Oh Yeah Doing The Happy Dance!

I almost expected this since the profile of the court hasn't changed since Heller but wasn't holding my breath.

AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT!

Bloomberg:

States Must Honor Gun Rights, U.S. High Court Says
By Greg Stohr - Jun 28, 2010

A divided U.S. Supreme Court extended the reach of the constitutional right to bear arms by saying it binds state and local governments as well as federal officials.

The justices, voting 5-4 in a ruling that is likely to invalidate Chicago’s handgun ban, said an individual right to bear arms was among the fundamental guarantees protected against state interference through a constitutional amendment after the Civil War.

“A provision in the Bill of Rights that protects a right that is fundamental from an American perspective applies equally to the federal government and the states,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court.

The ruling broadens the sweep of the court’s 2008 ruling interpreting the Constitution’s Second Amendment as protecting the rights of individuals, rather than just those of state-run militias. It’s a victory for the National Rifle Association, which joined a group of Chicago residents in challenging the city’s laws.

It will open a new front in the fight over gun rights, setting the stage for courtroom battles over the constitutionality of weapons restrictions around the country.

The decision, which came on the last day of the court’s nine-month term, divided the justices along lines that have become commonplace. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas joined Alito in the majority.

Dissenting Justices

In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer faulted the majority for “transferring ultimate regulatory authority over the private uses of firearms from democratically elected legislatures to courts or from the states to the federal government.”

Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor also dissented.

The high court’s 2008 decision said the right to bear arms “is not unlimited.” The majority said the ruling didn’t cast doubt on laws barring handgun possession by convicted felons and the mentally ill or restrictions on bringing guns into schools or government buildings.

“We repeat those assurances here,” Alito wrote. “Despite municipal respondents’ doomsday proclamations, incorporation does not imperil every law regulating firearms.”

Like the rest of the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment was originally aimed only at the federal government. The Supreme Court in the 19th century refused to apply the Second Amendment to the states.

More recently, the court has said that some, though not all, of the rights in the first eight amendments are so fundamental that they are “incorporated” into the 14th Amendment’s due process clause, which binds the states.

No Doctrinal Shift

In saying that the Second Amendment is incorporated as well, the court declined to usher in a major doctrinal shift, as some litigants had sought. Advocates across the ideological spectrum urged the justices to rely on the privileges-or- immunities clause, a long dormant provision in the 14th Amendment.

Such a step might have reinforced established constitutional rights including abortion and opened the door to broader protection of other guarantees, including property rights.

Chicago has been the only major U.S. city with a blanket prohibition on handguns. The ban was challenged by four Chicago residents, including Otis McDonald, a 76-year-old homeowner in the Morgan Park neighborhood on the city’s South Side.

McDonald, who says his home has been broken into at least three times, says he wants to keep a handgun by his bed for protection.

The Supreme Court’s 2008 decision invalidated the handgun ban in the District of Columbia, a federal enclave.

The case is McDonald v. City of Chicago, 08-1521.

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