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To do that, we have one of the people who was directly involved: Wolford's lawyer, Alan Beck. He joined the show to give us a preview of the case before oral arguments. Now, he's back to give us a rundown of how everything went from his perspective.

Beck said being in the room was an entirely different experience from listening to arguments online or reading a transcript. He said the justices were more expressive than many of the other federal judges he's argued in front of before, and it gave him extra insight into how arguments were going. He noted that at different points some of them even became visibly exasperated with some of what his opponent was saying, especially during the portion where they discussed a Black Code as evidence for Hawaii's modern gun-carry restriction.

Beck said he believes a majority of the justices favored his position. He said Justice Amy Coney Barrett appeared skeptical of his view about Second Amendment rights on private property, but he believes she came to understand his position after a long back-and-forth. Meanwhile, he said he thought his argument about the incompatibility of Hawaii's restrictions with American history won over a lot of the justices, perhaps even Justice Elana Kagan.

Special Guest: Alan Beck.

That's because this slate will be the biggest yet. Now, sure, that still only means they have two Second Amendment claims to consider. But that's more than ever before, and it comes just a few months after many gun-rights activists thought the Court was wavering on the deciding key cases.

So, to discuss what we should make of this Supreme Court term, we've got Independence Institute research director David Kopel back on the show. He is one of the leading scholars in the gun-rights movement, and his work helped develop and legitimize the individual right theory of the Second Amendment. He has been cited in numerous Supreme Court gun opinions and is an odd-on favorite to be quoted again this year.

Kopel argued it is notable that the Supreme Court is taking up more Second Amendment cases than ever before. He said there are outcomes that could dramatically alter the legal landscape for gun-carry or people who smoke marijuana and own guns. However, he also noted that narrow rulings could still alter the course of Second Amendment caselaw, given the Court's infrequent involvement in the issue to date.

Kopel said every word a Supreme Court justice utters or writes in the course of deciding these two cases will be pored over by the lower courts for years to come.

Special Guest: David Kopel.

Sure, that number is only two. But that's still a major development for a Court that's taken fewer than ten Second Amendment cases in its entire history. One of those chosen few cases is now Wolford v. Lopez, a challenge to Hawaii requiring licensed gun carriers to get explicit permission before entering publicly accessible private property--including stores or restaurants.

Alan Beck is the gun-rights lawyer behind that suit. He'll be arguing it at the Supreme Court. And he's the guest on this week's show.

Beck explains how Hawaii's law swaps the default presumption from one where gun carriers are generally allowed to carry into one where they aren't. He claimed the change has made it nearly impossible to legally carry in public. He then outlined his plan for convincing the justices that the law is out of line with the historical tradition of gun regulation in America, as the Court's current Second Amendment test requires.

Special Guest: Alan Beck.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) issued a stay on an emergency basis in Noem v. Perdomo. Justice Brett Kavanaugh's statement in that case inspired UC Law Professor Rory Little to write a piece for SCOTUSblog on its potential implications in areas beyond immigration enforcement, including firearms law. He joins the show to elaborate on why he finds Kavanaugh's reasoning dangerous.

Little said Kavanaugh's holding that immigration agents could use a person's apparent race, accent, and location as justification to detain them is troubling. He argued the idea that agents should be able to involuntarily stop and question somebody based on the idea that some percentage of similarly situated people may have broken the law could be turned on all sorts of people. He used gun shows as a prime example, arguing they primarily attract white men and can sometimes be the site of illegal sales.

He argued an administration taking an aggressive approach to federal gun law enforcement could use Kavanaugh's logic to detain and question everyone at a gun show in hopes of catching the few that may be breaking the law. Little said that moving from a probable cause standard for detentions that relies on individualized suspicion to one based on demographics or probabilities would have far-reaching consequences for all sorts of Americans. He argued it's difficult to see how Kavanaugh's logic could be contained to immigration either, though he also emphasized Perdomo is still at a preliminary stage and other members of the majority haven't fully articulated their view on the matter.

Special Guest: Rory Little.

It made three substantial moves along the way. First, it finally revealed what it would do with long-languishing cases against Rhode Island's magazine ban and Maryland's AR-15 ban. Then, it decided, unanimously, whether Mexico could sue Smith and Wesson over cartel violence.

To break it all down, we have the new editor of one of the premier Supreme Court publications. Zach Shemtob of SCOTUSblog joins the show to give his perspective on what the Court decided and what it means for future cases.

He said Justice Brett Kavanaugh's statement on the Court's decision to deny the AR case and his confident prediction it would take a different one up soon was less a signal that Justices John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett agreed with him and more a message to them. Shemtob said Kavanaugh could be the fourth vote to take up a case at any time and may be trying to convince the two conservative holdouts to come around to his point of view, which clearly favors striking down such bans.

He also said Justice Elana Kagan chooses her words carefully when writing opinions. So, including a line about the popularity of AR-15s in her Mexico opinion may signal a willingness to find they're protected arms. However, he ultimately argued the liberals on the Court are still unlikely to agree with their conservative colleagues on AR bans.

Special Guest: Zach Shemtob.

That's because we're doing a deep dive into oral arguments for the Supreme Court's latest gun case, Smith & Wesson v. Mexico. Most observers, including me, thought Mexico faired poorly in its attempt to move forward with liability claims against American gunmakers over cartel violence south of the border. However, Professor Dru Stevenson, who studies gun policy at Southern Texas College of Law, had a bit of a different take.

So, I wanted to have him on the show to go through why he thought the justices may be more sympathetic toward Mexico's claims than most other people thought. While he still believes Mexico's suit is unlikely to make it through the Supreme Court unscathed, Stevenson argued the justices might allow part of it to proceed. And, even if not, he said The Court may end up laying out what amounts to a framework for how to successfully pierce gun industry liability protections in future suits.

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Special Guest: Dru Stevenson.

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Contributing Writer Jake Fogleman joins me in fielding a bunch of different topics. We cover everything from the status of the legal fight over "assault weapons" bans, to what Second Amendment case the Supreme Court might take next, to what Donald Trump's next administration will look like.

We do our best to give as much insight as possible into where things currently lie and where they're headed. Reload Members, as always, give us a lot of great questions to work with!

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