Here's the end of the text of another article about the decision; note the
cockamamie arguments in the first paragraph cited below (for the full
article, see http://www.dcist.com/archives/2007/03/09/court_rules_dis.php
). I think the citizens that fought in the Revolutionary War would be
surprised to find that handguns had not yet been conceived of!

Cheers,
Rich
.

...

The District's lawyers argued that the Second Amendment guaranteed only a
collective right to gun ownership (as part of a "well-regulated militia"),
that the District is a not a state and thus not subject to the provisions
of the amendment (which, they argued, are limited to residents of "free
states") and that handguns were not conceived of when the Second Amendment
was written (the court responded by arguing that such a standard would
allow only the ownership of sabers). Judge Karen Henderson agreed with the
District in her dissent to the court's decision.

The court's decision doesn't mean that we'll soon be able to rush out to
the corner store and buy a .38 along with our gallon of milk, though. The
court's ruling only clarifies some constitutional points and orders a lower
court to allow a suit filed by Dick Heller, one of the appellants, to move
forward. Heller, the special police officer, actively filed a request to
register a handgun, but was turned down by the District. Since he suffered
an injury in the legal sense of the word, he's being allowed to proceed
with his suit. The decision is important, though, in that an important
court has actively interpreted gun ownership in such a fashion that it
might shoot down ownership and possession regulations across the country.
While the District can appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, the
additions of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, both
conservative icons, may push the highest court in the land to uphold the
appellate court's interpretation of gun ownership as being an individual,
not a collective right.

Might the District's gun laws soon coming tumbling down? Not anytime soon
with the way the legal system works, but this decision has laid the
foundations for it.