In the New York Times, Adam Liptak (admirably) writes a straightforward article on the effect of Heller:
The only odd statement in the article is that restrictive laws "are almost exclusively urban," when about half of the cities mentioned in the article are suburban. It would be better to say that most such laws are urban and suburban, not rural.Coming Next, Court Fights on Guns in Cities
The individual right to bear arms identified by the Supreme Court on Thursday will have little practical impact in most of the country, legal experts said, though Washington's comprehensive ban on handguns used for self-defense in the home will have to be revised, and similar laws in several cities are also vulnerable.
Most state and city gun restrictions appear to be allowed under the ruling, including licensing laws, limits on the commercial sale of guns, restrictions on guns in places like schools and government buildings and prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill. "Dangerous and unusual" weapons can also be banned, although that phrase was not fully defined.
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority in the 5-to-4 decision, also suggested that bans on concealed weapons would probably pass — new locution alert — Second Amendment muster. Justice Scalia added that the court's list of permissible restrictions was not exhaustive.
The legal battlegrounds will be cities with ordinances similar to Washington's essentially complete ban, most notably Chicago.
"It's really the municipalities that are the offenders," said Robert A. Levy, a lawyer on the winning side of the case and an architect of the victorious strategy.
"There is likely to be quite a flood of litigation to try to flesh out precisely what regulations are to be permitted and which ones are not," Mr. Levy said. "The challenges are likely to be in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Detroit."
In fact, a lawsuit against Chicago's very restrictive ordinance was filed almost immediately after the court's decision. Four Chicago residents and two gun rights groups asked the federal district court there to strike down the ordinance.
Adrian M. Fenty, the mayor of Washington, said the city was taking steps to comply with the court's ruling. Officials here are considering an amnesty period in which handgun owners can register them without penalty, Mr. Fenty said at a news conference.
Mr. Fenty emphasized that it remains illegal to carry handguns outside the home and that only registered guns may be kept at home. Automatic and semiautomatic weapons will generally remain illegal, he said.
In addition to Chicago, as Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote in a dissenting opinion, several of its suburbs in Illinois, including Evanston, Morton Grove, Oak Park, Winnetka and Wilmette, ban the possession of handguns in many settings. Toledo, Ohio, bans some kinds of handguns, Justice Breyer wrote, and San Francisco would have a similar ban had it not been pre-empted by state law.
As the list of affected localities demonstrates, gun control laws of the sort most likely to be affected by Thursday's decision are almost exclusively urban. Indeed, some 40 states pre-empt local gun regulations, indicating significant tensions between state lawmakers and municipal officials. . . . .