The dissent does not share our concern over Alameda County’s attempt to restrict the ability of law-abiding Americans to participate in activity protected by the Second Amendment. According to the dissent, there is no constitutional infirmity so long as firearm sales are permitted somewhere in the County. We doubt the dissent would afford challenges invoking other fundamental rights such cursory review. Would a claim challenging an Alameda County ordinance that targeted bookstores be nothing more than “a mundane zoning dispute dressed up as a [First] Amendment challenge”? Surely the residents of Alameda County could acquire their literature at other establishments that, for whatever reason, had not been shuttered by the law.

Such an ordinance, of course, would give us great pause. Our reaction ought to be no different when it comes to challenges invoking the Second Amendment. The right of law-abiding citizens to keep and to bear arms is not a “second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees that we have held to be incorporated into the Due Process Clause.” McDonald v. City of Chicago. Indeed, it is one “that the Framers and ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment counted … among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty.” Just as we have a duty to treat with suspicion governmental encroachments on the right of citizens to engage in political speech or to practice their religion, we must exert equal diligence in ensuring that the right of the people to keep and to bear arms is not undermined by hostile regulatory measures.

We reiterate Heller and McDonald’s assurances that government enjoys substantial leeway under the SecondAmendment to regulate the commercial sale of firearms. Alameda County’s Ordinance may very well be permissible. Thus far, however, the County has failed to justify the burden it has placed on the right of law-abiding citizens to purchase guns. The Second Amendment requires something more rigorous than the unsubstantiated assertions offered to the district court.