Here is an excerpt from some of the Court’s questions and the answers in DC v Heller:

JUSTICE BREYER: Now, focus on the handgun ban. As I read these 80 briefs – and they were very good, I mean really good and informative on both sides – and I’m trying to boil down the statistics where there is disagreement, and roughly what I get – and don’t quarrel with this too much; it’s very rough – that 80,000 to 100,000 people every year in the United States are either killed or wounded in gun-related homicides or crimes or accidents or suicides, but suicide is more questionable. That’s why I say 80,000 to 100,000. In the District, I guess the number is somewhere around 200 to 300 dead; and maybe, if it’s similar, 1,500 to 2,000 people wounded. All right.

Now, in light of that, why isn’t a ban on handguns, while allowing the use of rifles and muskets, a reasonable or a proportionate response on behalf of the District of Columbia?

MR. GURA: Because, Your Honor, for the same reason it was offered by numerous military officers at the highest levels of the U.S. military in all branches of service writing in two briefs, they agree with us that the handgun ban serves to weaken America’s military preparedness. Because when people have handguns -handguns are military arms, they are not just civilian arms – they are better prepared and able to use them. And, certainly, when they join the military forces, they are issued handguns.
And so if we assume that the sort of military purpose to the Second Amendment is an individual right, then the handgun ban, as noted by our military amici, would impede that.

JUSTICE SOUTER: Can we also look to current conditions like current crime statistics?

MR. GURA: To some extent, Your Honor, but we have certainly -

JUSTICE SOUTER: Well, can they consider the extent of the murder rate in Washington, D.C., using handguns?

MR. GURA: If we were to consider the extent of the murder rate with handguns, the law would not survive any type of review, Your Honor.

JUSTICE BREYER: Whose judgment is that to -

JUSTICE SOUTER: The question is whether they may consider those statistics, and I take it your answer is yes?

MR. GURA: Well, those statistics might be considered in some way, the fact is that at some point there is a role for judicial review. And you can’t just grab at statistics – and some of the statistics that were used here are very weak, and studies that have been rejected by the National Academy of Sciences repeatedly. I mean, we don’t really have – it’s hard to say that those laws -

JUSTICE SOUTER: But I think – I don’t want you to misunderstand my question. My question is that by looking to the statistics, I’m not suggesting that there is only sort of one reasonable response to them. I want to know whether – whether the policymakers may look to them; and I take it your answer is yes?

MR. GURA: To some degree, yes, policymakers have to be informed by what’s going on in order to make policy. However, there are constitutional limitations enforced by courts that are going to limit those policies. And when you have a ban which bans 40 percent of all weapons that are the type of weapons used by civilians, 80 percent of all self-defense occurs with handguns; when you have that kind of ban, functional firearms ban, these are extreme measures -

JUSTICE KENNEDY: But Just to be clear -and I don’t want to misstate your position, but my understanding, I at least inferred that you would consider it reasonable to ban shipment of machine guns and sawed-off shotguns in interstate commerce?

MR. GURA: Yes, Your Honor.

JUSTICE STEVENS: And how about a State university wants to ban students having arms in the dormitory?

MR. GURA: Certainly that creates some sort of an evidentiary record. Conceivably that -

JUSTICE STEVENS: That’s the bare fact. That’s what – a State regulation prohibits students from having arms on campus.

MR. GURA: We would have to do -

JUSTICE STEVENS: You’d have to think about that.

MR. GURA: – some fact finding. It’s something that might be doable, but again, that’s so far from what we have here. We have here a ban on all guns, for all people, in all homes, at all times in the Nation’s capital. That questionably is too broad and too sweeping under any level of review.
Thank you, Your Honor.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Thank you, Gura.

For complete audio transcript of the oral arguments in DC v Heller go to Oyez.