The primary purpose of firearms is to enable people to defend their persons, families, and property at times when the police are unable (or unwilling) to do so.
Unable: the police will rarely arrive in time to stop a crime in progress, even if the victim has a chance to call them.
Unwilling: during the LA riots and Crown Heights riots, people were essentially on their own, the police were for the most part standing down.
Strange that Breyer airily blows off D.C. gun owners and tells them to go pistol target shooting in Maryland, a state known to be very unfriendly to guns and gun owners.
Of course, the main purpose of pistol target practice is to sharpen one’s skills against the occasion when deadly force is the sole means of defense and survival.
Wonder why Breyer didn’t airily suggest taking the subway to go shooting in Virginia, a much more gun friendly state.
This recalls an earlier chief justice who held that the Second Amendment only guaranteed the right to own weapons of the same technology as the year the Bill of Rights was ratified.
He actually held up a muzzleloader flintlock musket and said this is what you can own under 2A as he saw it.
Smug, arrogant, self-satisfied jerks!
Seemed to me that they were more or less running away.