Reaction to the Supreme Court striking down the Supreme Court ban on handguns, from Extreme Mortman senior historian Richard Andrews:

1. The anti-gun folk have lost the talking point that ‘there ain’t no such individual right’; but,

2. This decision contains more ‘lawyer relief’; determining HOW FAR an authoritarian jurisdiction can go in ‘resonable regulation’ will take YEARS to fight out in court - the District law was so extreme it virtually had a bullseye painted on it with the words ‘Ready, Aim, Fire’ - it was just a matter of getting someone to pay for lining up a laundry list of plaintiffs (only one of six made it through the procedral hurdles), lucking out with a good panel of Appeals Court judges (in DC, not a foregone conclusion - there is at least one still there from the Carter years!), and making it to the Supreme Court before there was a net increase of liberal Justices.

3. But a host of questions remain about what states and localities CAN do - limitations on numbers of weapons/amounts of ammunition, how high can registration/licensing fees be before they are too burdensome, how much ‘training’ can be required for a license; what about situations not directly related to self-defense?  A number of possible restrictions on gun commerce are expressly outside the holding in this case - onerous zoning, bans on gunshows or gunshops.  Then there’s transportation of firearms in personal vehicles, etc.