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"Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded. ... That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct."

-- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

For champions of liberty and order, there is good news and bad news. Let's begin with the bad: According to an article in these pages last week, the Greensboro Police Department's average response time to high-priority calls (including those that "involve or present the probability of serious injury") is about nine minutes.

If someone were to break into your house in the middle of the night, nine minutes would seem like an eternity. A crack-addicted intruder bent on robbery, or worse, could commit his deeds and vanish into the darkness in far less time. Assistant Police Chief Harold Scott not only concedes the point, but also says the department's goal, a six-minute response time, is insufficient: "If there's someone lurking in your house, that's too long."

The good news is two-fold. First, most readers of this space live far from Washington, D.C., home of the nation's most restrictive gun regulations; second, the Supreme Court has declared the district's radical laws unconstitutional. The court has validated what most of us have known for years: that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms, regardless of whether one belongs to a "well-regulated militia."

In other words, during that nine-minute wait for the police, citizens of Greensboro (and of virtually every American city) have a right to defend themselves and their families with a firearm, if necessary. Incredibly, the good people of D.C. have been deprived of this constitutional right since 1976.

The fact that Washington consistently ranks among the deadliest cities is evidence of the futility of gun-grabbing legislation. Firearm-phobic liberals somehow fail to understand what the rest of us grasp intuitively: The bad guys don't care what the law is! Indeed, an unarmed citizenry, such as the district's, is an invitation to those who prey on the weak and defenseless.

Writing for the majority, Justice Scalia makes this point and dozens of others with eloquence and conviction. Citing the founders and history's greatest legal minds, Scalia builds an unassailable argument in defense of the individual right to bear arms. In fact, some commentators believe the decision will be studied for generations to come, as an example of potent legal reasoning.

For an historical understanding of the Second Amendment, Scalia cites, among other sources, Blackstone's Commentaries, where we learn that Americans of the early 19th century "understood the 'right of self-preservation' as permitting a citizen to 'repel force by force' when the intervention of society in his behalf may be too late to prevent an injury." Nine minutes, one could argue, is too late.

Scalia reminds us, too, of a warning from Joseph Story: "One of the ordinary modes by which tyrants accomplish their purposes, without resistance," wrote the former justice, "is by disarming the people, and making it an offense to keep arms." Tyrants from Nazi Germany, the former Soviet Union and elsewhere surely smile on the totalitarian efforts of public officials in Washington. "Few laws in the history of our nation," Scalia writes, "have come close to the severe restriction of the District's handgun ban."

The court's majority reminds us that the Second Amendment did not bestow upon us a new right; it merely "codified a pre-existing right." The text, writes Scalia, acknowledges this fact and "declares only that it 'shall not be infringed.' " The right to bear arms was not granted by the Constitution and "does not depend upon that instrument for its existence."

Nevertheless, the ruling has elicited hysteria from the firearm-phobic among us. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley reportedly calls it "a very frightening decision." But what is truly frightening is the ability of a few elected officials to deprive citizens of rights that are constitutionally guaranteed. Equally frightening is the belief among anti-gun extremists that disarming law-abiding citizens will enhance public safety. This is a deeply-held conviction among the firearm-phobic, who are not moved by waves of evidence to the contrary.

Now and then, however, reason trumps hysteria. In striking down D.C.'s gun ban, the court's majority has restored the right of self-preservation to the long-suffering people of the district: "In sum, we hold that the District's ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense."

Charles Davenport Jr. (daisha99@msn.com) is a freelance columnist who appears alternate Sundays in the News & Record.