Think This Will Get Blogged Much?

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From How Appealing (via Instapundit via Say Uncle):

BREAKING NEWS -- Divided three-judge D.C. Circuit panel holds that the District of Columbia's gun control laws violate individuals' Second Amendment rights: You can access today's lengthy D.C. Circuit ruling at this link.

From the majority opinion (and the Department of "Well, No Shit!"):

To summarize, we conclude that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. That right existed prior to the formation of the new government under the Constitution and was premised on the private use of arms for activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the depredations of a tyrannical government (or a threat from abroad). In addition, the right to keep and bear arms had the important and salutary civic purpose of helping to preserve the citizen militia. The civic purpose was also a political expedient for the Federalists in the First Congress as it served, in part, to placate their Antifederalist opponents. The individual right facilitated militia service by ensuring that citizens would not be barred from keeping the arms they would need when called forth for militia duty. Despite the importance of the Second Amendment's civic purpose, however, the activities it protects are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual's enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or intermittent enrollment in the militia.

From Uncle:

Shocking: The people means, err, the people.

Go figure.

UPDATE: You've just gotta love this part (page 53):

The modern handgun—and for that matter the rifle and long-barreled shotgun—is undoubtedly quite improved over its colonial-era predecessor, but it is, after all, a lineal descendant of that founding-era weapon, and it passes Miller’s standards. Pistols certainly bear “some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.” They are also in “common use” today, and probably far more so than in 1789. Nevertheless, it has been suggested by some that only colonial-era firearms (e.g., single-shot pistols) are covered by the Second Amendment. But just as the First Amendment free speech clause covers modern communication devices unknown to the founding generation, e.g., radio and television, and the Fourth Amendment protects telephonic conversation from a "search," the Second Amendment protects the possession of the modern-day equivalents of the colonial pistol.

Fuck yeah!

I think a trip to Wal-Mart for a celebratory ammo purchase is in order here, to be followed shortly thereafter by a celebratory range trip, to be followed shortly thereafter by a celebratory ammo purchase, to be followed...

Well, you get the picture.

Thanks to commenter Chris at Say Uncle for the heads-up. I haven't read the decision all the way through yet. Also, can't wait to see how, or if, the Boston Globe reports on this bit of news. I can hear the gears of the Sarah Brady Spin Machine spinning furiously as I type this.

UPDATE II: Speaking of the Sarah Brady Spin machine...

From the Washington Post:

Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, issued the following statement: "The 2-1 decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Parker v. District of Columbia striking down the District of Columbia's handgun law is judicial activism at its worst. ...

With all due respect, Mr. Helmke (and I mean that in the most literal sense possible), go fuck yourself. Your side lost. Truth, liberty, and the respect for people's rights won out over your loathsome campaign of hyperbole, deceit and fear-mongering. Deal with it.

... By disregarding nearly seventy years of U.S. Supreme Court precedent, two Federal judges have negated the democratically-expressed will of the people of the District of Columbia and deprived this community of a gun law it enacted thirty years ago and still strongly supports."

As a commenter over at Homeland Stupidity noted:

The "democratically-expressed will of the people" was to make blacks drink out of separate water fountains, sit on the back of the bus, and go to substandard schools. The "democratically-expressed will of the people" elected Hitler to power for god’s sake.