fred, no one seems to have mentioned the Fourteenth Amendment yet. The reason this Supreme Court decision is not immediately binding on the states is because the case was specifically crafted to avoid that question. It took place in the District of Columbia which is a federal enclave and only federal laws apply – no state’s laws nor state’s constitutions confuse the issue.

Now that this case has answered some basic questions – the Second Amendment grants an individual right where some restrictions are reasonable but an absolute handgun ban certainly is not – we can proceed to the next issue.

The next issue is ‘incorporation’ of the right to keep and bear arms under the Fourteenth Amendment so that it applies to the states as well – the same way that the right to free speech is ‘incorporated’ so that individual states cannot, say, pass a law against flag-burning and have it stand.