SCOTUS takes up DC Second Amendment case … predictions?

Lyle Denniston in this post at SCOTUSblog has the big Supreme Court news today:

After a hiatus of 68 years, the Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to rule on the meaning of the Second Amendment — the hotly contested part of the Constitution that guarantees “a right to keep and bear arms.” Not since 1939 has the Court heard a case directly testing the Amendment’s scope — and there is a debate about whether it actually decided anything in that earlier ruling. In a sense, the Court may well be writing on a clean slate if, in the end, it decides the ultimate question: does the Second Amendment guarantee an individual right to have a gun for private use, or does it only guarantee a collective right to have guns in an organized military force such as a state National Guard unit?

How Appealing has lots of additional coverage here. 

As I have suggested in previous posts, if the Supreme Court gets serious about protecting gun rights, I think severe sentences for some minor gun crimes could be subject to a new kind of constitutional attack.  But I’m not betting the Justices will get truly serious about protecting gun rights.