The Second Amendment’s guarantee of an individual right to bear arms applies to state and local gun control laws, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday in 5-to-4 decision.

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The ruling is an enormous symbolic victory for supporters of gun rights, but its short-term practical impact is unclear. As in the Heller decision, the justices left for another day the question of just what kinds of gun control laws can be reconciled with Second Amendment protection.

The majority said only that the right to keep handguns for self-protection at home is constitutionally protected. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the majority, reiterated the caveats in the Heller decision, saying the court did not mean to cast doubt on laws prohibiting possession of guns by felons or the mentally ill, those forbidding carrying guns in sensitive places like schools and government buildings or those regulating the commercial sale of firearms.

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Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor dissented. They said the Heller decision remains incorrect and added that they would not have extended its protections to state and local laws even had it been correctly decided.

The ruling is a victory for those of us who prefer to take our safety into our own hands instead of depending on local law enforcement to respond in a timely manner in the heat of an emergency such as a home invasion.

What’s scary about this ruling is that four out of nine judges were against allowing American citizens the ability to protect their own homes. This was not an issue of whether we could openly carry a weapon in public, or even conceal-and-carry a weapon in public or in our vehicles. This was the most basic of freedoms. It is our view that the Founders inherently believed that the right to bear arms is an absolute necessity designed to not only insure our liberty against tyrannical government and foreign invasion, but to secure our lives and happiness.

Four of our current justices were against this most basic of American freedoms. Had the Supreme Court’s mix included someone like Elena Kagan instead of a Justice Roberts or Thomas, we would very likely be seeing a completely different headline.

That should scare the hell out of every law abiding, freedom loving American.