My first prediction is that the good guys will win on the basic question - does the Second Amendment mean what it says? - though not necessarily by the huge margin Countertop is predicting. I see either a 5-4 or 6-3 victory, with Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Roberts and Alito endorsing the individual rights view, Justices Stevens, Souter and Breyer rejecting it, and Justice Ginsburg doing something random.

On the second question of what test to apply, my guess is that the SC will decline to rule on that question altogether. I floated that idea earlier today on Patterico’s site, figuring that since DC’s gun ban is so extreme and so draconian, and would clearly flunk any conceivable test, the question of which test to apply in Second Amendment cases generally is not yet ripe for review. I’m more confident of that view now, after reading the transcript, in which Chief Justice Roberts appeared to volunteer as much on p. 44:

Well, these various phrases under the different standards that are proposed, “compelling interest,” “significant interest,” “narrowly tailored,” none of them appear in the Constitution; and I wonder why in this case we have to articulate an all-encompassing standard. Isn’t it enough to determine the scope of the existing right that the amendment refers to, look at the various regulations that were available at the time, including you can’t take the gun to the marketplace and all that, and determine how these — how this restriction and the scope of this right looks in relation to those?

I’m not sure why we have to articulate some very intricate standard. I mean, these standards that apply in the First Amendment just kind of developed over the years as sort of baggage that the First Amendment picked up. But I don’t know why when we are starting afresh, we would try to articulate a whole standard that would apply in every case?

Maybe the question was rhetorical, maybe the Chief Justice is the only one on the court who doesn’t want to decide the standard now, yadda yadda yadda. It just doesn’t seem to me like he’s champing at the bit to decide a subtlety of future Second Amendment jurisprudence that is totally unnecessary to decide the instant case. Nor should he, in my opinion. Let’s save that issue for harder cases in the future, where the constitutionality of a statute may actually turn on whether that statute is narrowly tailored to a compelling government interest, or merely “substantially” related to a “legitimate” one. That is not this case.

On another note, I was relieved to see Justice Scalia save Alan Gura from an own goal on the question of what “infringed” means:

JUSTICE STEVENS: So we can — consistent with your view, we can simply read this: “It shall not be unreasonably infringed”?

MR. GURA: Well, yes, Your Honor, to some extent, except the word “unreasonable” is the one that troubles us because we don’t know what this unreasonable standard looks like.

JUSTICE SCALIA: You wouldn’t put it that way. You would just say it is not being infringed if reasonable limitations are placed upon it.

MR. GURA: That’s another way to look at it, Your Honor. Certainly –

I trust that “that’s another way to look at it” was just a more refined way of saying “um .. yeah, that’s the ticket.”

Lastly, I will say that if the Second Amendment ends up surviving by a 5-4 margin, with Justice Kennedy as the pivotal vote, I’ll have to seriously re-think my longstanding hatred for Arlen Specter for his role in helping to bork Bork. Bork shouldn’t have been borked, but better to bork Bork than to (literally) decimate the Bill of Rights.

UPDATE: Patterico notes another near own-goal on guru’s part, also prevented by the same referee. Maybe the soccer analogy is wrong; this looks more like the infield fly rule.