Some gun rights supporters characterize such litigation as "liberating" people living in such localities. I always found such triumphalism curious. If the people of DC, Chicago, NYC,...etc. really want their 2nd Amendment rights, why don't they stage public demonstrations by the hundreds of thousands demanding their rights? Why haven't I heard of mobs storming city halls demanding their rights back?
That hasn't happened because most people in those localities are either:
a) In favor of gun control,
b) indifferent, or
c) rank gun rights as a low priority.
It may very well be the case that after the restoration of their rights, they might grow to become dependent on them and thus become much more attached to them than they are now. (though this does bring up the question of why they allowed such regulations in the first place)
A very astute question, and there is a very logical answer. Because of the gun laws of Chicago, NYC, DC, etc. there has been a segregation of sorts. They do not have an established "gun culture" because of lack of opportunity for lifelong residents and tremendous deterrence of those coming from elsewhere to bring it with them if to move there at all. The anti gun laws, ideology, and mentality is spread and maintained through intense and deliberate marketing of identity politics, basically the idea that city people inherently don't own guns (legally, at any rate) and there's nothing in it for them because they don't hunt, aren't in the country, etc. Then they make it nasty by making the gun culture outcast using much of the same rhetoric as racial segregation.
They play EVERY possible issue against us that way, saying to the urbanized population that since they don't hunt, they must be against gun rights since that's a hunter thing. And because as far as they know, they don't see gun ownership as part of any life they recognize, as they've only seen guns in the hands of cops, criminals, and movie characters and they're not any of those either. With no equally competing information on a personal level, the anti gun politicians, media, and activist groups can tell them anything they want, and the ideas have become culturally entrenched:
* Since they live in a city, they must be against gun rights because that's a country thing, and they're not in the country. Legal gun ownership doesn't happen where they live or in the world they live in or for people like them. It happens in other states they're taught to dislike, like Texas or Montana, which are really more like fictional places in their minds not real places where real people like them live. Their teachers and the news media tells them so.
* If they're not Protestant, they must be against gun rights, because that's a Protestant thing, not for Catholics. Or Jews. Or atheists. Their religious leaders and friends they identify with of the same religion or lack thereof said so.
* If they're not Caucasian, they must be against gun rights, because that's a Caucasian thing, not for blacks, Hispanics, or Asians. Their ethnic group advocates said so.
* If they're female, they must be against gun rights because it's all about hunting and that's a guy thing, particularly a redneck, sexist guy thing. The culturally prominent outspoken rich liberal women in media and entertainment said so.
* If they're for abortion, they must be against gun rights because that's something only pro life people from rural America "Jesus Land" believe in. The politicians they keep reelecting for 20 years said so.
* If they're afraid of crime in the city, they must be anti gun because the only guns they know of are in the hands of cops and criminals, and the cops are anti gun there and are very vocal on the matter. Guess what the news media says about it too.
* If they're not chauvanists or misogynists, they must be against gun rights because that's not something for feminists or even people who merely believe in equal rights for both genders--so they are told.
* If they have gay friends or are themselves, or just like the idea of equal rights, they must be anti gun because only homophobic people who hate everyone like guns. The art and entertainment community says so.
* If they're educated, they must be against gun rights because all kinds of academic people with PhD's are anti gun. All through college all they heard was that guns are bad, and they heard that from supposedly very smart people. During that time nobody stood up and said otherwise, for fear that they would be labeled as not very smart, or fail the class, or lose their tenure--and have the cops called on them.
Since there aren't many gun owners in cities, none that they know at any rate, they believe it. Since that's what they're used to, they believe it, and they want it to stay that way because they don't know anything else. And since people who are like them who know differently don't want to be verbally abused, ostracized, fired from their jobs or not hired for a new one, penalized in school, or have their property vandalized or even their lives threatened, they stay silent and just go along with it. We have been so culturally maligned it's harder for someone to stand up for gun rights than just about anything. Most people get stage fright just to sing karaoke in front of a bunch of drunk friends--standing up for something you believe in that 99.9% of all printed published words and content of the airwaves are slanted to hate and 45% of the population believes every bit of it? Might as well ask them to brush a lion's teeth! For much too long the vast majority of visible promotion of gun ownership was centered around rural outdoors "sportsman" stuff, so an effective counter of equal magnitude to this misinformation and cultural slander has not been in place. We haven't even really begun to try.
Do you know the reason racist laws like segregation, Jim Crow laws, etc. had to be struck down in the Supreme Court? Racism worked GREAT for politicians. Politicians LOVED racist laws and politics. They could use fear of a little understood and submissive minority whom they could associate with crime, immorality, poverty, and other societal ills and blame it all on them so they could be the heroes who would shield society from it. They could make their majority voting base feel good about themselves and unify them under the banner of race. It worked! They won elections EVERY TIME! Exactly like today's anti gun politicians, who since the race card has been taken away from them, they simply shift the hate to gun owners and do the exact same thing. Keep us out of cities, keep us out of schools, keep us out of restaurants, keep us out of sporting events, keep us off public transportation, make us pay fees and go through complicated procedures, and we're all that's bad in the world today. Ever notice that? Oh, and it's all to protect the children, too. They didn't even bother to change the words on the laws or the arguments, just substitute guns, gun owners, and the NRA for the N word.
Need I even mention that anti gun laws were almost always originally designed and intended as racist laws in the first place.
Hence you read me saying on this gun board that we need to kick the anti gun political complex out of the country. Not play nicey nicey, not say "Oh, that's ok, I disagree but it's all politics", but absolutely remove it from political office, education, and all facets of life that it controls. As you see that's exactly what they've tried doing to us, and unless we do so to them they're going to eventually win as cities, divorce and illegitimacy, ethnic demographic shift, and pop culture try to drive us into cultural extinction. We cannot continue being content to try to stall their efforts or play penny ante win some lose some, we've got to fight as hard, as long, as deep, and as no-holds-barred as they do and drive for absolute and permanent victory.