Cite as: 514 U. S. 549 (1995)
Breyer, J., dissenting
threat to teaching and learning also substantially threatens the commerce to which that teaching and learning is inextricably tied? That is to say, guns in the hands of six percent of inner-city high school students and gun-related violence throughout a city's schools must threaten the trade and commerce that those schools support. The only question, then, is whether the latter threat is (to use the majority's terminology) "substantial." The evidence of (1) the extent of the gun-related violence problem, see supra, at 619, (2) the extent of the resulting negative effect on classroom learning, see ibid., and (3) the extent of the consequent negative commercial effects, see supra, at 620-622, when taken together, indicate a threat to trade and commerce that is "substantial." At the very least, Congress could rationally have concluded that the links are "substantial."
Specifically, Congress could have found that gun-related violence near the classroom poses a serious economic threat (1) to consequently inadequately educated workers who must endure low paying jobs, see, e. g., National Center 29, and (2) to communities and businesses that might (in today's "information society") otherwise gain, from a well-educated work force, an important commercial advantage, see, e. g., Becker 10 (1992), of a kind that location near a railhead or harbor provided in the past. Congress might also have found these threats to be no different in kind from other threats that this Court has found within the commerce power, such as the threat that loan sharking poses to the "funds" of "numerous localities," Perez v. United States, 402 U. S., at 157, and that unfair labor practices pose to instrumentalities of commerce, see Consolidated Edison Co. v. NLRB, 305 U. S. 197, 221-222 (1938). As I have pointed out, supra, at 618, Congress has written that "the occurrence of violent crime in school zones" has brought about a "decline in the quality of education" that "has an adverse impact on interstate commerce and the foreign commerce of the United States." 18 U. S. C. §§ 922(q)(1)(F), (G). The violence-related facts, the educa-
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