Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf
Page Number: 140

Cite as:  554 U. S. ____ (2008) 

27 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

public-safety  interests  that  the  Court  has  called  “compel-
ling.”  Salerno, 481 U. S., at 750, 754. 

B 

I  next  assess  the  extent  to  which  the  District’s  law 
burdens  the  interests  that  the  Second  Amendment  seeks 
to  protect.  Respondent  and  his amici,  as  well  as  the  ma-
jority, suggest that those interests include: (1) the preser-
vation  of  a  “well  regulated  Militia”;  (2)  safeguarding  the 
use  of  firearms  for  sporting  purposes,  e.g.,  hunting  and 
marksmanship;  and  (3)  assuring  the  use  of  firearms  for 
self-defense.  For  argument’s  sake,  I  shall  consider  all 
three of those interests here. 

1 

The  District’s  statute  burdens  the  Amendment’s  first 
and primary objective  hardly at all.  As previously noted,
there  is  general  agreement  among  the  Members  of  the
Court  that  the  principal  (if  not  the  only)  purpose  of  the 
Second Amendment is found in the Amendment’s text: the 
preservation of a “well regulated Militia.”  See supra, at 3. 
What  scant  Court  precedent  there  is  on  the  Second 
Amendment  teaches  that  the  Amendment  was  adopted 
“[w]ith  obvious  purpose  to  assure  the  continuation  and 
render  possible  the  effectiveness  of  [militia]  forces”  and 
“must  be  interpreted  and  applied  with  that  end  in  view.” 
Miller,  307  U. S.,  at  178.    Where  that  end  is  implicated
only  minimally  (or  not  at  all),  there  is  substantially  less
reason  for  constitutional  concern.  Compare  ibid.  (“In  the
absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or 
use  of  a  ‘shotgun  having  a  barrel  of  less  than  eighteen
inches  in  length’  at  this  time  has  some  reasonable  rela-
tionship  to  the  preservation  or  efficiency  of  a  well 
regulated  militia,  we  cannot  say  that  the  Second  Amend-
ment  guarantees  the  right  to  keep  and  bear  such  an 
instrument”).