After Heller declared two years ago that Second Amendment rights belong to individuals, there was a groundswell of litigation by federal defendants challenging the felon-in-possession prohibition in federal law.  For the most part, it went nowhere.

Still, hope springs eternal in the defense lawyer breast, and these same groups were hoping that McDonald would give new life to their claims.  Sorry about that.

The key passage in today's opinion is this: "We made it clear in Heller that our holding did not cast doubt on such longstanding regulatory measures as 'prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill'...We repeat those assurances here."

Defendants were losing almost all their cases after the Court said it once in Heller. Now that it's been repeated in McDonald, one must think defendants will be doing even worse, if possible.

N.B.  I agree with McDonald that possessing firearms for self-defense is a fundamental American right.  But I do not agree with the ideological criminal defense bar that the Second Amendment confers a right for persons adjudicated guilty of serious crimes to keep an AK-47 in case someone, somewhere, sometime 'disses them on the street.