Welcome to the second week of The Reload. As I mentioned in the free newsletter, it was a busy one, and that means we’ve got plenty to talk about. Let’s get rolling. What Will the Supreme Court Do? Here we have it. The biggest question in guns this week and for the foreseeable future: What will the Supreme Court do in its first-ever gun-carry case? The answer to that has huge implications for gun laws at every level of government. Yes, the case only deals directly with New York’s restrictive “may issue” gun-carry law and whether its government officials should have the discretion to deny law-abiding applicants who want to carry for self-defense. However, 7 other states have very similar laws, and together those states govern more than 25 percent of the population. But the outcome could be far broader than that. The Supreme Court established in 2008’s District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment protects the right to keep commonly owned firearms such as handguns inside your own home for self-defense. But the Court hasn’t weighed in on how or even if Second Amendment protections extend outside the home. If the Court decides New York’s law violates the Second Amendment because gun rights extend beyond the home, that could open up challenges to a wide swath of other gun laws on the books. And how the Court decides the case could determine whether those laws survive scrutiny even before they make it to SCOTUS. If the Court says a high level of scrutiny is required for all laws that impact gun rights, that will spell doom for many laws in force today across the country. The immediate reaction from gun-rights groups and gun-control groups alike seemed to assume the Court would do exactly that. Gun advocates were ecstatic, and gun-control groups were pissed. Each side seemed to be basing their assessments on the simple math of a Court made up of six Republican appointees and three Democratic ones. But the immediate reaction from legal experts pointed to a more complicated picture. There are no guarantees when it comes to predicting how the Court will rule, and there are some signs the outcome may not be the home run desired by gun advocates. Professor Robert Leider, a gun scholar from George Mason University, said the Court might uphold New York’s law and thereby set gun-rights activists back—or even cause them to reconsider their coalition with the Republican Party. Personally, I think the justices took a major-issue case like this because they want to expand their incredibly limited jurisprudence on the Second Amendment. I don’t see them punting on this one now. I doubt they will go as far as eliminating permitting for gun carry, but I could see them eliminating “may issue” regimes and forcing states to adopt the more common “shall issue” standard, so that bureaucratic discretion is taken out of the process. I plan on exploring this more in an analysis piece and a Q&A this