Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-843_7j80.pdf
Page Number: 86

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

3 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

Second  Amendment  prevents  democratically  elected  offi-
cials from enacting laws to address the serious problem of 
gun violence.  And yet the Court today purports to answer
that question without discussing the nature or severity of
that problem.

In 2017, there were an estimated 393.3 million civilian-
held  firearms  in  the  United  States,  or  about  120  fire- 
arms per 100 people.  A. Karp, Estimating Global Civilian-
Held  Firearms  Numbers,  Small  Arms  Survey  4  (June
2018), https://www.smallarmssurvey.org/sites/default/files/
resources/SAS-BP-Civilian-Firearms-Numbers.pdf.    That 
is  more  guns  per  capita  than  in  any  other  country  in  the
world.  Ibid.  (By comparison, Yemen is second with about 
52.8 firearms per 100 people—less than half the per capita
rate in the United States—and some countries, like Indone-
sia and Japan, have fewer than one firearm per 100 people. 
Id., at 3–4.)

Unsurprisingly, the United States also suffers a dispro-
portionately  high  rate  of  firearm-related  deaths  and  inju-
ries.  Cf. Brief for Educational Fund To Stop Gun Violence 
et al. as Amici Curiae 17–18 (Brief for Educational Fund)
(citing  studies  showing  that,  within  the  United  States, 
“states that rank among the highest in gun ownership also
rank among the highest in gun deaths” while “states with
lower  rates  of  gun  ownership  have  lower  rates  of  gun 
deaths”).  In 2015, approximately 36,000 people were killed 
by firearms nationwide.  M. Siegel et al., Easiness of Legal 
Access to Concealed Firearm Permits and Homicide Rates 
in the United States, 107 Am. J. Pub. Health 1923 (2017).
Of  those  deaths,  22,018  (or  about  61%)  were  suicides, 
13,463 (37%) were homicides, and 489 (1%) were uninten-
tional  injuries.  Ibid.  On  top  of  that,  firearms  caused  an 
average of 85,694 emergency room visits for nonfatal inju-
ries each year between 2009 and 2017.  E. Kaufman et al., 
Epidemiological Trends in Fatal and Nonfatal Firearm In-
juries in the US, 2009–2017, 181 JAMA Internal Medicine