Wolford v. Lopez · ¶33

A variety of sources, including scholarship, may aid this inquiry. See id., at 34–60. But often, the best evidence may be what Bruen called historical analogues. Id., at 28. These are old legal rules from which a court may draw a strong inference that the modern law at issue is consistent with the codified right. A party defending against a Second Amendment claim may rely on a single analogue or a group of analogues. Bruen identified three important inquiries that courts should undertake in evaluating proffered analogues. The first is the number of jurisdictions in which they were adopted. See id., at 67 (“[W]e will not stake our interpretation . . . upon a law in effect in a single State, or a single city” (citing Heller, 554 U. S., at 632)). The second is the extent to which they were well-accepted. This acceptance may be express, as when judicial decisions explicitly acknowledged the…

slip opinion
Source edition
Passage preview. Read in context for the complete text, notes and references.