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OREGONIAN lead editorial this morn:

Locked and loaded
The Supreme Court is right to affirm individual gun rights, but be prepared for endless court challengesFriday, June 27, 2008 The Oregonian
W ithin moments of the Supreme Court's historic ruling on gun rights, bullets flew. The National Rifle Association promised to fire away at gun regulations by filing lawsuits in cities nationwide. Then John McCain attacked Barack Obama as an anti-gun, unpatriotic elitist.

All this before high noon on the West Coast.

The court is right to affirm individual gun rights. But make no mistake: The court's majority of conservative activists deliberately thrust itself into the legislative arena and guaranteed a protracted constitutional fight over every kind of gun regulation, including assault-weapons bans.

Also, the court's ruling triggers a fierce and potentially explosive fight in the presidential race over gun rights and Supreme Court appointments. Based on McCain's early swipe at his Democratic opponent, this will get ugly fast.

The court ruled 5-4 Thursday that a longstanding ban on handguns in Washington, D.C., is overly broad and unconstitutional. The court also struck down the District of Columbia's storage laws for shotguns and rifles, saying that citizens shouldn't be required to use trigger locks or disassemble their weapons.

This was the Supreme Court's first major ruling on gun rights in nearly 70 years. It was also the court's most aggressive foray into Second Amendment politics in the nation's history.

The court was correct to define gun ownership as an individual right, rather than merely as a collective right to form militias. For one thing, the right of citizens to arm themselves against tyranny is firmly rooted in American history and cultural identity. For another, the United States is a rare country where citizens grant power to the government -- not the other way around.

The court was also correct to point out that these gun rights aren't absolute. As Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority, the court didn't overrule "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."

On the surface, this ruling sounds like a mainstream affirmation of the status quo.

In the fine print, the court raises as many questions as it answers.

Does this ruling apply to state laws? What is the standard for a constitutional gun law? What kinds of mental illness? The Supreme Court has signaled its desire to legislate these issues from the bench, rather than leave them to elected officials.

Obama and McCain both say they believe in individual gun rights. Both have supported reasonable gun laws in the past. This ruling is an opportunity for them to discuss the root issues here: high crime rates, bolstered by illegal firearms, ineffective policing, inadequate schools and intergenerational poverty.

This would be a much more interesting conversation than the one we're about to get sucked into -- the one about the Pro-Gun Patriot versus the Anti-Gun Elitist.