The gun grabbers lost another one over the weekend. A Federal court overturned DC’s current ban on carrying a firearm outside the home. This was the city’s attempt to get around the Heller decision, which overturned their ban on gun ownership. The ban on carry outside the home was intended to make gun ownership pointless. You could own a gun, but you could not carry it outside the home for any reason.

A federal judge in the District of Columbia on Saturday overturned the city’s total ban on residents being allowing to carry firearms outside their home in a landmark decision for gun-rights activists.

Judge Frederick Scullin Jr. wrote in his ruling in Palmer v. District of Columbia that the right to bear arms extends outside the home, therefore gun-control laws in the nation’s capital are “unconstitutional.”

“We won,” Alan Gura, the lead attorney for the Second Amendment Foundation, told Fox News in a phone interview. “I’m very pleased with the decision that the city can’t forbid the exercise of a fundamental constitutional right.”

Gura said he expects the District to appeal this decision but added, “We’ll be happy to keep the fight going.”

The decision leaves no gray area in gun-carrying rights.

Judge Scullin extensively referenced the Supreme Court decisions in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. Chicago (2010) to concluding “there is no longer any basis on which this court can conclude that the District of Columbia’s total ban on the public carrying of ready-to-use handguns outside the home is constitutional under any level of scrutiny.”

The court ordered the city to now allow residents from the District and other states to carry weapon within its boundaries.

Judge Scullin wrote that the court “enjoins Defendants from enforcing the home limitations of [D.C. firearms laws] unless and until such time as the District of Columbia adopts a licensing mechanism consistent with constitutional standards enabling people to exercise their Second Amendment right to bear arms.”

The defendants are the city government and Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier.

This case has dragged in the courts for five years. Gura has twice asked the federal appeals court to force Judge Scullin to issue a decision. The five plaintiffs filed in 2009, and the case was argued twice, most recently in Oct. 2012.

The city will appeal, but they have no chance to win on a total carry ban. They also opened up the door for the court to rule that the right to carry is a protected right and subject to strict scrutiny by the court. There is a school of thought that if such a case were to make it to the Supreme Court, they would effectively overturn all bans on concealed carry in the country. The result would be shall issue everywhere.

I’m not sure about that as this court is timid and frightened to do anything that may upset the ruling liberals. The more likely result would be the court simply invalidating these bans as they arise. That leaves liberal states to keep their web of gun laws designed to harass middle class suburbanites, while pretending to care about the blacks who commit all of the murders.

That’s what makes the Left’s lust for gun grabbing puzzling at first. It is a loser politically and legally. The Left is far more pragmatic about the acquisition of political power than the Right. They take the long view and they are willing to accept one click on the ratchet and then fall back in defense. It is why America has steadily moved left over the last century. One side plays the long game while the other plays with itself.

There’s nothing to be gained and everything to lose with gun control. Liberals like Bill Clinton avoided the gun issue, knowing it was a loser with no upside. I think what’s going on here is it is part signaling, part culture war and part self-deception. The first part is easy. The people rushing around vowing to keep fighting for gun control are engaging in public acts of piety. The good Progressive shows he is a good Progressive by flagellating himself in public over guns.

Then there is the culture war angle. Guns are southern, white and working class, three things the Left loathes more than anything. Guns are sold at Walmart. Guns are owned by men with beards who wear camo and watch Duck Dynasty. That would be beards that are not intended to be ironic. Guns are owned by people who attend Christian services and listen to country music.

What keeps the Left going to this well is the last bit. It is the self-deception. No matter how hard they try to pretend otherwise, the Left has been in charge for at least three generations now. They have held complete control of our major cities. Yet, the lives of black people are worse today than under segregation. West Baltimore makes the Gaza strip look nice.

For the same reason the left never mentions Marx or socialism anymore, they obsess over suburbanites owning guns. The failure is too painful and discomforting. By pretending the problem is not the grotesque and reckless management of our cities by the Left and is instead the fault of the bubbas in the burbs, the Left can avoid answering for their crimes. It is a classic case of shifting the focus.