Like the alarmists needlessly panicked about the Obama administration, the people who thought that their guns would be taken away -- and who flocked to gun stores to stock up -- have lived a fiction. In reality, this has been a boom time for the Second Amendment.

Congress has fallen all over itself to show that it is the vassal of the National Rifle Association, and the Obama administration, saving its political ammo for issues like health-care reform, hasn't had a pole long enough to touch gun control. In May, legislation on credit cards -- credit cards! -- was amended to allow people to bring loaded guns into national parks. Mr. Obama signed it.

Now comes the Supreme Court to seal the deal perhaps for the USA -- the United States of Arsenals. Last year, the court declared what its predecessors had never done before: that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" is an individual right, and never mind the inconvenient mention of "a well regulated militia" that suggests a collective right.

It could have been worse. Justice Antonin Scalia in his opinion declared that "nothing in our opinion should 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 or government buildings ..."

But, as we remarked at the time, "the court, in settling one battle, has invited a thousand." On Wednesday, the court agreed to hear a challenge of Chicago's outright handgun ban.

This first of the thousand begs a question concerning the reach of the Second Amendment, because last year's case came from Washington, D.C., a federal enclave. The court previously has said that most (but not all) rights spelled out in the Constitution's Bill of Rights should apply to state and local laws as well.

This question is more than academic. If Chicago's ban is overturned, the ruling has the potential to start fights over state and local gun laws across the country. To be sure, nothing much is clear at this stage -- not how the court will act and not what the effect would be of a sweeping ruling. Some 44 states, including Pennsylvania, have gun rights in their constitutions.

But in a country awash with guns and with a high court majority that has a broad interpretation of the Second Amendment, Americans who see gun control as a sane response to epidemic gun violence have reason to be concerned. What new woes will be released by opening this Pandora's box?

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