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The Breyer Patch

Posted on: March 9th, 2010

Town Hall   The Breyer Patch   Mike Adams   Tuesday, March 09, 2010   Justice Stephen Breyer was one of the four dissenting voices in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the landmark Supreme Court case ruling that the Second Amendment right to bear arms is an individual right, rather than a collective right, which merely attaches to service in a state militia. On page 35 of his 44 page dissent, Justice Breyer states the following:   "The upshot is that the District's objectives are compelling; its predictive judgments as to the law's tendency to achieve those objectives are adequately supported [emphasis mine]; the law does impose a burden upon any self-defense interest that the Amendment seeks to secure; and there is no less clear less restrictive alternative."   Justice Breyer was defending a District of Columbia law that banned handguns altogether as part of a stated objective to reduce violence in the District. The problem with Breyer's assertion that "predictive judgments as to the law's tendency to achieve those objectives are adequately supported" is that it's patently false. Nonetheless, Breyer continues on the final page (p. 44) of his dissent:   "In my view, there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendmen... ...[more]