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Page Number: 109.0

42 

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER 

STEVENS, J., dissenting 

been  well  settled  and  uncontroversial.38   Indeed,  the  Sec­
ond  Amendment  was  not  even  mentioned  in  either  full 
House of Congress during the legislative proceedings that 
led  to  the  passage  of  the  1934  Act.    Yet  enforcement  of 
that law produced the judicial decision that confirmed the
status  of  the  Amendment  as  limited  in  reach  to  military 
usage.  After reviewing many of the same sources that are 
discussed at greater length by the Court today, the Miller 
Court  unanimously  concluded  that  the  Second  Amend­
ment did not apply to the possession of a firearm that did 
not have “some reasonable relationship to the preservation
or efficiency of a well regulated militia.”  307 U. S., at 178. 
The key to that decision did not, as the Court belatedly 
suggests,  ante,  at  49–51,  turn  on  the  difference  between 

—————— 

38 The  majority  appears  to  suggest  that  even  if  the  meaning  of  the
Second  Amendment  has  been  considered  settled  by  courts  and  legisla­
tures  for  over  two  centuries,  that  settled  meaning  is  overcome  by  the 
“reliance of millions of Americans” “upon the true meaning of the right
to  keep  and  bear  arms.”    Ante,  at  52,  n.  24.    Presumably  by  this  the 
Court  means  that  many  Americans  own  guns  for  self-defense,  recrea­
tion, and other lawful purposes, and object to government interference 
with  their  gun  ownership.    I  do  not  dispute  the  correctness  of  this 
observation.  But it is hard to see how Americans have “relied,” in the 
usual sense of the word, on the existence of a constitutional right that,
until  2001,  had  been  rejected  by  every  federal  court  to  take  up  the 
question.    Rather,  gun  owners  have  “relied”  on  the  laws  passed  by 
democratically  elected  legislatures,  which  have  generally  adopted  only 
limited gun-control measures. 

Indeed, reliance interests surely cut the other way: Even apart from 
the reliance of judges and legislators who properly believed, until today, 
that  the  Second  Amendment  did  not  reach  possession  of  firearms  for
purely  private  activities,  “millions  of  Americans,”  have  relied  on  the
power of government to protect their safety and well-being, and that of
their families.  With respect to the case before us, the legislature of the
District  of  Columbia  has  relied  on  its  ability  to  act  to  “reduce  the 
potentiality  for  gun-related  crimes  and  gun-related  deaths  from  occur­
ring within the District of Columbia,” H. Con. Res. 694, 94th Cong., 2d
Sess., 25 (1976); see post, at 14–17 (BREYER, J., dissenting); so, too have 
the residents of the District.