Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf
Page Number: 65

62 

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER 

Opinion of the Court 

or jaywalking.  And although such public-safety laws may 
not  contain  exceptions  for  self-defense,  it  is  inconceivable
that the threat of a jaywalking ticket would deter someone 
from disregarding a “Do Not Walk” sign in order to flee an
attacker, or that the Government would enforce those laws 
under such circumstances.  Likewise, we do not think that 
a  law  imposing  a  5-shilling  fine  and  forfeiture  of  the  gun 
would  have  prevented  a  person  in  the  founding  era  from
using a gun to protect himself or his family from violence, 
or that if he did so the law would be enforced against him.
The  District  law,  by  contrast,  far  from  imposing  a  minor 
fine, threatens citizens with a year in prison (five years for 
a  second  violation)  for  even  obtaining  a  gun  in  the  first 
place.  See D. C. Code §7–2507.06.

JUSTICE BREYER moves on to make a broad jurispruden­
tial point: He criticizes us for declining to establish a level 
of scrutiny for evaluating Second Amendment restrictions. 
He  proposes,  explicitly  at  least,  none  of  the  traditionally 
expressed  levels  (strict  scrutiny,  intermediate  scrutiny,
rational  basis),  but  rather  a  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 governmental interests.”  Post, at 10.  After an 
exhaustive  discussion  of  the  arguments  for  and  against 
gun  control,  JUSTICE  BREYER  arrives  at  his  interest-
balanced answer: because handgun violence is a problem,
because  the  law  is  limited  to  an  urban  area,  and  because 
there  were  somewhat  similar  restrictions  in  the  founding
period  (a  false  proposition  that  we  have  already  dis­
cussed),  the  interest-balancing  inquiry  results  in  the
constitutionality of the handgun ban.  QED. 

We  know  of  no  other  enumerated  constitutional  right 
whose core protection has been subjected to a freestanding 
“interest-balancing”  approach.  The  very  enumeration  of
the right takes out of the hands of government—even the