Glenn Reynolds writes something that sums up what I’ve seen as significant result of the Heller decision:

What’s most striking about Heller is that absolutely everybody — majority and dissents — says the Second Amendment protects an individual right.

It’s true that the dissenters’ view of that right is somewhere between “minimalist” (to be charitable) and “incoherent” (to be accurate). But nonetheless, all nine Justices specifically said the right is individual, and thus rejected the “collective right” position on the Second Amendment, a position that’s been the mainstay of gun-control groups, newspaper editorialists, and lower federal courts for decades, and one that was presented by those adherents as so obviously correct that those arguing for an individual right were called “frauds” and shills for the NRA.

Yet the collective right theory could not command a single vote on the Court when actually tested. It was, it seems, a paper tiger all along.

Decades of “collective right for the militia” arguments evaporated in the sunlight.

This needs to be remembered, because we’re going to be hearing dozens of new “common sense” arguments about what “keep and bear” means or if certain types of restrictions and regulations are “infringing” on rights. They’re going to argue that it’s clear that the framers never meant this kind of gun or that it was okay to carry it there or use it for that purpose.

They’re going to tell us that it’s obvious that the 2nd Amendment means one thing, when a trip down memory lane to June 26th, 2008 will remind everyone that what they had previously told us it meant was completely and totally wrong and had been all along.

Yesterday I posted on Chicago suburb Wilmette suspending its gun ban, and now another one, Morton Grove, has done the same thing.

This seems good, but beware Chicagoland politicians bearing gifts. Rivrdog writes Gun law “Moratoriums” will outflank Heller and there’s no reason to think that the banners will go quietly into the night.

The battle has not ended. It’s merely changed.

Another reason to carry at home

An Omaha toddler underwent surgery Wednesday night to reattach her scalp after a pit bull attacked her and three other people.

Wilmette Suspends Local Handgun Ban

Wow:

WILMETTE, Ill. — Wilmette has suspended enforcement of its 19-year-old ordinance banning handgun possession in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that appears to invalidate such bans.

In a 5-4 decision, the court struck down Washington, D.C.’s ban on handguns, a prohibition similar to those used in several major cities, including Chicago, and a handful of suburbs including Wilmette, Evanston, Winnetka and Oak Park.

“The Law Department and the Police Department have suspended enforcement of the ordinance pending further review by the Village Board,” Wilmette village attorney Tim Frenzer said Thursday. “Based on the decision today, at a minimum it calls into serious question the continued viability of the ordinance.”

I’ll readily admit that I never expected anything like this. I know that rural Illinois does not share much of Chicao Mayor Daley’s maniacal anti-gun agenda, but to see a suburb of the Windy City play along so quickly took me by surprise.

Iraqi soldiers stand guard over rows of rifles seized by Iraqi security forces during recent operations in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City, June 18, 2008.

The Ministry of Minor Perfidy has a picture that appears to have been taken at the same event as the photo of the Iraqi police woman with an AK I posted earlier.

Go check it out.

I think the delivery of the Dirty Harry line would suffer from the layers of clothing masking the woman’s expression during the delivery.

Incidentally, I’ve been revisiting the Dirty Harry movies recently. I plan to watch The Enforcer tonight. I haven’t seen that in at least 20 years.

Instapundit on the op-ed page of the New York Post: Winner’s Test

I confess that I was one of the Second Amendment scholars who doubted that there were five votes on the high court to support an individual-right view of the Second Amendment.

I’m happy to be wrong about that, but there were only five such votes - demonstrating how narrow the margin was, and how out of touch the court is with the American public, which believes the Second Amendment protects an individual right to arms by a 3-1 margin.

If, as some have been calling for, we had a “Supreme Court that looks like America,” this case wouldn’t even have been close. Ordinary Americans have generally believed that the “right of the people to keep and bear arms” applied to, you know, the people.

It takes politicians, law professors (and, it turns out, four Supreme Court justices) to believe that a “right of the people” somehow actually doesn’t belong to the people at all.

Now, I doubt that many (if any) of the people reading GunPundit subscribe to the non-individual view of the 2nd Amendment. And all of us probably think that the individual view is simply “common sense.” As Reynolds says, about 75% of Americans think that way.

But 25% don’t, and a lot of them are in positions of power.

Reynolds’ larger point is that, now that Heller has been won, can the ball be kept rolling?

I think it can, for sure. It’s not like Heller was a bolt out of the blue in the gun control debate. Concealed carry and castle doctrine have both been growing nationwide for a couple of decades. The Assault Weapons Ban was allowed to sunset without too much of a fight. The Heller decision is really more of a final chapter in the opening sequence of the battle, not the beginning of the battle.

But there is no time to congratulate ourselves or pat ourselves on the back. The first round has been won and the opponent is reeling, but they are far from defeated. They have always played a long-view game, and until recently they played it well. They’ll be regrouping quickly, and I doubt that many of the battles in places like Chicago or California are going to be as easy as some seem to think.

Meanwhile, other efforts by our opponents are still underway, such as the effort to strictly regulate ammunition purchases, put an end to gun shows as we know them, and reinstate the bans on “assault weapons.” These are very dangerous campaigns, and the Heller decision is going to do little, if anything, to slow them.

Murdoc doesn’t have one of these but he likes the low power setting:

On its “low” setting, the E1B generates five lumens of light that’s perfect for reading a map, checking an ID, or navigating a dark pathway, and generates useful light levels for 37 hours.

More info here.

“Terrorist bread?” It’s in Hezbollah’s zone, so that probably helps move sandwiches.

Murdoc’s guess is that they won’t be importing any “terrorist meat” from Iraq or Afghanistan…

Is that a VW Bus muffler?