Law-abiding gun owners in the United States recently experienced a victory unlike any other in the history of the debate over rights granted under the Second Amendment.

The United States Supreme Court decision in the case of District of Columbia vs. Heller may change the face of gun control throughout the country.

In a nutshell, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that Americans have a constitutional right to keep guns in their homes for purposes of self-defense. The decision is historic because it is the first time the high court has ever conclusively interpreted the Second Amendment of our Bill of Rights since it was ratified in 1791.

The ruling shut down the District of Columbia’s 32-year ban on handguns, which was one of the nation’s strictest. The high court also ruled the District of Columbia requirement “that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock” makes it impossible for citizens to use arms for the core, lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional.

“This is a great moment in American history. It vindicates individual Americans all over this country who have always known that this is their freedom worth protecting,” said Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association.

“Our founding fathers wrote and intended the Second Amendment to be an individual right,” LaPierre said. “The Supreme Court has now acknowledged it. The Second Amendment as an individual right now becomes a real permanent part of American Constitutional law.”

This historic precedent all came about when one man, Dick Anthony Heller, sued the District of Columbia after it rejected his application to keep a handgun at his home on Capitol Hill. Heller decided to do something to protect what he believed was a violation of his constitutional rights and took his case to U.S. District Court.

The District Court dismissed the case, although a District Circuit Court reversed this and ruled in Heller’s favor last March, saying the Constitution guarantees Americans the right to own guns and that a total prohibition on handguns is not compatible with that right.

The District of Columbia applied for a re-hearing but was denied. It then appealed to the Supreme Court, where the decision of the lower court was not only upheld but expanded upon in explanation.

In Supreme Court Justice Scalia’s reading of the majority’s opinion, he said “Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment.

“We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding,” Scalia wrote.

Scalia went on to say “… it has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right. The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it “shall not be infringed.”

Justice J. Stevens was one of four Supreme Court Justices who opposed the decision.

“I do not know whether today’s decision will increase the labor of federal judges to the ‘breaking point’ … but it will surely give rise to a far more active judicial role in making vitally important national policy decisions than was envisioned at any time in the 18th, 19th, or 20th centuries,” he said.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, (D-California), and leading gun control advocate in Congress, criticized the ruling, saying, “I believe the people of this great country will be less safe because of it.”

Feinstein’s comments come even after statistics over the 32 years have shown the District of Columbia’s gun ban was never successful in the first place. A look at the numbers reveals that in 1976 (prior to the gun ban), guns were used in 63 percent of the city’s 188 homicides. Thirty years later, with a full ban on handguns in effect, the percentage of homicides committed with guns rose to over 80 percent of the total, according to the Washington Post.

The NRA is wasting no time in ensuring the rights of gun owners are not infringed in other locations after the Supreme Court decision in the Heller case. The NRA has filed five lawsuits challenging local gun bans in San Francisco, in Chicago and several of its suburban cities.