But not everyone who approves of the end result is happy about how the 5-4 majority (or rather, 4-1-4 plurality) arrived to this conclusion. My good friend and legal scholar Josh Blackman explained a few months ago the two different paths the court could take: it could incorporate the Second Amendment against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause, or it could use the Fourteenth Amendment's privileges or immunities clause.

The plurality went with the first option (Justice Clarence Thomas was the only one to go with the second). There has been and will be a lot of analysis of the implications of this decision, but the article Blackman co-wrote for the Washington Times explained and summarized the situation simply and clearly. Read it here.

Also see Why Capitalism Is Amazing reasons, one, two, three, four, five, and six.

A telling story is illustrated by the murder numbers since the handgun ban and gun-lock bans were struck down. Between 2008 and 2009, the FBI's preliminary numbers indicate that murders fell nationally by 10 percent and by about 8 percent in cities that have between 500,000 and 999,999 people. Washington's population is about 590,000. During that same period of time, murders in the District fell by an astounding 25 percent, dropping from 186 to 140. The city only started allowing its citizens to own handguns for defense again in late 2008.

Few who lived in Washington during the 1970s can forget the upswing in crime that started right after the ban was originally passed. In the five years before the 1977 ban, the murder rate fell from 37 to 27 murders per 100,000. In the five years after the gun ban went into effect, the murder rate rose back up to 35. One fact is particularly hard to ignore: D.C.'s murder rate fluctuated after 1976 but only once fell below what it was in 1976 before the ban. That aberration happened years later, in 1985.

This correlation between the D.C. gun ban and diminished safety was not a coincidence. Look at the Windy City. Immediately after Chicago banned handguns in 1982, the murder rate, which had been falling almost continually for a decade, started to rise. Chicago's murder rate rose relative to other large cities as well. The phenomenon of higher murder rates after gun bans are passed is not just limited to the United States. Every single time a country has passed a gun ban, its murder rate soared.