HERE'S a simple test to determine where you stand on gun control:

Q: Should convicted violent criminals be allowed to carry pistols or assault weapons?

Q: Should children be allowed to carry loaded guns to school?

Q: Should psychotics, drug addicts, drunks or bitter weirdos be allowed to carry hidden guns into your church, your workplace, your favorite restaurant, your children's playground or public arenas and government chambers?

If you answered no to any of these questions, then you favor gun control for those circumstances. You support gun control laws.

That's what the gun debate is about: trying to protect Americans from this country's horrifying rate of firearm murders - around 12,000 per year, much higher than in any other advanced nation. It's a struggle to find sensible, workable solutions for America.

Right-to-bear-arms advocates are overjoyed because conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Washington's extreme law, a total ban on gun ownership - a ban that never really worked.

But last week's ruling doesn't mean that every self-styled Rambo can begin prowling with an unlicensed pistol concealed in his pocket. The District of Columbia v. Heller decision specifically lets cities, states and counties continue imposing controls to save lives.

Q: Should convicted violent criminals be allowed to carry pistols or assault weapons?

Q: Should children be allowed to carry loaded guns to school?

Q: Should psychotics, drug addicts, drunks or bitter weirdos be allowed to carry hidden guns into your church, your workplace, your favorite restaurant, your children's playground or public arenas and government chambers?

If you answered no to any of these questions, then you favor gun control for those circumstances. You support gun control laws.

That's what the gun debate is about: trying to protect Americans from this country's horrifying rate of firearm murders - around 12,000 per year, much higher than in any other advanced nation. It's a struggle to find sensible, workable solutions for America.

Right-to-bear-arms advocates are overjoyed because conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Washington's extreme law, a total ban on gun ownership - a ban that never really worked.

But last week's ruling doesn't mean that every self-styled Rambo can begin prowling with an unlicensed pistol concealed in his pocket. The District of Columbia v. Heller decision specifically lets cities, states and counties continue imposing controls to save lives.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that justices "are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country," adding:

"Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms."

Scalia wrote that the Heller ruling doesn't unleash "dangerous and unusual weapons" such as machine guns, sawed-off shotguns, bazookas, grenades and others not typically used for home defense or hunting.

Long guns used by hunters aren't much of an issue in America's murder dilemma. And licensed, registered pistols owned by law-abiding, sober people cause modest concern. The real problem is millions of illegal pistols in dangerous hands. The Sacramento Bee commented Monday:

"The powerful National Rifle Association has consistently opposed common-sense laws to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill, and Congress has done the NRA's bloody bidding."

Conservatives in Congress, terrified by the gun lobby, once forbade the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to trace pistols used in crimes, and threatened to jail police officers if they revealed gun trace data. That's spineless madness.

Now that the Washington decision is locked into America's rules, guaranteeing individual gun ownership, national, state and local leaders should follow its specifications to impose sensible safeguards against gun murder.