Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf
Page Number: 63.0

60 

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER 

Opinion of the Court 

loaded Arms” in buildings, give reason to doubt that colo­
nial  Boston  authorities  would  have  enforced  that  general
prohibition  against  someone  who  temporarily  loaded  a 
firearm to confront an intruder (despite the law’s applica­
tion  in  that  case).    In  any  case,  we  would  not  stake  our
interpretation  of  the  Second  Amendment  upon  a  single 
law,  in  effect  in  a  single  city,  that  contradicts  the  over­
whelming  weight  of  other  evidence  regarding  the  right  to
keep  and  bear  arms  for  defense  of  the  home.    The  other 
laws  JUSTICE  BREYER  cites  are  gunpowder-storage  laws 
that  he  concedes  did  not  clearly  prohibit  loaded  weapons,
but  required  only  that  excess  gunpowder  be  kept  in  a
special container or on the top floor of the home.  Post, at 
6–7.  Nothing about those fire-safety laws undermines our
analysis;  they  do  not  remotely  burden  the  right  of  self-
defense  as  much  as  an  absolute  ban  on  handguns.    Nor, 
correspondingly,  does  our  analysis  suggest  the  invalidity
of  laws  regulating  the  storage  of  firearms  to  prevent 
accidents. 

JUSTICE  BREYER points to other founding-era  laws that
he says “restricted the firing of guns within the city limits 
to at least some degree” in Boston, Philadelphia and New
York.  Post,  at  4  (citing  Churchill,  Gun  Regulation,  the
Police Power, and the Right to Keep Arms in Early Amer­
ica,  25  Law  &  Hist.  Rev.  139,  162  (2007)).    Those  laws 
provide no support for the severe restriction in the present 
case.  The  New  York  law  levied  a  fine  of  20  shillings  on
anyone  who  fired  a  gun  in  certain  places  (including 
houses) on New Year’s Eve and the first two days of Janu­
ary, and was aimed at preventing the “great Damages . . .
frequently done on [those days] by persons going House to
House,  with  Guns  and  other  Firearms  and  being  often 
intoxicated  with  Liquor.”    5  Colonial  Laws  of  New  York 
244–246  (1894).  It  is  inconceivable  that  this  law  would 
have been enforced against a person exercising his right to
self-defense  on  New  Year’s  Day  against  such  drunken