Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf
Page Number: 121.0

8 

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

tion to those objectives—in a word, the details.  There are 
no purely logical or conceptual answers to such questions.
All of which to say that to raise a self-defense question is 
not to answer it. 

III 

I  therefore  begin  by  asking  a  process-based  question: 
How is a court to determine whether a particular firearm
regulation (here, the District’s restriction on handguns) is 
consistent  with  the  Second  Amendment?    What  kind  of 
constitutional standard should the court use?  How high a
protective hurdle does the Amendment erect? 

The  question  matters.    The  majority  is  wrong  when  it 
says  that  the  District’s  law  is  unconstitutional  “[u]nder
any  of  the  standards  of  scrutiny  that  we  have  applied  to
enumerated constitutional rights.”  Ante, at 56.  How could 
that be?  It certainly would not be unconstitutional under,
for example, a “rational basis” standard, which requires a
court  to  uphold  regulation  so  long  as  it  bears  a  “rational 
relationship”  to  a  “legitimate  governmental  purpose.” 
Heller v. Doe, 509 U. S. 312, 320 (1993).  The law at issue 
here, which in part seeks to prevent gun-related accidents,
at least bears a “rational relationship” to that “legitimate” 
life-saving  objective.    And  nothing  in  the  three  19th-
century state cases to which the majority turns for support
mandates  the  conclusion  that  the  present  District  law 
must fall.  See Andrews v. State, 50 Tenn. 165, 177, 186– 
187, 192 (1871) (striking down, as violating a state consti-
tutional  provision  adopted  in  1870,  a  statewide  ban  on  a 
carrying a broad class of weapons, insofar as it applied to
revolvers);  Nunn v.  State, 1 Ga. 243, 246, 250–251 (1846) 
(striking  down  similarly  broad  ban  on  openly  carrying 
weapons, based on erroneous view that the Federal Second 
Amendment  applied  to  the  States);  State  v.  Reid,  1  Ala. 
612,  614–615,  622  (1840)  (upholding  a  concealed-weapon
ban against a state constitutional challenge).  These cases