SCOTUS declares 2nd Amendment guarantees individual right to gun ownership

There was a landmark ruling today by the Supreme Court in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller where they declared Washington DC's ban on handguns to be unconstitutional. Of course, it was a 5-4 split decision with the four liberal justices deciding against private ownership of firearms.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense and hunting, the justices' first major pronouncement on gun rights in U.S. history.

The court's 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia's 32-year-old ban on handguns as incompatible with gun rights under the Second Amendment. The decision went further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most firearms laws intact.

The court had not conclusively interpreted the Second Amendment since its ratification in 1791. The amendment reads: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

The basic issue for the justices was whether the amendment protects an individual's right to own guns no matter what, or whether that right is somehow tied to service in a state militia.

Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that an individual right to bear arms is supported by "the historical narrative" both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted.

The Constitution does not permit "the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home," Scalia said. The court also struck down Washington's requirement that firearms be equipped with trigger locks or kept disassembled, but left intact the licensing of guns.

In a dissent he summarized from the bench, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority "would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons."

He said such evidence "is nowhere to be found."

Yeah, nowhere to be found aside from the main purpose of the Constitution being to limit the power of the federal government. Justice Kennedy sided with Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito on the constitutionality of private gun ownership. As suspected, Scalia wrote the majority opinon. Stevens and Breyer wrote the nanny-state dissent.

This is a case where Bush's SCOTUS appointments probably made the difference, as I have no doubt justices appointed by Al Gore or John Kerry would have decided against our constitutional rights to own a gun for self-defense.

I'm glad to see common sense prevail. Washington's gun ban was a travesty of justice, and it proved the foolishness of disarming the citizenry as a method of lowering the crime rate.
---
UPDATE: Surprise surprise, the Obamessiah now disavows his former "inartful" position supporting the D.C. handgun ban, basically saying he was for 2nd Amendment rights before he was against them. Any way the wind blows...

Captain Ed makes a salient point:

Suddenly, with the general election looming, Obama discovers that his campaign’s statement was inartful. This seems rather puzzling, because before he ran for public office, Barack Obama was supposed to be a Constitutional law expert. One might expect the “inartful” excuse on wetlands reclamation or some other esoteric matter of public policy, but the Constitution is what he supposedly studied at Columbia and Harvard. One has to wonder whether Obama has any competence even in his own chosen field to have seven months go by before realizing that he got the Constitutional question wrong.
[...]
We used to call John Kerry a flip-flopper for his enbarrassing quote on his opposition to Iraq war funding. Obama has now changed position on almost every key position in this election, and exposed himself as incompetent as a Constitutional law analyst as well.

And Jonathan Leffingwell quips:

Wait, wait, lemme guess: “This is not the Constitution I knew”, right?

---
UPDATE: Jim Geraghty exposes more details from Obama's anti-gun past, further demonstrating that not only is Obama consistently wrong on the issues, he consistently lies about his views.

Yesterday I wrote that despite Barack Obama’s claims that he believes in the Second Amendment, is a friend to gun owners, never supported a complete ban on handguns (despite a questionnaire from early in his career stating he did), etc., those claims are hard to balance with his approval of Chicago’s effective ban on handguns. In Obama's entire time in the city, there’s no record of him ever objecting to it.

Obama’s audacity on this issue goes even further.

Obama was named a director of the Joyce Foundation in late 1994, and remained in that position until late 2002.

During Obama’s tenure with the Joyce Foundation, donations to anti-gun groups increased dramatically. For example, in 1997 and 1998 the Violence Policy Center received $221,000 and $360,000 from the Foundation; those grants and donations increased to $1 million in 2000 and $800,000 in 2002. In all, during Obama’s tenure, the group received $15 million from the Joyce Foundation.

The Violence Policy Center, despite its name, never seems all that concerned with beatings, stabbings, immolations or explosions. No, they’re completely focused on gun violence, and they can effectively be called an anti-gun or pro-gun control organization.

Lest anyone think I’m mischaracterizing their objective analysis, note that their web site touts themselves as “the most aggressive group in the gun control movement.” Also note studies like their one from 2000 entitled, “Unsafe in Any Hands: Why America Needs to Ban Handguns,” which declared the idea that the Constitution would forbid a national handgun ban a “pure myth.” Also note the organization’s subtly-titled book, Every Handgun is Aimed at You: The Case for Banning Handguns.