My favorite selected excerpts From Thomas Clarence’s Opinion...
(In Heller) we looked to history because “it has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment . . . codified a pre-existing right.” The Amendment “was not intended to lay down a novel principle but rather codified a right inherited from our English ancestors.”
After surveying English history dating from the late 1600s, along with American colonial views leading up to the founding, we found “no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms.
We therefore turn to whether the plain text of the Second Amendment protects Koch’s and Nash’s proposed course of conduct — carrying handguns publicly for self-defense. We have little difficulty concluding that it does.
Nothing in the Second Amendment’s text draws a home/public distinction with respect to the right to keep and bear arms.
Heller further confirmed that the right to “bear arms” refers to the right to “wear, bear, or carry . . . upon the person or in the clothing or in a pocket, for the purpose . . . of being armed and ready for offensive or defensive action in a case of conflict with another person.”
This definition of “bear” naturally encompasses public carry.
Most gun owners do not wear a holstered pistol at their hip in their bedroom or while sitting at the dinner table. Although individuals often “keep” firearms in their home, at the ready for self-defense, most do not “bear” (i.e., carry) them in the home beyond moments of actual confrontation. To confine the right to “bear” arms to the home would nullify half of the Second Amendment’s operative protections.
Moreover, confining the right to “bear” arms to the home would make little sense given that self-defense is “the central component of the [Second Amendment] right itself.
After all, the Second Amendment guarantees an “individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation,” Heller, 554 U. S., at 592, and confrontation can surely take place outside the home.
Although we remarked in Heller that the need for armed self-defense is perhaps “most acute” in the home, we did not suggest that the need was insignificant elsewhere. Many Americans hazard greater danger outside the home than in it. Many Americans hazard greater danger outside the home than in it. “[A] Chicagoan is a good deal more likely to be attacked on a sidewalk in a rough neighborhood than in his apartment on the 35th floor of the Park Tower”.
The text of the Second Amendment reflects that reality.
The Second Amendment’s plain text thus presumptively guarantees petitioners Koch and Nash a right to “bear” arms in public for self-defense.
The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not “a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.” We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need. That is not how the First Amendment works when it comes to unpopular speech or the free exercise of religion. It is not how the Sixth Amendment works when it comes to a defendant’s right to confront the witnesses against him. And it is not how the Second Amendment works when it comes to public carry for self-defense.
New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment in that it prevents law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms. We therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case for further pro- ceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.