The Supreme Court will issue its decision in D.C. v. Heller any day now.  I can’t wait to see the explosion across the blogosphere when it comes.  We will, without a doubt, be in our glory.  But the forces fighting a fundamental right to keep and bear arms are already preparing for the worst.

In this ABC interview, Paul Helmke, campaign president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, talks about preparations for the next phase of gun control.

“We’ve lost the battle on what the Second Amendment means,” campaign president Paul Helmke told ABC News. “Seventy-five percent of the public thinks it’s an individual right. Why are we arguing a theory anymore? We are concerned about what we can do practically.”

If the Supreme Court strikes down the D.C. gun ban, the Brady Campaign is hoping that it will reorient gun control groups around more limited measures that will be harder to cast as infringements of the Second Amendment.

“The NRA [National Rifle Association] won’t have this fear factor,” Helmke said.

Helmke raises an interesting point.  While the Brady group and the NRA have been in opposite corners of the fight up to now, they may well find that they have far more in common than they thought once the “fear” of losing the 2d Amendment battle is over.

Brady Campaign Attorney Dennis Henigan said there are multiple gun control measures that would not run afoul of a Supreme Court decision striking down the D.C. gun ban.

“Universal background checks don’t affect the right of self-defense in the home. Banning a super dangerous class of weapons, like assault weapons, also would not adversely affect the right of self-defense in the home,” said Henigan. “Curbing large volume sales doesn’t affect self-defense in the home.”

While the details of control will no doubt differ, and likely differ significantly, the NRA has always been strong on the position that gun ownership entails education, limits on ownership by felons and the mentally ill and responsible possession.  They aren’t promoting the notion that everybody and anybody should be allowed to grab a gun and wave it around on the street.

On the other hand, this decision may well turn out to be a “be careful what you wish for” situation, with a fundamental right going much farther than anybody had in mind.  The “good for me but not for thee” approach may fly in the face of a holding that finds it difficult to recognize and rationalize limits on a fundamental right to keep guns out of the hands of those “unsavory” characters.  After all, even unsavory people get the benefit of the Constitution.  In fact, one might argue that protection of their rights lie at the heart of the Constitution, since the rights of the “good guys” tend not to be as readily infringed.

Whether Heller results in a seismic shift in the proliferation of guns across the nation, or whether the decision is far more limited in its breadth, has yet to be seen.  Smart money says that the Supreme (Nino excepted) will find some way to allow the government to keep its fingers around the neck of the gun-toting population while paying lip service to the 2d Amendment being a fundamental right, mostly because it is inconceivable that they would void all restrictions overnight and throw the nation into chaos.

But how they do so, and how far they go or don’t go, may well make for some unlikely bedfellows.