Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-843_7j80.pdf
Page Number: 105.0

22  NEW YORK STATE RIFLE & PISTOL ASSN., INC. v. BRUEN 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

Amendment right.  Ibid.  In doing so, they apply a level of 
“means-ends” scrutiny “that is proportionate to the severity
of the burden that the law imposes on the right”: strict scru-
tiny if the burden is severe, and intermediate scrutiny if it
is not.  National Rifle Assn. of Am., Inc. v. Bureau of Alco-
hol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, 700 F. 3d 185, 195, 
198, 205 (CA5 2012).

The Court today replaces the Courts of Appeals’ consen-
sus framework with its own history-only approach.  That is 
unusual.  We  do  not  normally  disrupt  settled  consensus 
among the Courts of Appeals, especially not when that con-
sensus approach has been applied without issue for over a
decade.  See Brief for Second Amendment Law Professors 
as Amici Curiae 4, 13–15; see also this Court’s Rule 10.  The 
Court  attempts  to  justify  its  deviation  from  our  normal 
practice by claiming that the Courts of Appeals’ approach is
inconsistent with Heller.  See ante, at 10.  In doing so, the 
Court implies that all 11 Courts of Appeals that have con-
sidered this question misread Heller. 

To the contrary, it is this Court that misreads Heller.  The 
opinion in Heller did focus primarily on “constitutional text 
and history,”  ante, at 13 (majority  opinion), but it did  not 
“rejec[t] . . . means-end scrutiny,” as the Court claims, ante, 
at 15.  Consider what the Heller Court actually said.  True, 
the  Court  spent  many  pages  in  Heller  discussing  the  text 
and historical context of the Second Amendment.  554 U. S., 
at 579–619.  But that is not surprising because the Heller 
Court  was  asked  to  answer  the  preliminary  question
whether the Second Amendment right to “bear Arms” en-
compasses an  individual  right  to possess a  firearm  in  the 
home for self-defense.  Id., at 577.  The  Heller Court con-
cluded that the Second Amendment’s text and history were 
sufficiently  clear  to  resolve  that  question:  The  Second 
Amendment, it said, does include such an individual right. 
Id., at 579–619.  There was thus no need for the Court to go 
further—to look beyond text and history, or to suggest what