Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf
Page Number: 115

2 

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

in  self-defense—the  majority’s  view  cannot  be  correct 
unless it can show that the District’s regulation is unrea-
sonable  or  inappropriate  in  Second  Amendment  terms. 
This the majority cannot do.   

In  respect  to  the  first independent  reason, I  agree  with 
JUSTICE STEVENS, and I join his opinion.  In this opinion I 
shall focus upon the second reason.  I shall show that the 
District’s  law  is  consistent  with  the  Second  Amendment 
even  if  that  Amendment  is  interpreted  as  protecting  a
wholly separate interest in individual self-defense.  That is 
so  because  the  District’s  regulation,  which  focuses  upon
the  presence  of  handguns  in  high-crime  urban  areas,
represents a permissible legislative response to a serious,
indeed life-threatening, problem. 

Thus  I  here  assume  that  one  objective  (but,  as  the  ma-
jority  concedes,  ante,  at  26,  not  the  primary  objective)  of
those  who  wrote  the  Second  Amendment  was  to  help 
assure  citizens  that  they  would  have  arms  available  for
purposes  of  self-defense.    Even  so,  a  legislature  could 
reasonably  conclude  that  the  law  will  advance  goals  of 
great  public  importance,  namely,  saving  lives,  preventing 
injury,  and  reducing  crime.    The  law  is  tailored  to  the 
urban  crime  problem  in  that  it  is  local  in  scope  and  thus 
affects  only  a  geographic  area  both  limited  in  size  and
entirely  urban;  the  law  concerns  handguns,  which  are 
specially  linked  to  urban  gun  deaths  and  injuries,  and 
which  are  the  overwhelmingly  favorite  weapon  of  armed 
criminals; and at the same time, the law imposes a burden 
upon  gun  owners  that  seems  proportionately  no  greater 
than  restrictions  in  existence  at  the  time  the  Second 
Amendment  was  adopted.    In  these  circumstances,  the 
District’s  law  falls  within  the  zone  that  the  Second 
Amendment leaves open to regulation by legislatures.  

II 
The  Second  Amendment  says  that:  “A  well  regulated