By STEPHEN MANNING

Associated Press Writer

Rory Narinesingh, a public high school security officer in Miami, can't carry a gun at his job. But it was the job that drove him to keep one at home.

"Sometimes it's scary when we have to break up very bad fights where other students are twice as big as me, and when we do drug busts right on campus," said the 28-year-old, who worries that one of those students might try to find out where he lives. "And to think that we're confiscating weapons and guns from students, while we are forbidden by law to carry them for our own safety."

Walking out of a Doral, Fla., shooting range with a bullet-ridden target under one arm, Narinesingh said he's comforted by the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling Thursday that Americans can keep guns at home for self-defense.

Daren Dieter has a different history, and a different reaction: "Outrageous."

The 24-year-old Philadelphia man is paralyzed from the chest down because a man he didn't know shot him with an illegal firearm Sept. 22 after a verbal argument. His spine was shattered; for two months he could communicate only by blinking, and even now he needs a respirator to breathe when he sleeps.

"The number of killings per year in Philadelphia (averages to) one a day," Dieter said. "If people who live in rural areas had the experience of having loved ones killed or injured by gun violence, they would have a different outlook on the whole issue."

The high court on Tuesday struck down the District of Columbia's ban on handguns in the justices' first-ever pronouncement on the meaning of gun rights under the Second Amendment.

But the court said the right to bear arms is not absolute and that the ruling should not affect federal restrictions on the sale of guns or who may own them and where they may be carried.

Gun-rights supporters cheered the ruling, and while many gun-control advocates expressed dismay, others trying to limit gun violence in big cities said it won't hinder their efforts to prevent bloodshed.

"In limiting its opinion to the matter of self-defense, and in saying the right is not absolute, the United States Supreme Court decision today is an explicit statement of support for cities all across America who are creating reasonable measures to limit the ability of those who will do harm, who will maim, who will buy, carry weapons illegally," Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said.

District of Columbia Mayor Adrian Fenty responded to the ruling with a plan to require residents of the nation's capital to register their handguns. "More handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence," he said.

Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School, predicted that the ruling would open the door to challenges of regulations already adopted by state and local governments nationwide.

"Now it's going to be open season on gun regulations," he said. "I think we're going to see a cottage industry of lawsuits against gun regulations, even regulations that in the end are going to be upheld."

After Thursday's decision, gun-rights groups filed a lawsuit against Chicago's handgun ban, which closely resembles the Washington law that was struck down. The National Rifle Association planned to file a similar complaint against San Francisco.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley said the court's ruling was "a very frightening decision" and predicted greater violence if his city's law was overturned.

San Francisco bars people from carrying handguns on county property, including in parks, schools and community centers. Mayor Gavin Newsom said city attorneys have been researching new regulations that might place tighter controls on ammunition and further restrict where guns could be carried.

Newsom said the ruling "just flies in the face of reality. You just wish the Supreme Court could spend a week in public housing and then come out with this decision. It's very easy and comfortable to stand there with security guards and metal detectors and make these decisions."

Some states, like New Jersey and Massachusetts, weren't so concerned about the decision, believing the court had expressed its distaste for D.C.'s flat-out ban but left room for some firearms regulation.

In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said "fighting illegal guns has nothing to do with the Second Amendment rights of Americans." He said local authorities "have a responsibility to crack down on illegal guns and punish gun criminals, and it is encouraging that the Supreme Court recognizes the constitutionality of reasonable regulations."

The high court said nothing in its ruling should "cast doubt on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons or the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings."

The ruling was celebrated in gun shops, by gun-rights advocates, and elected officials who support greater freedoms for gun owners. The White House embraced the decision even though it went further than the Bush administration had wanted.

Meanwhile, victims of violence and leaders of jurisdictions with gun laws similar to Washington's said the decision would only encourage violence.

"There are so many guns on the streets," said Pamela Bosely, a Chicago resident whose 18-year-old son Terrell was fatally shot in 2006. "If you didn't have the guns, we'd still have our children."

Washington's handgun ban went into effect in 1976, an attempt to stop a wave of gun-related violence. City residents cannot keep handguns in their homes, with the exception of law enforcement officials and those who owned guns before the ban.

The law's effectiveness is questionable. More than 8,400 people have been killed in the past 32 years, many with handguns.

Fenty, the mayor of the District of Columbia, said Thursday that the city has 21 days to draft new regulations for handgun registration, but that during that time, the ban remains in effect.

In Washington's Trinidad neighborhood, where police recently set up controversial vehicle checkpoints to reduce gun violence, reaction to the court's ruling was mixed.

Sadie Kirkland said the Supreme Court's decision has "legalized the turf and gun war." Kirkland, whose brother was shot and killed in 1995 by a friend in a dispute over guns, feared the city's crime would soar following the ban's dissolution.

But Wilhelmina Lawson, who lives several doors down, disagreed. She said she grew up with guns and believes that as long as people are responsible they should be allowed to own them. "If they ban honest people from having guns, the people doing the killing will still get them," she said.

People offered similar comments near Henderson, Ky., where a worker opened fire at a plastics plant earlier this week, killing five co-workers and himself. The gunman was known to have kept a .45-caliber pistol in his car, which is legal in Kentucky.

"The law is scattered around these parts, and everyone has a right to have a gun," said Jimmy Mooney, who described himself as semi-retired.

Coal miner Kyle Lea, 28, said the slayings reinforced his belief that gun ownership should be closely regulated.

"I just don't believe in guns. I don't like guns, period. And I don't think really anybody should be allowed to have guns," he said.

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Associated Press writers Damian Grass in Doral, Fla.; JoAnn Loviglio in Philadelphia; Tracie Cone in San Francisco; Jeffrey Gold in Newark, N.J.; Ashley Heher and Jenny Song in Chicago; Ryan Lenz in Dixon, Ky.; Stephanie Reitz in Hartford, Conn.; and Brian Westley and Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this report.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)