Drawing on originalism, the interpretive method embraced by the conservative legal movement, the brief argued that “the original understanding of the Second Amendment was that there is not an absolute, unfettered right to carry loaded guns in public.”

J. Michael Luttig, a former federal appeals court judge revered by conservatives, was among the lawyers who filed the brief. He said the issue was straightforward.

“When you look at the history and tradition, spanning six or seven centuries, you indisputably find that public carry of guns has been variously prohibited and regulated throughout the entire time,” he said in an interview. “New York’s statute, and the statutes in other states that are its equivalent, fit very comfortably within the history and tradition of firearm regulation.”…

“The weight of the historical evidence is pretty clearly on the side that there’s always been some kind of regulation of carrying arms in public,” said Saul Cornell, a historian at Fordham University who filed a brief supporting New York. “One of the longest continuous traditions in Anglo-American law are limits on the public carry of arms in populous areas.”