The Supreme Court’s landmark decision codifying an individual right to carry a gun in self-defense has reached a new peak in popularity. A full 70 percent of Americans approve of the Court’s ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, according to the latest Marquette Law School poll. Furthermore, a plurality strongly favors the holding, and only 12 percent strongly oppose it. The numbers, released on Thursday, represent a small uptick in approval from the last time Marquette asked the question. But they also represent a six-point increase from the first time it asked. And they cement the ruling’s status as among the most popular the Court has handed down this decade. In fact, it is second only to the Court’s decision barring race as a factor in college admissions. It’s a full 33 points more popular than the decision overturning Roe v. Wade, which was the least popular in the poll. Interestingly, it’s also four points more popular than the decision that maintained access to the abortion pill. Bruen‘s broad popularity cut across nearly all demographics. Americans of all races, income levels, genders, religions, and even political affiliations approved of the decision. While 92 percent of Republicans and 68 percent of Independents agreed with Breun, even a bare majority of Democrats felt the same way. The only sub-groups that disapproved of the decision were self-identified liberals and those with graduate degrees. Of course, this is basically the only poll asking this question. That adds some uncertainty into the equation. As does drilling down into the crosstabs of a survey, where the numbers at play are derived from fewer and fewer respondents that don’t necessarily make up a representative sample of the subgroup they’re part of. Still, this poll has been going for two years now, and the upward trend in Bruen approval is clear. It is important to understand what people are approving of, though. Bruen‘s immediate practical effect was overturning New York’s restrictive gun-carry permitting law. “The constitutional right to bear arms in public for selfdefense is not ‘a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees,’” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the Court in Bruen. “We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need.” However, its long-term effect was to upend how federal courts judge Second Amendment cases by setting a new standard of review. “When the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct,” Thomas said of that standard. “The government must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only then may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s ‘unqualified command.’” However, Marquette’s question only implicates the more direct impact of Bruen. “In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that, subject to some restrictions, the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to carry