In a decision widely expected for months, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a challenge to Chicago’s 28-year-old handgun ban, effectively consigning the law to the history books.
The decision, which you can read in a PDF file here, was announced Monday morning. “Self-defense is a basic right, recognized by many legal systems from ancient times to the present day,” Justice Samuel Alito writes in the majority opinion. “Individual self-defense is ‘the central component’ of the Second Amendment right.”
Though Mayor Daley, the gun ban’s biggest supporter, had hoped the court would come to see his side of things—”Maybe one of them will have an incident and they’ll change their mind overnight, going to and from work,” he said last month—the city has been suggesting for weeks that it will find other ways to try to restrict the flow of guns into Chicago. And Alito comes right out and states that the city has plenty of options.