In Wake of SCOTUS 2A Decision,
Uncertainty Plagues Gun Laws New and Old

By Melissa Quinn. Feb 7, 2023

Washington — Less than a year after the Supreme Court issued its major decision expanding gun rights, the new legal test laid out by Justice Clarence Thomas in his majority opinion has reshaped the legal landscape for firearms laws and led to uncertainty over whether measures that aim to curb gun violence can survive legal scrutiny.

The laws — those recently enacted in the states, as well as longstanding federal restrictions with broad support — are being tested in courtrooms from coast to coast, where judges are tasked with evaluating whether they are "consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation."

"We're seeing a lot of action and a lot of unpredictability when it comes to the Second Amendment after Bruen," said Joseph Blocher, co-director of Duke University's Center for Firearms Law. "It's happening in a bunch of different directions, and the source of the change is the new methodology that the Supreme Court announced in the Bruen case because it instructs courts to evaluate the constitutionality of laws based solely on whether they are in some ill-defined sense consistent with historical tradition."

Under the Supreme Court's new standard for determining whether gun laws are within constitutional bounds, the government is required to show that the measure is consistent with the nation's historical tradition of gun regulation.

"We hold that when the Second Amendment's plain text covers an individual's conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct," Thomas wrote. "To justify its regulation, the government may not simply posit that the regulation promotes an important interest. Rather, the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation." .....