A divided Supreme Court last week decided the central issue that has been at the heart of the dispute over the Second Amendment with a ruling that affirmed the basic right of individuals to own guns.

The debate over gun control has centered on the intent of the words "a well regulated militia" which begin the Second Amendment: "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 the one side, gun control opponents have argued the amendment guarantees individual rights; gun control advocates have said the nation's founders meant state militias as a matter of security and defense.

The court came down on the side of the former in a decisive ruling that overturned a ban on handguns in Washington, D.C., in a majority opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia.

He delved into the intent of the Founding Fathers in resisting tyranny, the right of self defense in the home, and the concept of militia as it was understood and organized at the time as well as other historical documents that shed light on the amendment's meaning.

The Second Amendment, he concluded, "surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home."

"The enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. Those include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home," he said.

But the majority did not go as far as some gun control opponents might have hoped. Notably, the ruling applied to handgun possession in the home, not elsewhere, and the five-member majority stopped short of establishing an unrestricted right of gun ownership. It left the door open to regulation.

"Nothing in our opinion," Justice Scalia wrote, "should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions 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." The ruling did not apply to laws regarding concealed weapons or "dangerous and unusual weapons."

The right to bear arms then is akin to other basic constitutional rights that are not without restraint.

The Supreme Court decision, though, moves Americans beyond the debate over whether they have the fundamental right to own guns to how we exercise that right within reasonable regulations.