Gun Rights Case gets Historic Hearing

A majority of the Supreme Court appeared ready on Tuesday to embrace, for the first time in the country’s history, an interpretation of the Second Amendment that protects the right to own a gun for personal use.

That may be the easy part.

The harder question in the case challenging the District of Columbia’s handgun ban is what kind of restrictions the government could constitutionally place, in the name of public safety, on the newly recognized right.

The answer to that question, on which the outcome of the case will turn, was less clear. The argument was lively and intense, running 22 minutes over its allotted hour and 15 minutes.

Despite “starting afresh,” as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. put it, on a subject the court had not addressed since 1939, the justices appeared at least as well informed as the lawyers on minute details of English and American legal history. The relevance of that history, on which both sides have their distinguished experts, remains to be seen.