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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