District of Columbia v. Heller

Majority reasoning

The majority held that the Second Amendment's operative clause ("the right of the people to keep and bear Arms") codifies an individual right, consistent with the use of "the people" elsewhere in the Bill of Rights, and that "keep and bear arms" naturally means possessing and carrying weapons for confrontation, not only military service. It found the prefatory clause about a "well regulated Militia" states a purpose—preventing the elimination of the militia by disarmament—but does not limit the operative clause, and that historical sources including English antecedents, state constitutions, and 19th-century commentary confirm an individual self-defense right. The Court concluded United States v. Miller did not limit the right to militia-connected uses but only limited protection to weapons "in common use" for lawful purposes, and that the District's total ban on handguns and its functional disassembly requirement fail under any level of scrutiny because they prohibit the most preferred means of self-defense in the home. The majority responded to Justice Breyer's proposed "interest-balancing" test by arguing that no enumerated constitutional right is subjected to open-ended interest balancing and that the Amendment itself reflects the balance already struck by the people.

Dissent reasoning

Justice Stevens, joined by Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer, argued that the Second Amendment was adopted to protect the States' ability to maintain militias against federal disarmament, not to protect private civilian use of weapons for self-defense or hunting, and that United States v. Miller correctly read the Amendment as tied to militia-related purposes. He contended the majority's textual analysis ignored the preamble's role in confining the operative clause, misread "bear arms" as a natural-meaning term of confrontation when it was a military idiom, and disregarded drafting history showing rejected proposals that would have protected private uses. Justice Breyer, joined by Stevens, Souter, and Ginsburg, separately argued that even if the Amendment protects some self-defense interest, that right is not absolute and the District's law should survive under an interest-balancing approach because colonial-era gunpowder and firearm-discharge laws similarly burdened in-home use of weapons, and the District's ban is a proportionate response given substantial evidence linking handguns to urban homicide, suicide, and accidental death. Breyer criticized the majority for failing to specify a standard of review while nonetheless declaring the District's law unconstitutional "under any" standard, and warned the decision would spawn widespread litigation without clear guidance for other gun regulations.