“The U.S. Supreme Court is about to take dead aim at the fierce debate over gun regulations in cities and states across the country, with California’s strict gun-control laws squarely in the cross hairs of the legal showdown. The justices on Tuesday will hear arguments in a challenge to a Chicago area ban on handguns and semiautomatic weapons, weighing for the first time whether the Second Amendment right to bear arms applies to local and state gun regulations. For a state such as California, which has long been a target of gun rights advocates for a slew of firearms regulations, a Supreme Court ruling extending Second Amendment protections to cities and states could open the floodgates to a new generation of lawsuits.” (02/28/10)