance to Gentlemen to ride armed for their security,” notwithstanding the statute); see also William Rawle, A View of the Constitution of the United States of America 126 (2d ed. 1829) (observing that the Second Amendment would not forbid the prohibition of the “carrying of arms abroad by a single individual, attended with circumstances giving just reason to fear that he purposes to make an unlawful use of them“). It is likely for this reason that Heller cites Blackstone‘s commentary on the statute as evidence not of the scope of the “keep and bear” language but of what weapons qualify as a Second Amendment “arms.” See Heller, 554 U.S. at 627.
Writing over thirty years later in what Heller calls the “most important” American edition of Blackstone‘s Commentaries, id. at 594, St. George Tucker, a law professor and former Antifederalist, affirmed Blackstone‘s comments on the British right and commented further on its American dimensions. The right to armed self-defense, Tucker insisted, is the “first law of nature,” and any law “prohibiting any person from bearing arms” crossed the constitutional line. St. George Tucker, Blackstone‘s Commentaries: With Notes of Reference to the Constitution and Laws of the Federal Government of the United States; and of the Commonwealth of Virginia 289 (1803). Tucker went on to note that, though English law presumed that any gathering of armed men indicated that treasonous plotting was afoot, it would have made little sense to apply such an assumption in the colonies, “where the right to bear arms is recognized and secured in the constitution itself.” Tucker, supra, vol. 5, app., n.B, at 19. After all, “[i]n many parts of the United States, a man no more thinks, of going out of his
3
In keeping with the views of the important late-eighteenth-century commentaries, the great weight of nineteenth-century precedent on the Second Amendment or its state-law analogues confirms the Heller-endorsed understanding of “bear Arms.”5 In fact, as we will show, many of the same cases that the Heller majority invoked as proof that the Second Amendment secures an individual right may just as easily be cited for the proposition that the right to carry in case of confrontation means nothing if not the general right to carry a common weapon outside the home for self-defense.
a
But before turning to the cases themselves, we offer a word on methodology. We set out to review the bulk of precedents from this period.6 All are, in a broad sense, equally relevant, for every historical gloss on the phrase “bear arms” furnishes a clue of that phrase‘s original or customary meaning. Still, some cases are more equal than others.7 That‘s because, with Heller on the books, the Second Amendment‘s original meaning is now settled in at least two relevant respects. First, Heller clarifies that the keeping and bearing of arms is, and has always been, an individual right. See, e.g., 554 U.S. at 616. Second, the right is, and has always been, oriented to the end of self-defense. See, e.g., id. Any contrary interpretation of the right, whether propounded in 1791 or just last week, is error. What that means for our review is that historical interpretations of the right‘s scope are of varying probative worth, falling generally into one of three categories
To illustrate, a precedent in the first category that declared a general right to carry guns in public would be a great case for Peruta, while a decision in the same group that confined exercise of the right to the home would do his position much damage. By contrast, those cases in the third category—which, like the dissenting opinions in Heller, espouse the view that one has a right to bear arms only collectively in connection with militia service and not for self-defense within or outside the home—are of no help. The second category, consisting mostly of cases that embrace the premise that the right‘s purpose is deterring tyranny, is only marginally useful. Since one needn‘t exactly tote a pistol on his way to the grocery store in order to keep his government in check, it is no surprise (and, thus, of limited significance for purposes of our analysis) when these courts suggest that the right is mostly confined to the home. Likewise, a second-category case asserting that the goal of tyranny prevention does indeed call for public weapon bearing lends only indirect support for the proposition that bearing arms in case of confrontation includes carrying weapons in public for self-defense.
b
Having set forth the methodology to be employed, we turn to the nineteenth-century case law interpreting the Second Amendment, beginning with the cases that the Court itself relied upon in Heller.
The first case is Bliss v. Commonwealth, 12 Ky. (2 Litt.) 90 (1822), cited in Heller, 554 U.S. at 585 n. 9, a decision “especially significant both because it is nearest in time to the founding era and because the state court assumed (just as [Heller] does) that the constitutional provision ... codified a preexisting right.” Nelson Lund, The Second Amendment, Heller, and Originalist Jurisprudence, 56 UCLA L.Rev. 1343, 1360 (2009). There, Kentucky‘s highest court interpreted that state‘s Second Amendment analogue (“the right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the state, shall not be questioned“) as invalidating a ban on “wearing concealed arms.” Bliss, 12 Ky. (2 Litt.) at 90. The Commonwealth‘s lead argument to the contrary had been that, though Kentucky‘s constitution forbad prohibitions on the exercise of the right, it permitted laws “merely regulating the manner of exercising that right.” Id. at 91. Although the court agreed with the Commonwealth‘s argument in principle, it disagreed with the conclusion that the ban on “wearing concealed arms” was merely a means of “regulating the manner of exercising” the right. Id. An act needn‘t amount to a “complete destruction” of the right to be “forbidden by the explicit language of the constitution,” since any statute that “diminish[ed] or impair[ed] the right] as it existed when the constitution was formed” would also be “void.” Id. at 92. Thus, had the statute purported to prohibit both the concealed and open carriage of weapons, effecting an “entire destruction of the right,” it would have been an obvious nullity; but even as a ban on concealed carry alone there could be “entertained [no] reasonable doubt but [that] the provisions of the act import a restraint on the right of the citizens to bear arms.” Id. at 91-92 (emphasis added). Striking down the law, the court explained that the preexisting right to bear arms had “no limits short of the moral power of the citizens to exercise it, and it in fact consist
In Simpson v. State, the Tennessee Supreme Court read that state‘s Second Amendment analogue just as the Bliss court read Kentucky‘s. 13 Tenn. (5 Yer.) 356 (1833), cited in Heller, 554 U.S. at 585 n. 9. Convicted of the crime of affray for appearing in public “arrayed in a warlike manner” (i.e., armed), Simpson argued that the state should have had to prove that he had committed acts of physical violence to convict him. Id. at 361-62. The court agreed, concluding in part that even if the common law did not require proof of actual violence to punish persons for merely walking around with weapons, the state constitution‘s protection of the “right to keep and to bear arms” would trump: “[I]t would be going much too far, to impair by construction or abridgment a constitutional privilege which is so declared.” Id. at 360; cf. State v. Huntly, 25 N.C. (3 Ired.) 418 (1843) (rejecting a “right to bear arms” defense and upholding an affray conviction of a defendant who, threatening to kill off a certain family, was caught carrying an unusual weapon in public). It went without saying, evidently—for the court offered little in the way of analysis—that whatever else the constitution meant by “bear arms,” it certainly implied the right to carry operable weapons in public. The court confirmed as much in 1871, holding that an act that proscribed openly carrying a pistol “publicly or privately, without regard to time or place, or circumstances” went too far, even though the statute exempted from its prohibitions the carrying of long guns. Andrews v. State, 50 Tenn. 165, 187 (1871), cited in Heller, 554 U.S. at 608, 629.
Though the Tennessee Supreme Court announced a slightly different view of the right to bear arms in Aymette v. State, that case is plainly consistent with—and indeed affirms—the principle that the right to bear arms extends out of doors. 21 Tenn. 154 (1840), cited in Heller, 554 U.S. at 613-14. Commenting on the “manifest distinction” between a restriction on “wearing concealed weapons” (which the court upheld) and a prohibition on open carry, the court observed with little fanfare that “[i]n the nature of things, if [persons] were not allowed to bear arms openly, they could not bear them in their defense of the State at all.” Id. at 160. The court marshaled this point in support of the second-category position “whereby citizens were permitted to carry arms openly, unconnected with any service in a formal militia, but were given the right to use them only for the military purpose of banding together to oppose tyranny“—a view of the right‘s end that Heller explicitly rejects. Heller, 554 U.S. at 613 (“[Aymette‘s] odd reading of the right is, to be sure, not the one we adopt.“). Nonetheless, what remains of Aymette is its observation that the right to bear arms, even if not in the service of personal self-defense, must include the right to carry guns outside the home.
The Alabama Supreme Court weighed in that same year. See State v. Reid, 1 Ala. 612 (1840), cited in Heller, 554 U.S. at 629. Taking a view of the right narrower than that of the Simpson court, it nonetheless declared that the constitutional guarantee of “a right to bear arms, in defense of [ ]self and the State,” meant that an Alabamian must be permitted to carry a weapon in public in some fashion. Id. at 615. Reid, found guilty of the “evil practice of carrying weapons secretly,” challenged the constitutionality of the statute of conviction. Id. at
We do not desire to be understood as maintaining, that in regulating the manner of bearing arms, the authority of the Legislature has no other limit than its own discretion. A statute which, under the pretence of regulating, amounts to a destruction of the right, or which requires arms to be so borne as to render them wholly useless for the purpose of defence, would be clearly unconstitutional.
Id. at 616-17. Read in light of the court‘s earlier statement that a restriction on arms bearing would stand so long as it simply proscribed the “manner in which arms shall be borne,” this passage suggests that to forbid nearly all forms of public arms bearing would be to destroy the right to bear arms entirely.8
Embracing precisely that position, the Georgia Supreme Court‘s decision in Nunn v. State six years later—praised in Heller as “perfectly captur[ing]” the relationship between the Second Amendment‘s two clauses, 554 U.S. at 612—made explicit what Reid intimated. 1 Ga. 243 (1846), cited in Heller, 554 U.S. at 612, 626, 629. Convicted of keeping a pistol on his person—a statutory misdemeanor (whether the pistol was carried openly or “secretly“)—Nunn attacked the statute of conviction as an unconstitutional infringement of his right to bear arms under the Second Amendment. Id. at 246. The court began with a statement of the constitutional standard: “The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, and not such merely as are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree.” Id. at 251. Turning to the statute, the court reasoned that had it merely limited the manner of the exercise of the right to carry, it would have withstood scrutiny. As written, however, it went too far:
We are of the opinion, then, that so far as the act of 1837 seeks to suppress the practice of carrying certain weapons secretly, that it is valid, inasmuch as it does not deprive the citizen of his natural right of self-defence, or of his constitutional right to keep and bear arms. But that so much of it, as contains a prohibition against bearing arms openly, is in conflict with the Constitution, and void; and that, as the defendant has been indicted and convicted for carrying a pistol, without charging that it was
done in a concealed manner, under that portion of the statute which entirely forbids its use, the judgment of the court below must be reversed, and the proceeding quashed.
Id. In other words, as the same court explained in a later case involving a defendant charged with illicit open carriage, to ban both the open and concealed carriage of pistols “would be to prohibit the bearing of those arms” altogether. Stockdale v. State, 32 Ga. 225, 227 (1861) (adding that such a set of restrictions “would bring the Act within the decision in Nunn‘s case“).
Although the Arkansas Supreme Court in State v. Buzzard appeared at first to take the contrary position, viewing restrictions on carrying weapons for self-defense as permissible police-power regulations, see 4 Ark. 18 (1842); see also Fife v. State, 31 Ark. 455 (1876) (relying on Buzzard to uphold a prohibition on concealed carry); Carroll v. State, 28 Ark. 99 (1872) (same), the court staked its position on two interpretations of the Second Amendment right that the Heller Court repudiated—and from which the Arkansas court itself later retreated. According to one judge in the splintered majority, the Second Amendment secured a right to bear arms for use in militia service but not a right to bear arms for personal self-defense. Id. at 22 (opinion of Ringo, C.J.). Writing separately, the other judge in the majority went further, asserting that the Second Amendment secured no individual right. Id. at 32 (opinion of Dickinson, J.); compare id. at 43 (Lacy, J., dissenting) (arguing that the court should have embraced the Bliss view). Neither interpretation survives Heller—which is also to say that neither opinion elucidates the right‘s originally understood scope.9 Yet it didn‘t take Heller to convince the Arkansas Supreme Court that Buzzard could use some shearing. Writing in 1878, the court clarified that while “the Legislature might, in the exercise of the police power of the State, regulate the mode of wearing arms,” banning “the citizen from wearing or carrying a war arm, except upon his own premises or when on a journey ... or when acting as or in aid of an officer, is an unwarranted restriction upon his constitutional right to keep and bear arms.” Wilson v. State, 33 Ark. 557, 560 (1878).
State v. Chandler, an 1850 decision of the Louisiana Supreme Court, proceeds along the lines drawn in Nunn. 5 La.Ann. 489 (1850), cited in Heller, 554 U.S. at 613, 626. Rejecting the argument that Louisiana‘s ban on carrying concealed weapons infringed the Second Amendment right, the court explained that the prohibition was “absolutely necessary to counteract a vicious state of society, growing out of the habit of carrying concealed weapons, and to prevent bloodshed and assassinations committed upon unsuspecting persons.” Id. at 489-90. A ban on the open carriage of weapons, by contrast, would enjoy no such justification. Echoing Reid, the court said:
[The Act] interfered with no man‘s right to carry arms (to use its words) “in full open view,” which places men upon an equality. This is the right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, and which is calculated to incite men to a manly and noble defence of themselves, if necessary, and of their country,
without any tendency to secret advantages and unmanly assassinations.
Id. at 490; see also Heller, 554 U.S. at 613 (citing favorably Chandler‘s holding that “citizens had a right to carry arms openly“); State v. Jumel, 13 La.Ann. 399, 400 (1858) (invoking Chandler for the proposition that “prohibiting only a particular mode of bearing arms which is found dangerous to the peace of society” does not infringe the right).
Nine years later, the Texas Supreme Court declared that “[t]he right of a citizen to bear arms, in the lawful defense of himself or the state, is absolute,” permitting even the wielding of a Bowie knife, “the most deadly of all weapons in common use.” Cockrum v. State, 24 Tex. 394, 403 (1859). Though the state legislature was free to discourage the carriage of such an “exceeding[ly] destructive weapon,” it could not adopt measures effectively prohibiting its use as a defensive arm: “[A]dmonitory regulation of the abuse [of the right] must not be carried too far. It certainly has a limit. For if the legislature were to affix a punishment to the abuse of this right, so great, as in its nature, it must deter the citizen from its lawful exercise, that would be tantamount to a prohibition of the right.” Id.10
Thus, the majority of nineteenth century courts agreed that the Second Amendment right extended outside the home and included, at minimum, the right to carry an operable weapon in public for the purpose of lawful self-defense. Although some courts approved limitations on the manner of carry outside the home, none approved a total destruction of the right to carry in public.
Indeed, we know of only four cases from that period rejecting the presumptive-carry view. Three of the four, however, are not category-one cases. See Haile v. State, 38 Ark. 564 (1882) (espousing a militia-based reading of the right); Hill v. State, 53 Ga. 472 (1874) (same); English v. State, 35 Tex. 473 (1872) (same). Consequently, they shed no light on the question whether, if the right to bear arms is an individual right directed to the end of self-defense, it sanctions the public carriage of common weapons. In the fourth case, State v. Duke, the court does begin with the Heller-endorsed understanding of the right but nonetheless concludes that, while the right contemplates weapon carrying in certain places outside the home (e.g., one‘s business) and in circumstances reasonably giving rise to fear of attack, the right is otherwise subject to heavy-handed regulation. 42 Tex. 455, 459 (1875). Yet, Duke is distinguishable: it construed the guarantee of the right to bear arms as it appeared in the Texas Constitution of 1869, which permitted “such regulations [of the right] as the legislature may prescribe.” Id. at 458. The Second Amendment‘s text contains no such open-ended clause restricting its application, and we ought not to go looking for an unwritten one.
4
As the Court did in Heller, we turn next to the post-Civil War legislative scene.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, our review suggests that their understanding comports with that of most nineteenth-century courts: then, as at the time of the founding, “[t]he right of the people ... to bear arms meant to carry arms on one‘s person.” Stephen P. Halbrook, Securing Civil Rights, Freedmen, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Right to Bear Arms 50 (1998).
Our examination of the Civil War legislative scene begins with the Supreme Court‘s infamous decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393, 19 How. 393, 15 L.Ed. 691 (1856). According to the Supreme Court in Dred Scott, black slaves and their descendants “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect“—pouring fuel on the flames of the nation‘s already-blazing sectional crisis just four years before the firing on Fort Sumter. Id. at 407. At the heart of this holding was the Court‘s conclusion that at no point had blacks ever been members of the sovereign “people” of the United States. It apparently followed from this premise that, as constitutional non-citizens, blacks lacked not only the right to “full liberty of speech in public and private” and “to hold meetings upon political affairs” but also the constitutional right “to keep and carry arms wherever they went.”. Id. at 417 (emphasis added). It was in large part in reaction to Dred Scott‘s logic, on which the Black Codes of the post-war South plainly rested, that the Reconstruction Congress sprung into action. Heller, 554 U.S. at 614. It was, of course, no coincidence that the codes, designed to deny the privileges of constitutional citizenship to the freedmen, took aim at that most fundamental right of keeping and bearing arms. Clayton E. Cramer, The Racist Roots of Gun Control, 4 Kan. J.L. & Pub. Pol‘y 17, 20 (Winter 1995) (“The various Black Codes adopted after the Civil War required blacks to obtain a license before carrying or possessing firearms or bowie knives.... These restrictive gun laws played a part in provoking Republican efforts to get the Fourteenth Amendment passed.“); see also Stephen P. Halbrook, Personal Security, Personal Liberty, and “The Constitutional Right to Bear Arms“: Visions of the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, 5 Seton Hall Const. L.J. 341, 348 (1995) (“One did not have to look hard to discover state ‘statutes relating to the carrying of arms by negroes’ and to an ‘act to prevent free people of color from carrying firearms. ’ ” (citations omitted)). As Heller notes, “[t]hose who opposed these injustices frequently stated that they infringed blacks’ constitutional right to keep and bear arms.” Heller, 554 U.S. at 614.
By all accounts, the model of such codes was Mississippi‘s 1865 “Act to Regulate
Among the proposed legislative solutions to the problem of the Black Codes was a bill to add to the powers of the Freedmen‘s Bureau, a federal agency dispatched to the South to aid the former slaves. One senator, a Democrat from Indiana, seemed to fear that the bill‘s section securing civil rights to blacks would cast doubt on the legitimacy of his state‘s laws securing only whites’ right to carry weapons openly. See Halbrook, supra, at 8. Another senator, though he opposed the bill, knew well the nature of the fundamental rights it sought to secure: They included “the subordination of the military to the civil power in peace, in a war, and always,” “the writ of habeas corpus,” and “trial by jury,” he declared. They also included the right “for every man bearing his arms about him and keeping them in his house, his castle, for his own defense.” Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. 340, 371 (Jan. 23, 1866) (Sen. Henry Winter Davis) (emphasis added), cited in Heller, 554 U.S. at 616. Meanwhile, in the House, T.D. Eliot, the chairman of the Committee on Freedman‘s Affairs, quoted from the Louisiana city ordinance mentioned above, citing its prohibition on “carrying firearms” within the town as an example of the sort of black code that federal legislation securing fundamental rights would undo. Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. 517 (Jan. 29, 1866). Underscoring the danger that the Southern states’ abridgement of the right portended for blacks, he quoted a letter from a teacher at a black school in Maryland, which told of violence prompting “both the mayor and sheriff [to] warn[] the colored people to go armed to school, (which they do).” She apparently added: “The superintendent of schools came down and brought me a revolver.” Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. 658 (Feb. 5, 1866). Concerned by such peril, Massachusetts Congressman Nathaniel P. Banks proposed making the language of the act more specific by explicitly listing “the constitutional right to bear arms” among the civil rights protected. Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. 585 (Feb. 1, 1866). The language made it into both the first bill, which President Johnson vetoed (though he did not object to its arms-bearing provision), as well as the final version, passed by a veto-proof supermajority. Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. 915-17 (Feb. 19, 1866); Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. 3842 (July 16, 1866).
Just as it was “plainly the understanding in the post-Civil War Congress that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to use arms for self-defense,” Heller, 554 U.S. at 616, it appears that the right was also understood to encompass carrying weapons in public in case of confrontation.
5
We consider next the major “[p]ost-Civil War [c]ommentators[]” understanding of the right. Id.; see also David B. Kopel, The Second Amendment in the Nineteenth Century, 1998 B.Y.U. L. Rev 1359, 1461-1503 (1998) (collecting relevant commentary from the period). The first and most influential was Thomas Cooley, judge, professor, and author of two leading treatises on constitutional law. Quoted at length in Heller solely for his view that the right is an individual one, Cooley‘s works say little on the self-defense component of the right. Nonetheless, his treatment of the Second Amendment in his more popular treatise supports a self-defense view of the right. There, he notes that “happily” there has been “little occasion” for consideration by courts of the extent to which the right may be regulated, citing only—and without disapproval—the pro-carriage decisions in Bliss, Nunn, and a third case on “the right of self-defence.” Thomas M. Cooley, A Treatise on the Constitutional Limitations Which Rest upon the Legislative Power of the States of the American Union 350 & n.1 (1868), cited in Heller, 554 U.S. at 616-17.11 Also of note, Cooley observes elsewhere in the book that state constitutions typically secure (among others) the right of each citizen to bear arms for self-defense. Id.
A second constitutional commentator from the era, also cited in Heller, seemed to concur in Cooley‘s account. See John Pomeroy, An Introduction to the Constitutional Law of the United States (8th ed.1885), cited in Heller, 554 U.S. at 618, 128 S.Ct. 2783. Though Pomeroy associated the right with the “object” of “secur[ing] a well-regulated militia,” he suggested that, while restrictions on the frowned-upon method of “secret” carrying would not violate the right, restrictions on open carry likely would. Consistent with the majority of nineteenth century courts, Pomeroy did not see “laws forbidding persons to carry dangerous or concealed weapons” alone as incompatible with the Amendment‘s “intent and design,” (in contrast with laws barring carry altogether) for the right is not absolute: “Freedom, not license, is secured.” Id. at 152-53.
The observations of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in his annotations to James Kent‘s canonical Commentaries on American Law, are in accord. “As the Constitution of the United States declare[s] the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” he wrote, “it has been a subject of grave discussion, in some of the state courts, whether a statute prohibiting persons, when not on a journey, or as travellers, from wearing or carrying concealed weapons, be constitutional. There has been a great difference of opinion on the question.” 2 J. Kent, Commentaries on American Law *340 n.2 (Holmes ed., 12th ed.1873), cited in Heller, 554 U.S. at 618, 128 S.Ct. 2783. Reviewing a handful of cases “in favor of” concealed-carry restrictions and others wholly against it, Holmes tellingly ends with an analysis of Nunn v. State, in which a statutory prohibition on carrying was “adjudged to be valid so far as it goes to suppress the wearing of arms secretly, but unconstitutional so far as it prohibits the bearing or carrying arms openly.” Id. For his own part, Holmes thought a state acting pursuant to its general police power may (and should) prohibit the “atrociously abused” practice of con
The account of George Chase, yet another nineteenth-century editor of Blackstone, also reflects the mainstream view of the right—and quite explicitly so. Though the right may not be infringed, he wrote, “it is generally held that statutes prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons are not in conflict with these constitutional provisions, since they merely forbid the carrying of arms in a particular manner, which is likely to lead to breaches of the peace and provoke to the commission of crime, rather than contribute to public or personal defence.” The American Students’ Blackstone: Commentaries on the Laws of England 84 n.11 (George Chase ed., 3d ed.1890) [hereinafter “Chase“], cited in Heller, 554 U.S. at 626, 128 S.Ct. 2783.
Legal commentator John Ordronaux, also cited in Heller, understood the right clearly to include arms bearing outside the home. Predating the Constitution, “[t]he right to bear arms has always been the distinctive privilege of freemen,” rooted in part in the “necessity of self-protection to the person.” John Ordronaux, Constitutional Legislation in the United States: Its Origin, and Application to the Relative Powers of Congress, and of State Legislatures 241 (1891), cited in Heller, 554 U.S. at 619, 128 S.Ct. 2783. He described the special province of the privilege in American history: “Exposed as our early colonists were to the attacks of savages, the possession of arms became an indispensable adjunct to the agricultural implements employed in the cultivation of the soil. Men went armed into the field, and went armed to church. There was always public danger.” Id. at 242. Still, for all its robustness, the Amendment has never prevented “a State from enacting laws regulating the manner in which arms may be carried. Thus, the carrying of concealed weapons may be absolutely prohibited without the infringement of any constitutional right, while a statute forbidding the bearing of arms openly would be such an infringement.” Id. at 243 (adding that a state may require a private citizen to “obtain a license in order to be permitted to carry a concealed weapon“). Thus, Ordronaux squarely comes down on the side of Nunn and like authorities, affirming in no uncertain terms the right‘s viability outside the home.
That position also prevailed, to a greater or lesser extent, in some of the minor late-nineteenth-century commentaries. Henry Campbell Black, Handbook of American Constitutional Law 463 (1895) (noting that, though the arms-bearing privilege belongs to individuals and is a “natural right,” restrictions on carrying concealed weapons are not unconstitutional); James Schouler, Constitutional Studies: State and Federal 226 (1897) (“To the time-honored right of free people to bear arms was now [in the mid-nineteenth-century] annexed, ... the qualification that carrying concealed weapons was not to be included.“); see also, supra, n. 12 (late-nineteenth-century editors of Blackstone).
That is not to say that this period was without proponents of a dissenting view. Indeed, there were several. See Joel Prentiss Bishop, Commentaries on the Law of Statutory Crimes 497-98 (1873) (disagreeing that the right permits the carrying of weapons for personal self-defense); J.C. Bancroft Davis, “Appendix,” in Samuel Freeman Miller, Lectures on the Constitution of the United States 645 (1893) [hereinafter “Davis“] (understanding the right to secure the characteristic activities of “military bodies and associa
The weight of authority suggests that the right to bear arms, as understood in the post-Civil War legal commentary, included the right to carry weapons outside the home for self-defense, which, as shown, is consistent with the understanding of the right articulated in most eighteenth-century commentary, nineteenth-century court opinions, and by many post-Civil War political actors.
So concludes our analysis of text and history: the carrying of an operable handgun outside the home for the lawful purpose of self-defense, though subject to traditional restrictions, constitutes “bear[ing] Arms” within the meaning of the
6
Our conclusion that the right to bear arms includes the right to carry an opera
Given this consensus, one might consider it odd that we have gone to such lengths to trace the historical scope of the
One other nineteenth-century author cited in Heller registers disapproval of public arms bearing but offers no legal assessment of whether such bearing is within the scope of the right. See Benjamin Vaughan Abbott, Judge and Jury: A Popular Explanation of Leading Topics in the Law of the Land 333-34 (1880) (“Carrying them for defence, in the more settled parts of the land, savors of cowardice rather than of prudence; a well-behaved man has less to fear from violence than from the blunders of himself and friends in managing the pistol he might carry as a protection.“), cited in Heller, 554 U.S. at 619, 128 S.Ct. 2783.
One of Heller‘s most important lessons is that the
We thus disagree with those courts—including the district court in this case—that have taken the view that it is not necessary (and, thus, necessary not) to decide whether carrying a gun in public for the lawful purpose of self-defense is a constitutionally protected activity. See, e.g., Drake, 724 F.3d at 431; Woollard, 712 F.3d at 876; Kachalsky, 701 F.3d at 89; cf. Masciandaro, 638 F.3d at 475. Understanding the scope of the right is not just necessary, it is key to our analysis. For if self-defense outside the home is part of the core right to “bear arms” and the California regulatory scheme prohibits the exercise of that right, no amount of interest-balancing under a heightened form of means-ends scrutiny can justify San Diego County‘s policy. See Heller, 554 U.S. at 634, 128 S.Ct. 2783 (“The very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government—even the Third Branch of Government—the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon.“).
B
Having concluded that carrying a gun outside the home for self-defense comes within the meaning of “bear[ing] Arms,” we ask whether San Diego County‘s “good cause” permitting requirement “infringe[s]” the right.
1
a
To determine what constitutes an infringement, our sister circuits have grappled with varying sliding-scale and tiered-scrutiny approaches, agreeing as a general matter that “the level of scrutiny applied to gun control regulations depends on the regulation‘s burden on the
And there is, of course, an alternative approach for the most severe cases—the approach used in Heller itself. In Heller, applying heightened scrutiny was unnecessary. No matter what standard of review to which the Court might have held the D.C. restrictions,14 “banning from the home the most preferred firearm in the nation to keep and use for protection of one‘s home and family would fail constitutional muster.” Id. at 628-29, 128 S.Ct. 2783 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). A law effecting a “destruction of the right” rather than merely burdening it is, after all, an infringement under any light. Heller, 554 U.S. at 629, 128 S.Ct. 2783 (emphasis added) (quoting Reid, 1 Ala. at 616-17); see also Heller II, 670 F.3d at 1271 (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting) (“In my view, Heller and McDonald leave little doubt that courts are to assess gun bans and regulations based on text, history, and tradition, not by a balancing test such as strict or intermediate scrutiny.“).15
b
Our first task, therefore, is to assess the nature of the infringement that the San Diego County policy purportedly effects on the right to bear arms—namely, does it burden the right or, like in Heller, does it destroy the right altogether?
California‘s regulatory scheme addresses two types of arms-bearing: open and concealed carry. Under California law, open carry is prohibited in San Diego County16 regardless of whether the weapon is loaded or unloaded. See
California law also severely restricts concealed carry, although not to the same extent as open carry. As a general rule, concealed carry is not allowed regardless of whether the weapon is loaded. See
Clearly, the California scheme does not prevent every person from bearing arms outside the home in every circumstance. But the fact that a small group of people have the ability to exercise their right to bear arms does not end our inquiry. Because the
In California, the only way that the typical responsible, law-abiding citizen can carry a weapon in public for the lawful purpose of self-defense is with a concealed-carry permit. And, in San Diego County, that option has been taken off the table. The San Diego County policy specifies that concern for “one‘s personal safety alone” does not satisfy the “good cause” requirement for issuance of a permit. Instead, an applicant must demonstrate that he suffers a unique risk of harm: he must show “a set of circumstances that distinguish [him] from the mainstream and cause[] him ... to be placed in harm‘s way.” Given this requirement, the “typical” responsible, law-abiding citizen in San Diego County cannot bear arms in public for self-defense; a typical citizen fearing for his “personal safety“—by definition—cannot “distinguish [himself] from the mainstream.”
Although California law provides other specified exceptions from the general prohibition against public carry, these do little to protect an individual‘s right to bear arms in public for the lawful purpose of self-defense. The exemptions for particular groups of law enforcement officers and military personnel do not protect the typical responsible, law-abiding citizen. Excluding private property and places of business does not protect the right to bear arms for public confrontation. And the exceptions for “making or attempting to make a lawful arrest” or for situations of “immediate, grave danger” (to the extent that they are not entirely illusory—for how would one obtain a gun for use in public when suddenly faced with such a circumstance?) do not cover the scope of the right, which includes the right to carry in case of public confrontation, not just after a confrontation has occurred. Heller, 554 U.S. at 584, 128 S.Ct. 2783 (defining bear arms to mean carrying a weapon “for the purpose ... of being armed and ready for offensive or defensive action in a case of conflict with another person.” (emphasis added)) (quoting Muscarello, 524 U.S. at 143, 118 S.Ct. 1911 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting)). To reason by analogy, it is as though San Diego County banned all polit
c
It is the rare law that “destroys” the right, requiring Heller-style per se invalidation, but the Court has made perfectly clear that a ban on handguns in the home is not the only act of its kind. We quote the relevant paragraph in full, telling case citations included:
Few laws in the history of our Nation have come close to the severe restriction of the District‘s handgun ban. And some of those few have been struck down. In Nunn v. State, the Georgia Supreme Court struck down a prohibition on carrying pistols openly (even though it upheld a prohibition on carrying concealed weapons). See 1 Ga., at 251. In Andrews v. State, the Tennessee Supreme Court likewise held that a statute that forbade openly carrying a pistol “publicly or privately, without regard to time or place, or circumstances,” 50 Tenn., at 187, violated the state constitutional provision (which the court equated with the Second Amendment). That was so even though the statute did not restrict the carrying of long guns. Ibid. See also State v. Reid, 1 Ala. 612, 616-617 (1840) (“A statute which, under the pretence of regulating, amounts to a destruction of the right, or which requires arms to be so borne as to render them wholly useless for the purpose of defence, would be clearly unconstitutional“).
Id. at 629, 128 S.Ct. 2783. In other words, D.C.‘s complete ban on handguns in the home amounted to a destruction of the right precisely because it matched in severity the kinds of complete carry prohibitions confronted (and struck down) in Nunn and Andrews. These, in turn, resemble the severe restrictions in effect in San Diego County, where the open or concealed carriage of a gun, loaded or not, is forbidden. Heller teaches that a near-total prohibition on keeping arms (Heller) is hardly better than a near-total prohibition on bearing them (this case), and vice versa. Both go too far.
2
The County presents one further argument in support of the constitutionality of its “good cause” policy, which it perceives as its ace in the hole: the Heller Court‘s description of concealed-carry restrictions as “presumptively lawful regulatory measures.” Id. at 627 n. 26, 128 S.Ct. 2783. “The right [is] not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose,” Heller says. Id. at 626, 128 S.Ct. 2783. “For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment and state analogues.” Id. According to the County, this means that their concealed-carry policy (which stops just short of an all-out ban) must also be lawful. Ergo, this suit must fail.
But the County‘s argument has two flaws. First, it misapprehends Peruta‘s challenge. This is not a case where a plaintiff who is permitted to openly carry a loaded weapon attacks the validity of a state‘s concealed-carry rule because he
The second, somewhat-related mistake in the County‘s argument is that it reads too much into Heller‘s ostensible blessing of concealed-carry restrictions. A flat-out ban on concealed carry in a jurisdiction permitting open carry may or may not infringe the
Of course, these three sources are not the only exponents of this view. As we have shown, dozens of other cases and authorities from the same period—many of which Heller cites as probative of the
To be clear, we are not holding that the
California, through its legislative scheme, has taken a different course than most nineteenth-century state legislatures, expressing a preference for concealed rather than open carry.18 See
To put it simply, concealed carry per se does not fall outside the scope of the right to bear arms; but insistence upon a particular mode of carry does. As we have explained previously, this is not the latter type of case. Peruta seeks a concealed-carry permit because that is the only type of permit available in the state. As the California legislature has limited its permitting scheme to concealed carry—and has thus expressed a preference for that manner of arms-bearing—a narrow challenge to the San Diego County regulations on concealed carry, rather than a
For these reasons, Heller‘s favorable mention of concealed-carry restrictions is not the silver bullet the County had hoped it was, at least not in this case.
3
Our opinion is not the first to address the question of whether the
a
We are unpersuaded by the decisions of the Second, Third, and Fourth Circuits for several reasons. First, contrary to the approach in Heller, all three courts declined to undertake a complete historical analysis of the scope and nature of the
For example, in Kachalsky, the Second Circuit‘s perfunctory glance at the plaintiffs’ historical argument misunderstood the historical consensus regarding the right to bear arms outside the home. Relying on three cases, the court concluded that “history and tradition [did] not speak with one voice” regarding the ability to restrict public carry because at least three states “read restrictions on the public carrying of weapons as entirely consistent with constitutional protections.” Kachalsky, 701 F.3d at 90-91 (citing Fife v. State, 31 Ark. 455 (1876), English v. State, 35 Tex. 473 (1872), and Andrews v. State, 50 Tenn. 165 (1871)). But in its brief historical analysis, the court missed a critical factor: the cases it cites in favor of broad public carry restrictions adhere to a view of the
By evading an in-depth analysis of history and tradition, the Second, Third, and Fourth Circuits missed a crucial piece of the
Because the Second, Third, and Fourth Circuits eschewed history and tradition in their analysis of the constitutionality of these regulations, despite the Supreme Court‘s admonition that “the public understanding of a legal text in the period after its enactment or ratification” is a “critical tool of constitutional interpretation,” we find their approaches unpersuasive. See Heller, 554 U.S. at 605, 128 S.Ct. 2783. Our independent analysis of history and tradition leads us to take a different course.
b
Because our analysis paralleled the analysis in Heller itself, we did not apply a particular standard of heightened scrutiny. See also Moore, 702 F.3d at 941 (declining to subject the “most restrictive gun law of any of the 50 states” to an “analysis based on degrees of scrutiny“). Thus, the Second, Third, and Fourth Circuits’ extensive discussions regarding the application of intermediate scrutiny to similar regulations in other states is not particularly
Nonetheless, to the extent those opinions suggest that the type of regulation at issue here can withstand some form of heightened scrutiny, it is worth noting our disagreement with their reasoning.
When analyzing whether a “substantial relationship” existed between the challenged gun regulations and the goal of “public safety and crime prevention” the Second Circuit concluded that it owed “substantial deference to the predictive judgments of [the legislature]” regarding the degree of fit between the regulations and the public interest they aimed to serve. Kachalsky, 701 F.3d at 97. Relying on New York‘s historical regulation of handguns from 1911 to the present, the court deferred to the state legislature‘s “belief” that regulation of handgun possession would have “an appreciable impact on public safety and crime prevention.” Id. at 97-98. It thus upheld New York‘s regulatory scheme, emphasizing that there was “general reticence to invalidate the acts of [our] elected leaders.” Id. at 100 (citing Nat‘l Fed‘n of Indep. Bus. v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. 519, 132 S.Ct. 2566, 2579, 183 L.Ed.2d 450 (2012)). Taking a similar approach, the Third Circuit deferred to the legislature‘s judgment that the permitting regulations would serve its interest in ensuring public safety even though “New Jersey [could not] present[ ] [the court] with much evidence to show how or why its legislators arrived at this predictive judgment.” Drake, 724 F.3d at 437; see also id. at 454 (Hardiman, J., dissenting) (clarifying that in actuality “New Jersey ... provided no evidence at all to support its proffered justification ...“). And the Fourth Circuit, in a familiar vein, relied on the legislature‘s judgment that “reduc[ing] the number of handguns carried in public” would increase public safety and prevent crime, despite conflicting evidence on the issue. Woollard, 712 F.3d at 879-82.
This is not an appropriate application of intermediate scrutiny in at least two respects. First, the analysis in the Second, Third, and Fourth Circuit decisions is near-identical to the freestanding “interest-balancing inquiry” that Justice Breyer proposed—and that the majority explicitly rejected—in Heller. See Heller, 554 U.S. at 689-90, 128 S.Ct. 2783 (Breyer, J., dissenting) (proposing that in Second Amendment cases the court should “ask[] whether the statute burdens a protected interest in a way or to an extent that is out of proportion to the statute‘s salutary effects upon other important governmental interests“); see also id. at 634-35, 128 S.Ct. 2783 (majority opinion) (rejecting a “judge-empowering ‘interest-balancing inquiry‘” as a test for the constitutionality of Second Amendment regulations because “no other enumerated constitutional right [had its] core protection ... subjected to [such] a freestanding” inquiry). All three courts referenced, and ultimately relied upon, the state legislatures’ determinations weighing the government‘s interest in public safety against an individual‘s interest in his
Our second disagreement with our sister circuits’ application of intermediate scrutiny relates to the high degree of deference they afforded the state legislatures’ assessments of the fit between the challenged regulations and the asserted government interest they served. Although all three cite Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC (Turner II), 520 U.S. 180, 117 S.Ct. 1174, 137 L.Ed.2d 369 (1997), for the proposition that courts must afford deference to legislative findings, they apply this premise in the wrong context. See Drake, 724 F.3d at 436-37; Woollard, 712 F.3d at 881; Kachalsky, 701 F.3d at 97. In Part II.A. of Turner, the Court applied deference to the legislature‘s judgment regarding the first portion of the intermediate scrutiny analysis: whether there was a “real harm” amounting to an important government interest and “whether [the statutory provisions at issue] will alleviate it in a material way.” Turner, 520 U.S. at 195, 117 S.Ct. 1174. But in Part II.B, when assessing “the fit between the asserted interests and the means chosen to advance them,” the Court applied no such deference. Id. at 213, 117 S.Ct. 1174. Instead, it required the government to prove that the statute did not burden the right “‘substantially more than is necessary to further’ [the government‘s legitimate] interests.” Id. at 214, 117 S.Ct. 1174 (quoting Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC (Turner I), 512 U.S. 622, 662, 114 S.Ct. 2445, 129 L.Ed.2d 497 (1994)).
In Drake, Woollard, and Kachalsky, the government failed to show that the gun regulations did not burden “substantially more” of the
The Maryland statute‘s failure lies in the overly broad means by which it seeks to advance this undoubtedly legitimate end. The requirement that a permit applicant demonstrate “good and substantial reason” to carry a handgun does not, for example, advance the interests of public safety by ensuring that guns are kept out of the hands of those adjudged most likely to misuse them, such as criminals or the mentally ill. It does not ban handguns from places where the possibility of mayhem is most acute, such as schools, churches, government buildings, protest gatherings, or establishments that serve alcohol. It does not attempt to reduce accidents, as would a requirement that all permit applicants complete a safety course. It does not even, as some other States’
laws do, limit the carrying of handguns to persons deemed “suitable” by denying a permit to anyone “whose conduct indicates that he or she is potentially a danger to the public if entrusted with a handgun.” Rather, the regulation at issue is a rationing system. It aims, as Defendants concede, simply to reduce the total number of firearms carried outside of the home by limiting the privilege to those who can demonstrate “good reason” beyond a general desire for self-defense.
....
The challenged regulation does no more to combat [the state‘s public safety concerns] than would a law indiscriminately limiting the issuance of a permit to every tenth applicant. The solution, then, is not tailored to the problem it is intended to solve. Maryland‘s “good and substantial reason” requirement will not prevent those who meet it from having their guns taken from them, or from accidentally shooting themselves or others, or from suddenly turning to a life of crime.... If anything, the Maryland regulation puts firearms in the hands of those most likely to use them in a violent situation by limiting the issuance of permits to “groups of individuals who are at greater risk than others of being the victims of crime.”
Woollard v. Sheridan, 863 F.Supp.2d 462, 474-75 (D.Md.2012) (internal citations and quotation marks omitted), rev‘d sub nom. Woollard, 712 F.3d at 865; see also City of Cincinnati v. Discovery Network, Inc., 507 U.S. 410, 417-18, 113 S.Ct. 1505, 123 L.Ed.2d 99 (1993) (holding that the “city did not establish the reasonable fit” between a regulation prohibiting the distribution of commercial handbills and a government interest in safety and esthetics and rejecting the city‘s argument that it could show “a close fit between its ban on newsracks dispensing ‘commercial handbills’ and its interest in safety and esthetics because every decrease in the number of such dispensing devices necessarily effect[ed] an increase in safety and an improvement in the attractiveness of the cityscape.“).
In light of the states’ failure to demonstrate sufficient narrow tailoring in Drake, Woollard, and Kachalsky, the gun regulations at issue in those cases should have been struck down even under intermediate scrutiny.
III
We conclude by emphasizing, as nearly every authority on the
We are well aware that, in the judgment of many governments, the safest sort of firearm-carrying regime is one which restricts the privilege to law enforcement with only narrow exceptions. Nonetheless, “the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table.... Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing
The district court erred in denying the applicant‘s motion for summary judgment on the
REVERSED and REMANDED.
THOMAS, Circuit Judge, dissenting:
In its landmark decision in Heller, the Supreme Court held that a complete ban on handgun possession in the home violated the
This case involves California‘s “presumptively lawful” and longstanding restrictions on carrying concealed weapons in public and, more specifically, an even narrower question: the constitutionality of San Diego County‘s policy of allowing persons who show good cause to carry concealed firearms in public. When we examine the justification provided for the policy, coupled with Heller‘s direction, our conclusion must be that the County‘s policy is constitutional.
Unfortunately, the majority never answers the question posed. Instead, in a sweeping decision that unnecessarily decides questions not presented, the majority not only strikes down San Diego County‘s concealed carry policy, but upends the entire California firearm regulatory scheme. The majority opinion conflicts with Heller, the reasoned decisions of other Circuits, and our own case law.
Therefore, I must respectfully dissent.
I
We are not asked in this case to determine the reach of the
Second Amendment jurisprudence has rapidly evolved in the last several years, commencing with the Supreme Court‘s groundbreaking decisions in Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 130 S.Ct. 3020, 177 L.Ed.2d 894 (2010). Although these cases are of recent origin, Heller and McDonald, along with decisions of our sister circuits, have provided an analytical framework for examining
The Supreme Court has not as yet defined the extent to which the
In this changing landscape, with many questions unanswered, our role as a lower court is “narrow and constrained by precedent,” and our task “is simply to apply the test announced by Heller to the challenged provisions.” Heller v. District of Columbia, 670 F.3d 1244, 1285 (D.C.Cir.2011) (”Heller II“).
In this case, we are not presented with a broad challenge to restrictions on carrying firearms outside the home. Instead, we are asked a much more circumscribed question concerning regulation of public carry of concealed firearms. As the Supreme Court emphasized in Heller, that issue has a much different and unique history than the
Simply put, concealed carry presents an entirely different
Under Heller and Chovan, we employ a two-part inquiry when reviewing
II
The first question is whether the challenged law imposes a burden on conduct falling within the scope of the
A
The majority‘s first—and crucial—mistake is to misidentify the “conduct at issue.” Chester, 628 F.3d at 680. The majority frames the question as “whether a responsible, law-abiding citizen has a right under the Second Amendment to carry a firearm in public for self-defense.” This is certainly an important issue, but it is not the question we are called upon to answer. The Plaintiffs are not seeking a general license to carry firearms in public for self-defense—they are seeking a license to carry concealed firearms in public.
Thus, the proper analytic approach is to answer the historical inquiry as to whether carrying a concealed weapon in public was understood to be within the scope of the right protected by the
B
Heller instructed us to look to the
Because of the importance attached to the historical sources by the Supreme Court in Heller, it is necessary to examine them in some detail.
1
History of the Right to Bear Arms in England. Because the
Restrictions on the carrying of open and concealed weapons in public have a long pedigree in England. The fourteenth-century
Following the enactment of the
More than three centuries after the enactment of the
if any Person shall Ride or go Arm‘d offensively ... in Fairs or Markets or elsewhere, by Day or by Night, in affray of Her Majesties Subjects, and Breach of the Peace; or wear or carry any Daggers, Guns or Pistols Charged; the Constable upon sight thereof, may seize and take away their Armour and Weapons, and have them apprized as forfeited to Her Majesty.
Robert Gardiner, The Compleat Constable, 18-19 (1708) (emphasis added). Notably, Gardiner distinguished between going armed offensively in breach of the peace, on the one hand, and merely wearing or carrying arms, on the other. Id. This distinction suggests that he considered carrying weapons in public a violation of the statute, regardless of whether doing so actually breached the peace. Charles, supra, at 25-28. Blackstone confirmed this understanding:
The offense of riding or going armed with dangerous or unusual weapons, is a crime against the public peace, by terrifying the good people of the land; and is particularly prohibited by the
Statute of Northampton , upon pain of forfeiture of the arms, and imprisonment during the king‘s pleasure: in like manner as, by the laws of Solon, every Athenian was finable who walked about the city in armour.
4
Certainly, this history does not provide a ready or easy answer to this case. Indeed, history—especially history as old as that recited here—is often ambiguous or contradictory. Nonetheless, from what we know, we can be sure that “the right we inherited from our English ancestors” left ample leeway for restrictions on the public carrying of firearms in the interest of public safety.
2.
Post-Ratification Commentary. The Heller Court relied heavily on the post-ratification commentary of St. George Tucker, William Rawle, and Joseph Story. See 554 U.S. at 605-10. Unfortunately, these commentators revealed little of their opinions about concealed weapons. Still, Rawle wrote that the
3
Pre-Civil War State Constitutions and Legislation. To confirm its understanding of the
By the Founding era, three of the original thirteen states—Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Virginia—had expressly adopted the Statute of Northampton. Charles, supra, at 31-32 & n.166. There is no indication that in doing so these states meant to exclude the longstanding interpretations of the statute.
In the early nineteenth century, states increasingly limited the carrying of concealed firearms.3 And “[m]ost states enacted laws banning the carrying of concealed weapons.”4 Kachalsky, 701 F.3d at
4
Pre-Civil War Case Law. The Heller Court relied heavily on several early-nineteenth-century court cases interpreting the
In State v. Mitchell, 3 Blackf. 229 (Ind. 1833), the Indiana Supreme Court succinctly declared “that the statute of 1831, prohibiting all persons, except travelers, from wearing or carrying concealed weapons, is not unconstitutional.” Id.
In the 1840 case of State v. Reid, the defendant—who had been convicted under Alabama‘s Act of February 1, 1839, which made it a crime for any person to “carry concealed about his person, any species of fire arms” or “any other deadly weapon“—challenged his conviction under Alabama‘s arms-bearing constitutional guarantee. 1 Ala. 612, 614-15, 616 (1840) (cited in Heller, 554 U.S. at 629). The Alabama Supreme Court began its analysis of the defendant‘s challenge by considering the history of the right to bear arms in England, including the English Bill of Rights, which the court considered to be the progenitor of the right to bear arms in Alabama. Id. at 615. After examining this history, the court held that Alabama‘s concealed firearm ban did not “trench upon the constitutional rights of the citizen.” Id. at 616. The court reasoned that Alabama‘s
§ 1, 1881 Ark. Acts at 191; Act of Feb. 1, 1881, 1881 Colo. Sess. Laws at 74; Act of Feb. 12, 1885, ch. 3620, 1885 Fla. Laws at 61; Act of Apr. 16, 1881, 1881 Ill. Laws at 73-74; Act of Jan. 14, 1820, ch. 23, 1820 Ind. Acts at 39; 29 Ky. Gen. Stat. art. 29, § 1 (as amended through 1880); Act of Mar. 25, 1813, 1813 La. Acts at 172; 1866 Md. Laws, ch. 375, § 1; Neb. Gen. Stat., ch. 58, ch. 5, § 25 (1873); Act of Mar. 5, 1879, ch. 127, 1879 N.C. Sess. Laws at 231; N.D. Pen. Code § 457 (1895); Act of Mar. 18, 1859, 1859 Ohio Laws at 56; Act of Feb. 18, 1885, 1885 Or. Laws at 33; Act of Dec. 24, 1880, no. 362, 1881 S.C. Acts at 447; S.D. Terr. Pen.Code § 457 (1883); Act of Apr. 12, 1871, ch. 34, 1871 Tex. Gen. Laws at 25-27; Act of Oct. 20, 1870, ch. 349, 1870 Va. Acts at 510; Wash.Code § 929 (1881); W. Va.Code, ch. 148, § 7 (1891).” Kachalsky, 701 F.3d at 95 n. 21.
In the same year as Reid, the Tennessee Supreme Court considered a similar challenge to the constitutionality of a law criminalizing the carrying of concealed weapons. Aymette v. State, 21 Tenn. 154 (1840) (cited in Heller, 554 U.S. at 613). As in Reid, the court first considered the history of the right to bear arms in England, including the English Bill of Rights under William and Mary. Id. at 156, 157. Based on this history, the court concluded that the Tennessee legislature was well within its powers to criminalize the carrying of concealed weapons:
To hold that the Legislature could pass no law upon this subject by which to preserve the public peace, and protect our citizens from the terror which a wanton and unusual exhibition of arms might produce, or their lives from being endangered by desperadoes with concealed arms, would be to pervert a great political right to the worst of purposes, and to make it a social evil of infinitely greater extent to society than would result from abandoning the right itself.
Id. at 159.5 The court‘s opinion also included the following passage, which is quite relevant in assessing its view of legislative power:
Supose [sic] it were to suit the whim of a set of ruffians to enter the theatre in the midst of the performance, with drawn swords, guns, and fixed bayonets, or to enter the church in the same manner, during service, to the terror of the audience, and this were to become habitual; can it be that it would be beyond the power of the Legislature to pass laws to remedy such an evil? Surely not. . . . The convention, in securing the public political right in question, did not intend to take away from the Legislature all power of regulating the social relations of the citizens upon this subject.
The majority concedes that Aymette does not support a
In State v. Buzzard, 4 Ark. 18 (1842), the Arkansas Supreme Court held that the Arkansas law banning the wearing of concealed weapons was not contrary to either the Arkansas or United States Constitution. Id. at 28. As the Chief Justice wrote:
The act in question does not, in my judgment, detract anything from the
power of the people to defend their free state and the established institutions of the country. It inhibits only the wearing of certain arms concealed. This is simply a regulation as to the manner of bearing such arms as are specified. The practice of so bearing them the legislative department of the government has determined to be wrong, or at least inconsistent with sound policy. So far, that department had a discretion in regard to the subject, over which the judiciary, as I conceive, has no control, and therefore, the duty of the courts must be the same, whether the policy of the law be good or bad. In either event it is binding, and the obligation of the courts to enforce its provisions, when legally called upon to do so, is imperative.
In the 1846 case of Nunn v. State, the defendant—who had been convicted for carrying a pistol in violation of Georgia‘s Act of December 25, 1837—challenged his conviction under the
that so far as the act of 1837 seeks to suppress the practice of carrying certain weapons secretly, . . . it is valid, inasmuch as it does not deprive the citizen of his natural right of self-defence, or of his constitutional right to keep and bear arms. But that so much of it, as contains a prohibition against bearing arms openly, is in conflict with the Constitution, and void. . . .
Id. at 251. Because the criminal charges had not specified the manner in which the defendant carried his pistol, the court reversed his conviction. Id.
Nunn plainly does not support the notion that bearing concealed weapons falls within the protection of the
Finally, in State v. Chandler, the Louisiana Supreme Court joined its counterparts
interfered with no man‘s right to carry arms . . . in full open view, which places men upon an equality. This is the right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, and which is calculated to incite men to a manly and noble defence of themselves, if necessary, and of their country, without any tendency to secret advantages and unmanly assassinations.
Id. at 490 (internal quotation marks omitted). Eight years later, the Louisiana Supreme Court reaffirmed its holding, explaining that the state‘s concealed-carry ban did not violate the
To be sure, there was at least one state high court whose voice was out of tune with this nineteenth-century chorus. In the 1822 case of Bliss v. Commonwealth, the Kentucky high court reversed the defendant‘s conviction for carrying a concealed weapon (a sword in a cane). 12 Ky. at 93 (cited in Heller, 554 U.S. at 585 n. 9). The court held that under the Kentucky constitution, any restraint or regulation on the right to bear arms, including regulations on the manner of carry, were void. Id. at 92, 93. Therefore, the court saw no difference between acts forbidding the carrying of concealed weapons and acts forbidding the carrying of weapons openly. Id.
But the reign of Bliss was short-lived in Kentucky. The ruling was met with disbelief by the Kentucky legislature. Indeed, “[a] committee of the Kentucky House of Representatives concluded that the state‘s Supreme Court had misconstrued the meaning of the state‘s constitutional provision on arms bearing.”
Bliss was clearly a judicial outlier. The courts in Buzzard, Reid, Aymette, and Nunn all considered Bliss‘s conclusions and expressly rejected them. Nunn, 1 Ga. at 247-48, 251; Aymette, 21 Tenn. at 160; Reid, 1 Ala. at 617; Buzzard, 4 Ark. at 25-26. Reid speculated that Bliss‘s solitary position was the result of the unique language of Kentucky‘s constitution. 1 Ala. at 619. Aymette more directly questioned the correctness of Bliss‘s reasoning, explaining that “there is a manifest distinction” between carrying arms secretly and carrying arms openly. 21 Tenn. at 160.
However captivating such arguments may appear upon a merely casual or superficial view of the subject, they are believed to be specious, and to rest upon premises at variance with all the fundamental principles upon which the government is based; and that, upon a more mature and careful investigation, as to the object for which the right was retained their fallacy becomes evident. The dangers to be apprehended from the existence and exercise of such right, not only to social order, domestic tranquillity and the upright and independent administration of the government, but also to the established institutions of the country, appears so obvious as to induce the belief that they are present to every intelligent mind, and to render their statement here unnecessary.
In short, Bliss does not in any way alter the great weight of early-nineteenth century cases holding that carrying concealed weapons is conduct that falls outside the bounds of
5
Post-Civil War Legislation and Commentary. Even though laws enacted after the Civil War were far removed from the Founding Era, the Heller Court found them instructive for discerning the
By the latter half of the nineteenth century, most states had enacted bans or limitations on the carrying of concealed weap-
Despite these widespread restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons, legal commentators saw no
In his edition of Kent‘s Commentaries, Justice Holmes noted a “great difference of opinion” among the state courts on whether prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were constitutional.
George Chase, like Justice Holmes, concluded in The American Students’ Blackstone (1884) that concealed weapons bans were necessary to ensure public safety, and that they were widely deemed lawful: “[I]t is generally held that statutes prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons are not in conflict with these constitutional provisions, since they merely forbid the carrying of arms in a particular manner, which is likely to lead to breaches of the peace and provoke to the commission of crime, rather than contribute to public or personal defence.”
John Ordronaux wrote that although “[t]he right to bear arms has always been the distinctive privilege of freemen,” the
In addition to these commentators cited in Heller, the majority recognizes other commentators who concluded that the
6
Given this extensive history, it is not surprising that in 1897 the Supreme Court endorsed the view that carrying concealed weapons is not protected conduct under the
Most of our sister circuits that have considered the question have reached similar conclusions. In Drake v. Filko, 724 F.3d 426 (3d Cir. 2013), the Third Circuit considered the New Jersey Handgun Permit Law, which required persons who wished to carry a handgun in public to apply for permit and show “justifiable need.” Against a
In Peterson, the Tenth Circuit considered a
Although the Second Circuit did not reach the question of the scope of the
D
In sum, employing the analysis prescribed by the Supreme Court, the answer to the historical inquiry is clear: carrying a concealed weapon in public was not understood to be within the scope of the right protected by the
Because the act of carrying concealed weapons in public is not protected by the
The second Chovan inquiry is whether the challenged government action survives means-end scrutiny under the appropriate level of review. Chovan, 735 F.3d at 1136. In
The core of the
Surviving intermediate scrutiny requires “(1) the government‘s stated objective to be significant, substantial, or important; and (2) a reasonable fit between the challenged regulation and the asserted objective.” Id. at 1139 (citing Chester, 628 F.3d at 683).7
The County argues that the good cause requirement helps protect public safety because it reduces the number of concealed firearms circulating in public. According to the County, reducing the number of guns carried in public ensures public safety by, among other things:
- Limiting the lethality of violent crimes. According to an expert declaration filed in support of the County‘s motion for summary judgment, even though the general availability of guns may or may not influence the absolute number of violent crimes, when guns are used in such crimes it is much more likely that the crime will result in the death of the victim.
- Limiting the ability of criminals to legally take advantage of stealth and surprise.
- Protecting police officers and ensuring their practical monopoly on armed force in public. According to the County, more than ninety percent of police officers who are killed in the line of duty are killed with guns.
- Limiting the danger to other members of the public. The decision to carry a concealed firearm in public exposes other people to increased risk of injury or death without their knowledge or control.
- Limiting the likelihood that minor altercations in public will escalate into fatal shootings.
The County presented data showing that the more guns are carried in public, the more likely it is that violent crimes will result in death and detailing the specific risks posed by concealed weapons.
Obviously, the Plaintiffs disagree with the efficacy of the policy to achieve these goals, and have marshaled evidence challenging conventional wisdom about the correlation between violence and the prevalence of handguns. But ours is not the forum in which to resolve that debate. Rather, we owe “substantial deference to the predictive judgments” of legislative bodies. Turner Broad. Sys., Inc. v. FCC, 520 U.S. 180, 195 (1997). “In the context of firearm regulation, the legislature is ‘far better equipped than the judiciary’ to make sensitive public policy judgments (within constitutional limits) concerning the dangers in carrying firearms and the manner to combat those risks.” Kachalsky, 701 F.3d at 97 (quoting Turner Broad. Sys., Inc. v. FCC, 512 U.S. 622, 665 (1994)). As the Second Circuit aptly explained, “[i]t is the legislature‘s job, not ours, to weigh conflicting evidence and make policy judgments.” Id. at 99; accord Woollard, 712
v. Gallagher, 712 F.3d 865, 869, 876 (4th Cir. 2013) (applying intermediate scrutiny to a Maryland statute requiring applicants to demonstrate a “good and substantial reason to wear, carry, or transport a handgun” in order to obtain a license to do so); Kachalsky, 701 F.3d at 96 (applying intermediate scrutiny to a New York statute requiring applicants to demonstrate “proper cause” in order to obtain a license to carry concealed handguns).
The second inquiry in an intermediate scrutiny analysis is whether there is “a reasonable fit between the challenged regulation and the asserted objective.” Id. First, as the majority properly notes, California does not impose a complete ban on the carrying of concealed weapons in public.
Because of these exceptions, the California Court of Appeal concluded that California‘s concealed carry statutes were “narrowly tailored to protect the public,” and did “not substantially burden defendant‘s exercise of his
Second, the San Diego County “good cause” permit requirement itself does not preclude all carrying of concealed weapons in public. It limits the risk to public safety by reducing the number of guns in public circulation, but allows those who will most likely need to defend themselves in public to carry a handgun. In this way, the licensing scheme is “oriented to the
When viewed objectively, the San Diego County “good cause” policy easily survives intermediate scrutiny. The government has identified significant, substantial, or important objectives and provided a reasonable fit between the challenged regulation and the asserted objective. Therefore, even if the
IV
Rather than employing the straightforward methodology prescribed by Chovan, the majority wanders off in a different labyrinthian path, both in its analysis of the
A
The majority never answers the question as to whether carrying concealed weapons in public is protected under the
The majority‘s logical tapestry quickly unravels under close examination. If carrying concealed firearms in public falls outside the
An analogy to the
The same logic applies in the
Unsurprisingly, the majority does not—and cannot—cite any authority that supports its assertion. It claims that several nineteenth-century sources cited in Heller support its proposition. As I have discussed, those sources support no such proposition. In Chandler, the Louisiana Supreme Court explained that a concealed weapons ban “interfered with no man‘s right to carry arms” under the
Although all the nineteenth-century cases cited by the majority cautioned against restrictions on the open carrying of weapons, none of them—except the discredited, outlier Bliss—suggests that restrictions on carrying concealed weapons implicate the
The majority concedes that it is in conflict with the Second, Third, and Fourth Circuits in Drake, Woollard, and Kachalsky. However, it insists that it is in accord with the Seventh Circuit‘s decision in Moore. But Moore did not involve a challenge to the implementation of a “good cause” requirement to carry a concealed weapon in public. Rather, it was a direct challenge to an Illinois law banning almost all forms of carrying a loaded firearm outside the home and did not involve “narrower, better tailored restrictions” such as the one at issue here. See Moore v. Madigan, 708 F.3d 901, 904 (7th Cir. 2013) (Hamilton, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc).
2
The majority essentially concedes that the Plaintiffs’ challenge to San Diego County‘s “good cause” policy fails unless we consider California‘s regulatory scheme in its entirety. According to the majority, the Plaintiffs’ challenge “is not an attack trained on a restriction against concealed carry as such, or viewed in isolation.” Rather, the Plaintiffs “target[] the constitutionality of the entire scheme” of carry regulation in California. Indeed, if California did not restrict open carry, Plaintiffs would have no cause for complaint. And, of course, if California law permitted
Although the constitutionality of the entire scheme is at issue, the Plaintiffs did not name the State of California as a defendant, and the Plaintiffs have not complied with
Given the real essence of the Plaintiffs’ argument, they were required to comply with
B
I must also respectfully disagree with the majority‘s analysis of the government regulation at issue, which directly conflicts with our circuit precedent in Chovan.
1
The majority acknowledges that we, like our sister circuits, employ a sliding-scale approach, where the level of scrutiny we apply to a challenged law depends on how severe a burden the law imposes on the “core” of the
Despite whatever pedigree the majority claims for this alternative approach, we
The majority suggests that the Heller Court rejected any means-ends scrutiny when it rejected Justice Breyer‘s “interest-balancing inquiry.” See 554 U.S. at 634-35; id. at 689-90 (Breyer, J., dissenting). However, the Court did no such thing. Justice Breyer‘s dissent advocated against applying established tiers of scrutiny, preferring instead to decide case-by-case whether a challenged law burdened the
The majority‘s new alternative approach to establishing the appropriate level of scrutiny is unsupported in Supreme Court precedent and is in direct conflict with our Circuit‘s precedent and the approach taken by our sister circuits.
2
The majority also errs in its alternative intermediate scrutiny analysis. The majority acknowledges the Chovan second step inquiry as to whether the government policy is a reasonable fit between the challenged regulation and the asserted objective. But, rather than applying that analysis, it substitutes the demanding and inappropriate least restrictive means test.
There is no support for the application of a least restrictive means test in Chovan, and our sister circuits have repeatedly and emphatically recognized that, in this context, intermediate scrutiny does not require the least restrictive means available. See Masciandaro, 638 F.3d at 474 (“[I]ntermediate scrutiny does not require that a regulation be the least intrusive means of achieving the relevant government objective, or that there be no burden whatsoever on the individual right in question.“); Heller, 670 F.3d at 1258 (explaining that
The majority also rejects Turner Broadcasting‘s admonition to afford “substantial deference to the predictive judgments” of legislative bodies, Turner Broad. Sys. Inc. v. FCC, 520 U.S. 180, 195 (1997), and criticizes our sister circuits’ reliance on Turner Broadcasting.
However, “[i]n the context of firearm regulation, the legislature is ‘far better equipped than the judiciary’ to make sensitive public policy judgments.” Kachalsky, 701 F.3d at 97; see also Drake, 724 F.3d at 436-37; Woollard, 712 F.3d at 881. This advice is particularly apt when we consider the widely-varying state and local gun laws that are tailored to particular community needs. What law enforcement deems a critical restriction in urban areas may not be as important in rural portions of the country. Those sensitive policy assessments are best made by the respective legislative branches and, when permitted by statute, by local law enforcement officials.10
Turner Broadcasting itself provides a sound rejoinder to the majority: “Even in the realm of
Finally, the majority derides the good cause requirement as nothing more than an arbitrary, overbroad rationing system. In fact, the record supports the opposite conclusion. The County does not randomly allocate concealed-carry licenses to people regardless of need. Instead, it makes the best prediction possible of who actually needs firearms for self-defense, and grants concealed-carry licenses accordingly.11
IV
A careful examination of the narrow questions before us can only lead to the
Notes
Compare Moore v. Madigan, 702 F.3d 933, 935-36 (7th Cir.2012) with id. at 944-49 (Williams, J., dissenting).
In post-Heller jurisprudence, nearly every other circuit that has addressed this question has similarly identified the
I respectfully dissent.
Mary FRUDDEN; Jon E. Frudden, Plaintiffs-Appellants,
v.
Kayann PILLING; Roy Gomm Uniform Committee; Health Morrison; Lynn Rauh; Washoe County School District; Debra Biersdorff, Defendants-Appellees.
No. 12-15403.
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
Argued and Submitted Oct. 7, 2013.
Filed Feb. 14, 2014.
ing a “class of one” equal protection claim “where the plaintiff alleges that she has been intentionally treated differently from others similarly situated and that there is no rational basis for the difference in treatment.“). The HDSA renewal applicants documented specific threats or otherwise qualified for renewals, so they were not similarly situated. I would also reject Plaintiffs’ remaining due process and privileges & immunities claims because Plaintiffs failed to “specifically and distinctly argue [them] in [their] opening brief.” Greenwood v. FAA, 28 F.3d 971, 978 (9th Cir. 1994).
In Cooley‘s other treatise, he often described the right to bear arms as oriented toward the goal of citizenry-wide military readiness. To this end, “to bear arms implies something more than the mere keeping; it implies the learning to handle and use them in a way that makes those who keep them ready for their efficient use; in other words, it implies the right to meet for voluntary discipline in arms, observing in doing so the laws of public order.” Thomas M. Cooley, The General Principles of Constitutional Law in the United States of America 271 (1880), cited in Heller, 554 U.S. at 617-18, 128 S.Ct. 2783. Although one might be tempted to read this passage, and the section in which it appears, as suggesting that Cooley believed the right to be devoted solely to the defense of the community, two of his later comments suggest otherwise. First, a later line in the same treatise clarifies: “[T]he secret carrying of those [arms] suited merely to deadly individual encounters may be prohibited.” Id. at 272. If Cooley understood the right to allow weapons bearing only for training in “discipline in arms” and the like, this later clarification would not have been necessary: of course the Amendment would not foreclose restrictions on concealed carrying, just as it would not foreclose restrictions on open carrying—or carrying altogether. And second, as previously noted, Cooley‘s more popular treatise referenced and contemplated a self-defense component to the right. Cooley, A Treatise on the Constitutional Limitations, supra, at 350 & n. 1.
Some of these authorities took their cues from the Supreme Court‘s decision in Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252, 6 S.Ct. 580, 29 L.Ed. 615 (1886), which they understood as tying the right exclusively to militia service. See, e.g., Davis, supra, at 645. Justice Stevens, dissenting in Heller, read it similarly. Heller, 554 U.S. at 673, 128 S.Ct. 2783 (Stevens, J., dissenting). The majority called that view “simply wrong,” concluding that ”Presser said nothing about the Second Amendment‘s meaning or scope, beyond the fact that it does not prevent the prohibition of private paramilitary organizations.” Id. at 621, 128 S.Ct. 2783 (majority opinion).
Excluding, of course, rational basis review. See Heller, 554 U.S. at 628 n. 27, 128 S.Ct. 2783.
In Chovan, we applied intermediate scrutiny to a
San Diego, like most of the populous cities and counties in California, is incorporated. See California State Association of Counties, available at http://www.csac.counties.org/cities-within-each-county (last visited Feb. 4, 2014).
It is worth noting that California has one of the most restrictive gun regulatory regimes in the nation. Indeed, it is one of only eight states with a “may-issue” permitting regime, meaning that a general desire to carry in self-defense is not sufficient to justify obtaining a permit. See Drake, 724 F.3d at 442 (Hardiman, J., dissenting).
This is likely the result of a changing social convention in favor of concealed rather than open carry. See Volokh, Implementing the Right, supra, at 1521 (“In many places, carrying openly is likely to frighten many people, and to lead to social ostracism as well as confrontations with the police.“).
The dissent curiously misinterprets our opinion as ruling on the constitutionality of California statutes. We decline to respond to its straw-man arguments.
The Supreme Court of Illinois has also found Moore persuasive. See People v. Aguilar, 2013 IL 112116, 377 Ill.Dec. 405, 2 N.E.3d 321, 327 (2013) (ruling “that the second amendment protects the right to possess and use a firearm for self-defense outside the home“).
Indeed, the Third Circuit went even further than that. It not only rejected history and tradition, but specifically relied on more recent mid-twentieth century developments to justify New Jersey‘s permitting scheme. See Drake, 724 F.3d at 432-34; see also id. at 447-52 (Hardiman, J., dissenting) (criticizing the majority‘s reliance on mid-twentieth-century New Jersey law to justify narrowing the scope of the Second Amendment right). The Third Circuit majority concluded that even if the Second Amendment right extended outside the home, permitting restrictions that required individuals to show a “justifiable need to carry a handgun” in the form of “specific threats or previous attacks which demonstrate a special danger to the applicant‘s life” were analogous to the type of “longstanding” regulations that the Supreme Court had identified as “presumptively lawful” in Heller. Id. at 628-29 (majority opinion). To reach this conclusion, the Third Circuit relied upon New Jersey law, which had incorporated some version of the “justifiable need” requirement into its permitting scheme since 1924. Id. at 432. We reject this analysis because it goes against the analysis of the Second Amendment‘s scope employed in Heller and McDonald: those cases made clear that the scope of the Second Amendment right depends not on post-twentieth century developments, but instead on the understanding of the right that predominated from the time of ratification through the nineteenth century. See, e.g., Heller, 554 U.S. at 605, 128 S.Ct. 2783; see also Drake, 724 F.3d at 452 (Hardiman, J., dissenting) (“[R]egardless of whether New Jersey‘s justifiable need requirement dates to 1924 or 1966 for purposes of the inquiry, there is not a sufficiently longstanding tradition of regulations that condition the issuance of permits on a showing of special need for self-defense to uphold New Jersey‘s law on that basis.“).
Because we reverse on the basis of the Second Amendment issue, we do not reach any of Peruta‘s other claims.