To be sure, Scalia made clear that most restrictions should stand.
"The court's opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms," he wrote in the majority opinion.
The 2nd Amendment right to bear arms is "not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose," he wrote.
But dissenting Justice Stephen G. Breyer said the decision would "encourage legal challenges to gun regulation" and "leave the nation without clear standards for resolving those challenges."
Breyer added: "And litigation over the course of many years, or the mere specter of such litigation, threatens to leave cities without effective protection against gun violence and accidents during that time," Breyer said.
Lawyers for the National Rifle Assn. said their first targets would be ordinances in Chicago and San Francisco that restrict homeowners from keeping handguns. They hope that victories in those cases will lay the foundation for challenging other restrictions.
California allows gun owners to carry a concealed weapon if they obtain a permit. NRA attorney Chuck Michel said he expected legal challenges to be filed in Los Angeles and San Francisco because officials there regularly rejected requests for permits.
"Licensing and registration are hot issues," Michel said. "I don't think the Supreme Court would strike down licensing entirely. But we will look for an opportunity to challenge a policy that denies concealed-weapons permits."
Application of gun-permit laws has analogies in the 1st Amendment. For instance, the high court has ruled that cities may require permits for demonstrations and limit them to public parks or other open areas, but that cities generally may not give some groups a permit to demonstrate while denying a permit to another group with a different message.
UCLA's Winkler expects the high court to uphold reasonable regulations of firearms, even if the justices say the 2nd Amendment is like the 1st Amendment, he said.
