Supersizing the Second Amendment

“It appears the votes are now there to supersize the Second Amendment’s protection for guns,” Adam Winkler, a law professor at UCLA and the author of Gun Fight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America, told me.

He was referring to the Supreme Court’s decision on Tuesday to grant review in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. City of New York, New York.

It has been 11 years since a 5–4 majority, in announced that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess handguns in the home for purposes of self-defense. It has been nine years since the same majority held in that an identical handgun-possession right is “incorporated” by the due-process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (which means it applies to states—and cities—as well as to the federal government). The Court in indicated that it was deciding only a narrow question. Justice Antonin Scalia’s