As a gun owner and a progressive, I have mixed feelings about the ruling today. While I do think the NRA is full of shit on most issues or the non-issues they turn into issues, I believe there is a fundamental right to bear arms. That said however, I do not believe that people need arsenals or automatic weapons.
Evidently there was a dust-up during the reading of the ruling today between Scalia the turd who read the majority opinion and Justice Stevens who read the dissenting opinion. From the BLT link:
"Do not accept the summary you have just heard," Stevens said at one point. Earlier, Scalia told spectators they had to slog through 154 pages of opinions to really understand the Court's position. And Scalia said it was "particularly wrongheaded" for dissenters to rely on United States v. Miller, the 1939 case that marked the last time the high court ruled on the Second Amendment.
When Scalia was reading his own opinion Stevens occasionally shook his head in disbelief. And Stevens jousted back. With emphasis on the word "genuine," Stevens said that "a genuine judicial conservative" would not have inserted the Court into the "political thicket" of the gun rights debate as Scalia had done.
What I gather is that this ruling is pretty complicated. The NRA has already stated this ruling sets precedence and they will now challenge other types of gun restriction laws in other cities and states. To be sure, the DC gun law was the strictest law on the books anywhere in the U.S. But the NRA's goal is to overturn any and all gun laws, including those which ban automatic and semiautomatic rifles.
Thats where the NRA and I part ways. Semi and automatic rifles were created for one reason; to kill humans a quickly as possible. You won't see hunters using either of those types of weapons when they are game hunting and even my father thinks no one needs to own semi or automatic guns. Good ol Dad and I finally agree on something..stop the presses!
