Few sentences in the English language have been parsed more intently than "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court settled the argument over the definition of the Second Amendment, ruling that the right to bear arms extends beyond states to individual gun owners.

Written by the Founding Fathers at a time when the country had no standing army and a firearm was a muzzle-loaded musket, the Second Amendment has now been broadened to uphold gun ownership for personal defense as well as national defense. The 5-to-4 landmark decision states that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm for self-defense within the home.

The ruling overturns a Washington, D.C., law that essentially banned handguns in homes. But the ruling does not immediately change much, especially here in Georgia, where gun rights have always been sacrosanct.

In his majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that the constitutional right to bear arms disallows "the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home."

However, he also wrote that "it is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose." Likely anticipating that the gun lobby would seize on his ruling as a means to attack virtually any gun law, Scalia cautioned that "the court's opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on long-standing 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."

In other words, the debate will continue over such common-sense reforms as background checks on gun sales, restricting bulk sales of handguns and tougher penalties on crooked gun dealers. In fact, by making it clear that such laws do not violate the Constitution, Scalia's opinion makes it harder to raise Second Amendment objections to such legislation.

In his strongly worded dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens also anticipates an effort by the gun lobby to use the case to undermine all gun laws. He predicts that many local policies will be threatened by the ruling's sweeping language about "the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home."

Stevens warns: "Given the presumption that most citizens are law abiding, and the reality that the need to defend oneself may suddenly arise in a host of locations outside the home, I fear that the District's policy choice may well be just the first of an unknown number of dominoes to be knocked off the table."

Advocates of sane gun policy ought to be ready; Georgia will be one of the first battlegrounds in the campaign to push aside even the laws that Scalia cites as reasonable and vital to the public welfare.

—- Maureen Downey, for the editorial board (mdowney@ajc.com)