It’s a ruling that’s bound to bring more bloodiness to Chocolate City.

Last week, by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court struck down the District of Columbia’s three-decades-old ban on handgun ownership. Not surprisingly, National Rifle Association types, people who have long been oblivious to the body counts in urban America, hailed the decision as a victory for the Second Amendment guarantee of the right to bear arms.

I guess they’re right. I can’t imagine that the Founders intended for the right to own a gun as a right only for state militias. I’m no constitutional scholar, but the Second Amendment does, after all, guarantee the “right of the people to keep and bear arms.”

The Supremes interpreted that to mean individuals. Even so, they left some
leeway for cities to enact reasonable restrictions on guns. That, to me, was a surprise.
 
But just as the justices didn’t imagine that the Founders envisioned gun ownership as a right only for militias, I’m sure the Founders didn’t envision the crack cocaine trade. Or Uzis and Magnums. Or crime-ridden communities in which people wouldn’t have to defend themselves against foreign invaders or the forces of a president-turned-despot, but their fellow citizens.

Nor did they envision the bloodshed that could ensue once fear begins to beget more fear -- and when good people buy guns because of that.

The statistics are splattered everywhere.

Arthur Kellerman, a professor of emergency medicine and public health at Emory University, wrote in the Washington Post about how his studies had revealed that guns kept in homes were 12 times more likely to wind up injuring a member of the household than an intruder or another bad guy.

He also cited Justice Department statistics that show that far more guns are stolen by the bad guys to commit crimes than are used by the good guys to prevent them. In Atlanta, he said, a study of 197 home-invasion crimes revealed only three instances in which the inhabitants got to their guns before the intruders did.

And even though I can’t fault people for wanting to buy guns for protection, I still believe that more guns in homes will lead to more tragedies in black families than triumphs over criminality.

A disproportionate number of us live in struggling communities with high crime rates. So in many of those communities, fear forces people to get guns for protection. Many do that -- and the episode often, though not always, ends badly.

Last year, for example, I wrote about a single mother who, after being concerned about the rise in burglaries and homicides in her community, purchased a gun. What she didn’t count on, however, was that her young son was going to be more fixated with the gun than any would-be criminal.

She kept catching him trying to get to the gun. She continued to move it to places where she figured he couldn’t get it. But he finally did get to it -- and fatally shot his younger sister while playing with it.

Sadly enough, in the ‘hood these days, guns hold as much fascination for young kids as do cars and bling.

Then there are the people who are living in such frightful conditions that they literally believe in shooting first and asking questions later. Many times, that means elderly people who’ll wind up shooting the neighbor who comes up on their front porch at night to hand them a piece of mail that wound up in the wrong box.

For many people living in fear, guns won’t be weapons of protection as much as they’ll be weapons of paranoia.

It’s a safe bet that the justices’ decision will lead to more guns circulating on the District’s already crime-saturated streets. And while I understand the decision, I still hate it.

I hate that we’re at the point where law-abiding citizens have to expose themselves, as well as their children, to injury and death because of people who don’t respect themselves, much less any laws.

I hate that the NRA’s narrow pursuit of preserving gun rights is making it nearly impossible for places like the District, which is plagued with urban violence, to take the steps necessary to stop gun violence.

And I worry that District officials and officials throughout the nation are going to have a tough time stemming the tide of illegal guns because of their single-minded focus.

But for now, the Supreme Court has spoken. And now, the District’s denizens shouldn’t brace for less crime, but more tragedies.

And a buildup in the body count.