"Although, as we have held, the Second Amendment does protect individual rights, that does not mean that those rights may never be made subject to any limited, narrowly tailored specific exceptions or restrictions for particular cases that are reasonable and not inconsistent with the right of Americans generally to individually keep and bear their private arms as historically understood in this country. Indeed, Emerson does not contend, and the district court did not hold, otherwise. As we have previously noted, it is clear that felons, infants and those of unsound mind may be prohibited from possessing firearms."
I'm not a lawyer, so my take on that may be skewed, but it looks to me that the above ruling negates all CCW laws except for Vermont's, and means that anyone can carry (i.e., "bear") unless that specific person has been prohibited for non-trivial ("limited, narrowly tailored") reasons.
Comments, anyone?
You're probably right, with one significant "maybe not": the Bill of Rights originally applied only to the Federal Government, not to the states. A series of court decisions from the 1920s through the 1960s applied most, but not all, of the BOR to the states (freedom of speech, unreasonable search and seizure, double jeopardy, jury trial in criminal cases, all apply to the states; requirement of a grand jury in criminal cases and a right to trial by jury in civil cases don't). The Supreme Court could still hold that the RKBA is binding on Congress but not on the states.
You know, I think you may be right...
1) The Emerson case was a 5th Circuit case therefore only directly applies to those states in the 5th Circuit (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi).
2) CCW laws are state laws. The 2nd Amendment has never been held to apply to the states through the 14th Amendment (commonly referred to as "incorporation") unlike most of the other amendments in the Bill of Rights. The law at issue in Emerson is a federal law. We need a case that will allow SCOTUS to rule that the 2nd Amendment is incorporated into the 14th. Until then, you can forget about overturning state laws.
I haven't read the actual opinion yet, but these were 2 things that jumped out at me regarding your statement.