SCOTUS's 2A Map: Who Gets Regulated, Who Doesn't

The Supreme Court's Second Amendment jurisprudence is entering a new phase, and the stakes for law-abiding gun owners have never been higher.

SCOTUSblog's ongoing legal analysis series, 'A Second Opinion,' breaks down the constitutional framework courts use to decide who gets regulated, what weapons qualify for protection, and where restrictions can legally apply.

Since the landmark Bruen decision in 2022, lower courts have scrambled — and in many cases schemed — to find historical analogues that justify modern gun control schemes. Anti-gun judges in blue-state circuits have twisted the Bruen test into a pretzel, hunting for any 18th-century footnote to rubber-stamp unconstitutional restrictions.

The 'who' question is critical. Courts keep carving out categories of Americans — felons, domestic violence convicts, the mentally ill — and stripping their Second Amendment rights. Some of those exclusions carry genuine historical grounding. But activist judges keep expanding those carve-outs, deploying vague 'dangerousness' standards to disarm people who have never committed a criminal act.

The 'what' question matters just as much. Bruen and Heller established that arms in 'common use' receive full constitutional protection. Yet prosecutors and regulators keep targeting standard-capacity magazines, semi-automatic rifles, and suppressors — items owned by tens of millions of Americans — as if they were exotic war machines.

The 'where' question is where the most aggressive overreach happens. California Governor Gavin Newsom and New York Attorney General Letitia James have led a wave of sensitive-place designations that effectively turn every public space into a gun-free zone — nullifying the carry rights the Supreme Court just affirmed.

The Justice Department has an obligation to file briefs defending the broadest possible reading of the Second Amendment in these cases. Gun owners should demand nothing less.

Watch these cases closely. The left loses at the Supreme Court, retreats to the circuit courts, and tries to run out the clock. Know your rights, know the litigation, and stay locked in.