I still find it absolutely disturbing that it was only 5 to 4!!! Had they been intellectually honest it would have been 9 to 0. Which makes me question the existence of a judicial branch with this kind of power given their overt partisanship.
OTHO is it possible it was so narrow because the other 5 passed a very broad and sweeping decision?
We therefore read Miller to say only that the second amendment does not protect those weapons not typically possesed by law abiding citizens for lawful purposes, such as short barreled shotguns.
"....and to use that arm for traditional lawful purposes,"
A constitutional guarantee subject to future
judges’ assessments of its usefulness [the interest balancing approach]
is no constitutional
guarantee at all. Constitutional rights are enshrined with
the scope they were understood to have when the people
adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or (yes)
even future judges think that scope too broad. We would
not apply an “interest-balancing” approach to the prohibi-
tion of a peaceful neo-Nazi march through Skokie. See
National Socialist Party of America v. Skokie, 432 U. S. 43
(1977) (per curiam). The First Amendment contains the
freedom-of-speech guarantee that the people ratified,
which included exceptions for obscenity, libel, and disclo-
sure of state secrets, but not for the expression of ex-
tremely unpopular and wrong-headed views. The Second
Amendment is no different. Like the First, it is the very
product of an interest-balancing by the people—which
JUSTICE BREYER would now conduct for them anew.
“Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”