Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-843_7j80.pdf
Page Number: 106.0

Cite as:  597 U. S. ____ (2022) 

23 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

analysis would be appropriate in other cases where the text
and history are not clear.
  But  the  Heller  Court  did  not  end  its  opinion  with  that
preliminary  question.  After  concluding  that  the  Second
Amendment protects an individual right to possess a fire-
arm for self-defense, the Heller Court added that that right 
is  “not  unlimited.”    Id.,  at  626.    It  thus  had  to  determine 
whether  the  District  of  Columbia’s  law,  which  banned 
handgun possession in the home, was a permissible regula-
tion of the right.  Id., at 628–630.  In answering that second 
question,  it  said:  “Under  any  of  the  standards  of  scrutiny 
that  we  have  applied  to  enumerated  constitutional  rights, 
banning from the home ‘the most preferred firearm in the
nation  to  “keep”  and  use  for  protection  of one’s  home  and 
family’ would fail constitutional muster.”   Id., at 628–629 
(emphasis added; footnote and citation omitted).  That lan-
guage makes clear that the Heller Court understood some 
form of means-end scrutiny to apply.  It did not need to spec-
ify whether that scrutiny should be intermediate or strict
because, in its view, the District’s handgun ban was so “se-
vere” that it would have failed either level of scrutiny.  Id., 
at  628–629;  see  also  id.,  at  628,  n. 27  (clarifying  that  ra-
tional-basis review was not the proper level of scrutiny).

Despite  Heller’s  express  invocation  of  means-end  scru-
tiny, the Court today claims that the majority in Heller re-
jected means-end scrutiny because it rejected my dissent in
that case.  But that argument misreads both my dissent and 
the majority opinion.  My dissent in Heller proposed directly
weighing  “the  interests  protected  by  the  Second  Amend-
ment on one side and the governmental public-safety con-
cerns  on  the  other.”  Id.,  at  689.    I  would  have  asked 
“whether the statute burdens a protected interest in a way
or to an extent that is out of proportion to the statute’s sal-
utary  effects  upon  other  important  governmental  inter-
ests.”  Id., at 689–690.  The majority rejected my dissent,