They Don't Shoot Lawyers... Do They?

From Linda Greenhouse, the great legal affairs reporter for the Times:

Despite the decision’s enormous symbolic significance, it was far from clear that [District of Columbia v. Heller] actually posed much of a threat to the most common gun regulations. Justice Scalia’s opinion applied explicitly just to “the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home,” and it had a number of significant qualifications.

“Nothing in our opinion,” he said, “should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding 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.”

So, what's the point, then? As Adam Liptak explains, almost everyone agrees with New York's police commissioner Ray Kelly's comment:

[T]here’s no question about it that this decision will generate litigation throughout the country.”