High Court's Gun Ruling Won't End Local Skirmishes

WASHINGTON (June 28) -- By extending the Second Amendment right to bear arms to state and local governments, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday opened the door to legal challenges to gun laws across the country. Whether the decision will change the status quo, though, remains unclear.

The case, McDonald v. City of Chicago, strikes down decades-old gun bans in Chicago and its suburb of Oak Park, Ill. It follows almost two years to the day the court's landmark Heller decision striking down the District of Columbia's ban on handgun possession. That case, also decided by an ideologically split court ruling 5-4, applied only to federal laws. Monday's 214-page decision applies that right to governments at every level.

The decision broadening gun rights was announced just hours before confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan were to begin and underscored just how much is at stake in the makeup of the bench.

Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, told AOL News he intends "to make sure" Kagan is asked about today's gun ruling, even though his group has reportedly clamped a lid on testifying at her hearing. "We were assured by the Obama administration that (Sonia) Sotomayor was a Second Amendment supporter, and we saw how that worked out," he said.

Sotomayor, who was confirmed a year ago as the court's first Hispanic justice, voted with the liberal minority that would have upheld state and local restrictions on gun ownership and that reaffirmed its dissent in the Heller decision.

As the court recesses for the summer and Justice John Paul Stevens retires from the bench, here is a look at what the gun rights decision means for:

Handgun Bans. They're done. After the Heller ruling, few observers were surprised that the conservative-led Roberts court would apply its reasoning in the federal enclave to states and local jurisdictions. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito noted that in the previous case, "we held that the Second Amendment protects the right to possess a handgun in the home for the purpose of self-defense." What's good in Georgetown, in other words, is good along Lake Shore Drive.

Chicago. That said, the justices sent this particular case back to a lower court. So, for now, the city's handgun ban will remain in effect. Still, Mayor Richard Daley didn't wait for the court to rule to make clear what he would do if his city lost. He vowed to follow Washington's lead when its local law was thrown out. The capital city passed strict new regulations for prospective gun owners, requiring residents who want to buy a gun to first pass a written test and undergo firearms training.

Gun Control. As a lawyer for the liberal advocacy group Alliance for Justice put it, "This doesn't say you have the right to go marching around the streets with a gun without a license."

Wrote Alito: "We made it clear in Heller that our holding did not cast doubt on such longstanding regulatory measures as 'prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill,' '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.' We repeat those assurances here. Despite municipal respondents' doomsday proclamations, (this ruling) does not imperil every law regulating firearms."

Dave Workman of the Second Amendment Foundation, the Bellevue, Wash.-based group that joined the lawsuit to overturn Chicago's handgun ban, said the regulations cited by Alito are a far cry from "onerous regulations merely designed to discourage people" from exercising their constitutional right to own a firearm. Among them: licensing, registration, "heavy" permit fees and waiting periods of up to six months. "That kind of stuff is in trouble and it's in big trouble," he told AOL News.

Lawyer Billing Hours. If there is one thing advocates on both sides agree on, it is that lots more lawsuits can be expected, whether they be filed by criminals seeking to overturn their convictions on gun charges or Second Amendment advocates seeking to test the boundaries of the court's ruling.

"We will likely see hundreds of new challenges to gun laws," said Ladd Everitt of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. "The overwhelming majority will fail, just as they once again failed to achieve a high court opinion that would legitimize their 'guns anywhere, anyhow, anytime' agenda."

Expect cases to be filed by gun rights groups in New York City, New Jersey, Massachusetts, North Carolina and California "real soon," Workman said. All these jurisdictions, he told AOL News, have gun laws "that have pushed the envelope."

How far that envelope extends was the subject of Justice Stephen Breyer's dissent:

"Does the right to possess weapons for self-defense extend outside the home? To the car? To work? What sort of guns are necessary for self-defense? Handguns? Rifles? Semiautomatic weapons? When is a gun semi-automatic? Where are different kinds of weapons likely needed? Does time-of-day matter? Does the presence of a child in the house matter? Does the presence of a convicted felon in the house matter? Do police need special rules permitting patdowns designed to find guns? When do registration requirements become severe to the point that they amount to an unconstitutional ban? Who can possess guns and of what kind? Aliens? Prior drug offenders? Prior alcohol abusers? How would the right interact with a state or local government's ability to take special measures during, say, national security emergencies? As the questions suggest, state and local gun regulation can become highly complex, and these 'are only a few uncertainties that quickly come to mind.'"

Politics. Democrats had enough problems going into November's critical congressional elections, so they are unlikely to turn Monday's decision into a campaign talking point. Despite the concerns of big-city mayors like Daley, support for stricter gun laws is a minority position -- and something Democrats recognized years ago.

"Gun control laws have little chance of passage in vast swaths of the nation anyway, so the practical effect will be limited to liberal states and cities," said University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato. "For the most part, we've never had much gun control in the U.S., and this decision probably spells the end of efforts to change that in significant ways."

The decision will hardly register with the electorate, said analyst Charlie Cook: "When you have two wars, unemployment at 9.7 percent and an environmental catastrophe on the Gulf Coast, cultural issues are inconsequential. This decision will not even cause a political ripple this year."

Culture Wars. They will go on, with neither side backing down.

"We will continue working at every level to see that this constitutional victory is not transformed into some practical defeat by defiant city councils or cynical politicians," LaPierre said. Noting that the court did not address the "Byzantine labyrinth of regulations" still on the books, he said the NRA would redouble its efforts to erase laws that make gun ownership "inaccessible, unaffordable and impossible to experience in a practical way. What good is the right to own a firearm without the firearm?"

But Dennis Henigan of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence said the conservative justices may have done his cause a favor by forcing gun rights advocates to abandon their "slippery slope argument" that handgun bans were the first step toward government confiscation. Now that handgun bans are history but their regulation is not, "It's a very different legal terrain," he said. "When the legal dust settles, I think the Chicago decision as well as Heller may prove to be a more symbolic victory than a substantive victory for the gun rights community."