What are other newspapers saying? Here are excerpts from some of Friday's editorials:

The Washington Times

In the very first sentence of yesterday's landmark Supreme Court decision District of Columbia v. Heller, a constitutionalist jurisprudence to protect the Second Amendment emerges. The right to bear arms as the Founders inscribed it in the Bill of Rights "protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia," proclaims the ruling. Thus does this 5-4 watershed address frontally the many decades of dispute on a most basic constitutional question. Does the Second Amendment protect an individual right to bear arms, or a collective one? It is an individual right, the court ruled. The District's handgun ban is overturned, as are the city's firearm disassembly requirements. The gun-control movement must respect the Constitution.

Chicago Tribune

Chicago and the nation saw a decline in gun violence over the last decade or so, but recent news has been ominous. The murder rate in Chicago has risen 13 percent this year. Guns are still the weapon of choice for mayhem in the U.S. About 68 percent of all murders in 2006 were committed with a firearm, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Repeal the Second Amendment? Yes, it's an anachronism.

We won't repeal the amendment, but at least we can have that debate.

Want to debate whether crime-staggered cities should prohibit the possession of handguns?

The Supreme Court has just said, "Forget about it."

Las Vegas Review-Journal

Would the Founding Fathers -- who had just defeated the greatest military power on Earth thanks to the fact that the American yeoman farmer carried a serviceable rifle -- have enacted a Second Amendment to guarantee the right of the central government to disarm the common populace, who it could then overawe with its own armed might?

Quite to the contrary, the Federalists argued their new Constitution presented no such danger. The government could never impose a tyranny, Madison promised in The Federalist No. 46, since the regular army would find itself opposed by "a militia amounting to nearly half a million citizens with arms in their hands."

Note that the militia thus described by the very author of the Constitution was conceived as a force of common citizens who could oppose the orders of the government -- not obey and enforce them, like today's National Guard.

Boston Globe

Even the lawyer for Dick Heller, the plaintiff in the challenge to the strict handgun ban in Washington, D.C., told the court that reasonable restrictions might also include background checks, curbs on gun ownership by minors, and a ban on machine guns. We would add limits on bulk purchases, background checks on purchasers at gun shows, and a reasonable waiting period to prevent crimes of passion.

Some Americans may feel safer owning a gun for self-defense. But guns will still kill 80 people today in homicides, suicides, or accidents. This ruling won't change that.

The Charlotte Observer

The Second Amendment, which guarantees the right of the people to keep and bear arms, is weirdly written and distinctly not a model of clear communication. But its obvious intent is simple: to guarantee the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. The Washington ban was doomed from the minute it went into federal courts. The only real question was why Washington local officials chose to defend the law rather than amend it . . . .

Certainly outlawing handguns would simplify efforts to limit the damage they do. But by clearly ruling out that option, the court's decision should bolster efforts to take practical steps to make guns safer, keep them out of the wrong hands, and firmly punish those who use them to break the law.