Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf
Page Number: 62

Cite as:  554 U. S. ____ (2008) 

59 

Opinion of the Court 

that the District “may not prevent [a handgun] from being 
moved throughout one’s house.”  478 F. 3d, at 400.  It then 
ordered  the  District  Court  to  enter  summary  judgment
“consistent  with  [respondent’s]  prayer  for  relief.”    Id.,  at 
401.  Before this Court petitioners have stated that “if the
handgun  ban  is  struck  down  and  respondent  registers  a
handgun,  he  could  obtain  a  license,  assuming  he  is  not 
otherwise disqualified,” by which they apparently mean if 
he  is  not  a  felon  and  is  not  insane.  Brief  for  Petitioners 
58.  Respondent  conceded  at  oral  argument  that  he  does 
not “have a problem with . . . licensing” and that the Dis­
trict’s law is permissible so long as it is “not enforced in an
arbitrary and capricious manner.”  Tr. of Oral Arg. 74–75.
We therefore assume that petitioners’ issuance of a license
will  satisfy  respondent’s  prayer  for  relief  and  do  not  ad­
dress the licensing requirement.

JUSTICE  BREYER  has  devoted  most  of  his  separate  dis­
sent to the handgun ban.  He says that, even assuming the 
Second Amendment is a personal guarantee of the right to
bear arms, the District’s prohibition is valid.  He first tries 
to  establish  this  by  founding-era  historical  precedent, 
pointing  to  various  restrictive  laws  in  the  colonial  period.
These  demonstrate,  in  his  view,  that  the  District’s  law 
“imposes  a  burden  upon  gun  owners  that  seems  propor­
tionately  no  greater  than  restrictions  in  existence  at  the
time the Second Amendment was adopted.”  Post, at 2.  Of 
the  laws  he  cites,  only  one  offers  even  marginal  support
for  his  assertion.  A  1783  Massachusetts  law  forbade  the 
residents  of  Boston  to  “take  into”  or  “receive  into”  “any
Dwelling  House,  Stable,  Barn,  Out-house,  Ware-house, 
Store,  Shop  or  other  Building”  loaded  firearms,  and  per­
mitted  the  seizure  of  any  loaded  firearms  that  “shall  be 
found” there.  Act of Mar. 1, 1783, ch. 13, 1783 Mass. Acts 
p. 218.  That statute’s text and its prologue, which makes 
clear that the purpose of the prohibition was to eliminate 
the  danger  to  firefighters  posed  by  the  “depositing  of