“For all of the hype, last week’s Second Amendment ruling by the Supreme Court won’t have much practical effect, at least in the short term. And we likely won’t know it’s long-term implications for years. D.C. v. Heller wasn’t so much a victory for gun rights as it was a deft aversion of defeat. The Supreme Court addressed its first broad gun rights case in decades and came away finding that the Constitution confers an individual right to bear arms, not a collective right. A 5-4 decision the other way would have been devastating. Still, this victory seems hollow. … Heller’s lawyers’ strategy (a wise one, in my opinion) was to argue the case narrowly enough that courts couldn’t throw it out, forcing the federal court system once and for all to determine whether the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms applies strictly to militias or to each of us as individuals.” (06/30/08)