Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf
Page Number: 136

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

23 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

carry concealed weapons—better fit the problem.  See, e.g., 
Criminologists’  Brief  35–37  (advocating  easily  obtainable
gun  licenses);  Brief  for  Southeastern  Legal  Foundation,
Inc.  et al.  as  Amici  Curiae  15  (hereinafter  SLF  Brief) 
(advocating “widespread gun ownership” as a deterrent to 
crime);  see  also  J.  Lott,  More  Guns,  Less  Crime  (2d  ed. 
2000).  They  further  suggest  that  at  a  minimum  the  Dis-
trict  fails  to  show  that  its  remedy,  the  gun  ban,  bears  a
reasonable  relation  to  the  crime  and  accident  problems
that  the  District  seeks  to  solve.  See,  e.g.,  Brief  for  Re-
spondent 59–61.

These  empirically  based  arguments  may  have  proved
strong  enough  to  convince  many  legislatures,  as  a  matter
of legislative policy, not to adopt total handgun bans.  But 
the  question  here  is  whether  they  are  strong  enough  to 
destroy  judicial  confidence  in  the  reasonableness  of  a
legislature that rejects them.  And that they are not.  For 
one  thing,  they  can  lead  us  more  deeply  into  the  uncer-
tainties that surround any effort to reduce crime, but they
cannot  prove  either  that  handgun  possession  diminishes 
crime or that handgun bans are ineffective.  The statistics 
do  show  a  soaring  District  crime  rate.    And  the  District’s 
crime rate went up after the District adopted its handgun
ban.  But,  as  students  of  elementary  logic  know,  after  it 
does  not  mean  because  of  it.    What  would  the  District’s 
crime  rate  have  looked  like  without  the  ban?  Higher? 
Lower?  The  same?    Experts  differ;  and  we,  as  judges, 
cannot say.

What about the fact that foreign nations with strict gun
laws  have  higher  crime  rates?  Which  is  the  cause  and 
which  the  effect?  The  proposition  that  strict  gun  laws 
cause  crime  is  harder  to  accept  than  the  proposition  that
strict  gun  laws  in  part  grow  out  of  the  fact  that  a  nation
already has a higher crime rate.  And we are then left with 
the  same  question  as  before:  What  would  have  happened 
to  crime  without  the  gun  laws—a  question  that  respon-