I haven’t read the dissents on this morning’s ruling (and don’t know if or when I will, given time constraints), but is it possible that the majority isn’t as narrow as it looks? Four justices ruled that the DC ban was Constitutional, but they didn’t necessarily do so on the basis that the right to keep and bear isn’t individual. For instance, as Ed Whelan notes:

Stevens doesn’t dispute that the Second Amendment protects an individual right, but he finds the scope of that right limited to using weapons for certain military purposes. He argues that the text of the Second Amendment (5-17), its drafting history (17-27), and the Court’s precedents–especially its 1939 ruling in United States v. Miller (42-45)–support his reading.

Breyer argues that even if the Second Amendment does protect a right of personal self-defense, D.C.’s law is constitutional because the burdens it imposes are not disproportionate in light of the law’s legitimate objectives. (That sure sounds like a meaningful test, doesn’t it?)

So now we have at least six justices who agree that it is an individual right (Whelan doesn’t say what Breyer’s opinion on that score is, since Breyer doesn’t accept that the ban would be Constitutional under that interpretation). And since Ginsburg and Souter joined the Stevens dissent, and didn’t write one of their own disputing the individual right interpretation, doesn’t it really make it at least eight to one?

I think that it’s going to be pretty untenable at this point to argue that the right is a collective one in light of both the ruling and the dissents.

[Evening update]

Dale Carpenter agrees with me, and confirms that the acknowledgment of it as an individual right was in fact unanimous:

Chief Justice Roberts came in with the hope of producing more unanimous decisions from the Court. While today’s decision was 5-4, it was actually unanimous on one point: there is an individual right protected by the Second Amendment. The split came over the important question of the scope of the right and whether the D.C. law itself was constitutional, but the underlying individual-right theory prevailed over a collective- or states-right interpretation that would give no single person the ability to challenge any type of arms regulation. Thus, an idea that not so long ago seemed radical and even frivolous to many academics and judges now has the assent of all of the Justices, representing a wide range of views about constitutional law and theory.

Emphasis mine. It was a huge victory when Bellesilles’ propaganda was shown to be fraudulent. I think that it was the beginning of the end for the nonsensical notion that the right only applied to members of the National Guard, partly because the proponents had so overreached with his nonsense about few people having or using guns in colonial times. He has a lot of other good comments about the ruling as well.