Commentary

In the end, the court settled a matter that had been ruled by sensibilities. When fashionable people can afford to hire security guards or live in gated communities, they tend to think of self-defense as a neurotic obsession of the gauche and overwrought. They don't think they need handguns, therefore no one needs handguns. They are undeterred by research that shows that their gun bans don't reduce crime, because it only matters that they mean well.

The AP has reported that in Atlanta, gun-rights advocates are saying a new Georgia state law allows visitors to carry firearms at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. City officials in charge of the airport declared it a 'gun free zone' when the new law took effect Tuesday. Gun rights supporters, including a state legislator who helped pass the law, quickly filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the designation. …

The Washington Post has reported that gun shops in suburban Maryland and Virginia felt an immediate impact from the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling Thursday that the District's handgun ban is unconstitutional. City leaders said it would take about three weeks to iron out which kinds of guns will be legal and how the registration process will work.

The National Rifle Association lost no time challenging the Illinois' city of Evanston's handgun ban in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's June 26 decision upholding individual rights of gun owners.

…Here's a sampling of reactions to the D.C. V. Heller decision handed down Thursday.

More than five years after six Washington, D.C. residents challenged the city's 32-year-old ban on all functional firearms in the home, the Supreme Court held in District of Columbia v. Heller that the law is unconstitutional.

Florida’s 'guns at work' law is set to take effect July 1 unless a suit by the Florida Chamber of Commerce and the Florida Retail Federation stops the legislation, which allows Floridians to keep a gun in their locked cars on work premises if they have a concealed weapons permit.

Writing in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, gun-rights advocates Alan Gottlieb and Joe Waldron wrote that “Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, behaving like the would-be ruler of a ‘city state,’ has decided to ignore Washington's longstanding firearms statute regarding the legal carry of concealed handguns by licensed private citizens on city property.”

…Last week, the New Jersey Assembly Judiciary Committee approved legislation that would ban the purchase, transfer, and inheritance of many popular hunting guns, historical American firearms, and large-bore target firearms

Writing on the Buckeye Firearms Association website, Chad D. Baus takes a well-aimed rhetorical shot at presidential candidate John McCain.

As the mini-movement of open carry gains steam, handgun owners who might consider carrying their handguns openly can expect to hear a lot of hooey about how open carry will ruin the world, as the following shows.

With the Supreme Court poised to hand down a potentially landmark decision in the case, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence fully expects to lose.