Despite warnings from both city officials and your trusted bloggers at DCist, it looks like District residents were visiting gun shops over the weekend in Virginia and Maryland to try to take advantage of their freshly interpreted Second Amendment rights. Fortunately, as the Post reports, gun store owners are holding off on taking advantage of the new business — they’re waiting to see what regulations the city eventually chooses to impose on the purchase and ownership of handguns for District residents.

Of course, one of the consequences resulting from the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic decision will be whether or not gun shops will eventually be able to open within city limits. The Post’s Marc Fisher tackled the issue today:

I asked Fenty whether the court’s ruling means that the District must now allow retail sales of guns. “It’s hard to say,” the mayor replied. “Who knows what the demand is.” He said there have been no discussions about how or whether to proceed toward any new regulations on gun retailing. The District has had a couple of gun dealers who were grandfathered in from before the gun ban went into effect in 1976. Those dealers, working from offices or home rather than from a storefront, sold their wares to security guards and law enforcement officers. But the mayor didn’t seem terribly eager to incorporate gun shops into his economic development agenda.

Even if the D.C. Council decides that gun shops should be able to open in the city, we can only imagine how complex the negotiations will end up being as to where they’ll actually be. After all, if single beers and strip clubs can provoke the uproar that they do in many ANCs across the city, should we expect anything less from gun shops? Local officials and residents have a good deal of power when it comes to zoning issues, so we should expect plenty of fights over where any gun shops could actually open. They wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near schools, bars or liquor stores, and those limitations would be enough to give any prospective gun retailer a headache. Add an over-eager and bad-tempered commissioner (hello Frank Winstead!), and the spaces available for gun shops decrease even further.

These sorts of questions could even kick off another legal battle centering on how far a community can go in imposing regulations — not on guns, but on where to obtain them. The Supreme Court didn’t really provide much guidance on this, so we should be ready for a long, hot summer of debates.