Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-843_7j80.pdf
Page Number: 19.0

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

13 

Opinion of the Court 

muster” “[u]nder any of the standards of scrutiny that we 
have  applied  to  enumerated  constitutional  rights,”  id.,  at 
628–629,  we  did  not  engage  in  means-end  scrutiny  when
resolving the constitutional question.  Instead, we focused 
on  the  historically  unprecedented  nature  of  the  District’s 
ban, observing that “[f]ew laws in the history of our Nation
have  come  close  to  [that]  severe  restriction.”    Id.,  at  629. 
Likewise, when one of the dissents attempted to justify the
District’s  prohibition  with  “founding-era  historical  prece-
dent,” including “various restrictive laws in the colonial pe-
riod,” we addressed each purported analogue and concluded 
that they were either irrelevant or “d[id] not remotely bur-
den the right of self-defense as much as an absolute ban on
handguns.”  Id., at 631–632; see id., at 631–634.  Thus, our 
earlier historical analysis sufficed to show that the Second
Amendment did not countenance a “complete prohibition”
on the use of “the most popular weapon chosen by Ameri-
cans for self-defense in the home.”  Id., at 629. 

2 
As the foregoing shows, Heller’s methodology centered on
constitutional text and history.  Whether it came to defining
the character of the right (individual or militia dependent), 
suggesting  the  outer  limits  of  the  right,  or  assessing  the 
constitutionality of a particular regulation, Heller relied on 
text and history.  It did not invoke any means-end test such 
as strict or intermediate scrutiny.

Moreover,  Heller  and  McDonald  expressly  rejected  the
application  of  any  “judge-empowering  ‘interest-balancing
inquiry’ that ‘asks whether the statute burdens a protected 
interest in a way or to an extent that is out of proportion to 
the statute’s salutary effects upon other important govern-
mental interests.’ ”  Heller, 554 U. S., at 634 (quoting id., at 
689–690 (BREYER, J., dissenting)); see also McDonald, 561 
U. S.,  at  790–791  (plurality  opinion)  (the  Second  Amend-
ment does not permit—let alone require—“judges to assess