Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-915_8o6b.pdf
Page Number: 27

Cite as:  602 U. S. ____ (2024) 

5 

SOTOMAYOR, J., concurring 

III 
The Court today clarifies Bruen’s historical inquiry and 
rejects the dissent’s exacting historical test.  I welcome that 
development.  That being said, I remain troubled by Bruen’s 
myopic  focus  on  history  and  tradition,  which  fails  to  give 
full consideration to the real and present stakes of the prob-
lems  facing  our  society  today.    In  my  view,  the  Second
Amendment allows legislators “to take account of the seri-
ous problems posed by gun violence,” Bruen, 597 U. S., at 
91 (Breyer, J., dissenting), not merely by asking what their 
predecessors at the time of the founding or Reconstruction
thought, but by listening to their constituents and crafting
new  and  appropriately  tailored  solutions.  Under  the 
means-end scrutiny  that this Court rejected in  Bruen but 
“regularly use[s] . . . in cases involving other constitutional 
provisions,” id., at 106, the constitutionality of §922(g)(8) is
even more readily apparent.*

To  start,  the  Government  has  a  compelling  interest  in 
keeping firearms out of the hands of domestic abusers.  A 
woman who lives in a house with a domestic abuser is five 
times more likely to be murdered if the abuser has access 
to a gun.  See A. Kivisto & M. Porter, Firearm Use Increases 
Risk of Multiple Victims in Domestic Homicides, 48 J. Am.
Acad. Psychiatry & L. 26 (2020).  With over 70 people shot
and killed by an intimate partner each month in the United
States, the seriousness of the problem can hardly be over-
stated.  See  Centers  for  Disease  Control  and  Prevention, 

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*By “means-end scrutiny,” I refer to the mode of analysis that would 
permit courts “to consider the State’s interest in preventing gun violence, 
the effectiveness of the contested law in achieving that interest, the de-
gree to which the law burdens the Second Amendment right, and, if ap-
propriate,  any  less  restrictive  alternatives.”  Bruen,  597  U. S.,  at  131 
(Breyer, J., dissenting).  Prior to Bruen, the Courts of Appeals would ap-
ply a level of means-end scrutiny “ ‘proportionate to the severity of the 
burden that the law imposes on the right’: strict scrutiny if the burden is
severe, and intermediate scrutiny if it is not.”  Id., at 103.