Or, if they do not, they are going to have to do some damn fancy writing to work around past decisions. Personally, I think that if this Court (in its present configuration) does hear Emerson, Justice Thomas will be charged with writing the 5-4 majority opinion. His excellent concurring opinions in the Tenth Amendment, Commerce and gun rights cases are already historic and leave little doubt what the outcome will be.
Which means, to keep a majority, we will probably not get everything we want. But, the right to keep and bear arms will be enforced equally throughout the nation for all law abiding citizens. Problem is, there is no telling what Congress will do about limiting that "right" afterwards.
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I don't understand your problem with congress.
If the court writes a decision - [barring that 'fancy' language]-, affirming that the individual right cannot be infringed,--- how then can congress start limiting that right, - afterwards?
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
That's cool! But, what did the U.S. Supreme Court say to enforce that?
Back in some 1883 civil rights cases, the Court seemed a little angry with certain States violating the civil rights of citizens. In the U.S. Senate's annotated version of the Constitution (p. 1933), I find this cute little ditty:
In the Civil Rights Cases, the Court observed that "the legislation which Congress is authorized to adopt in this behalf is not general legislation upon the rights of the citizen, but corrective legislation," that is, laws to counteract and overrule those state laws which Sec. 1 forbade the States to adopt. And the Court was quite clear that under its responsibilities of judicial review, it was the body which would determine that a state law was impermissible and that a federal law passed pursuant to Sec. 5 was necessary and proper to enforce Sec. 1.
So, in the face of the Second, Ninth, Eleventh, and Fourteenth Amendments, it appears to me that we build quite a positive argument for the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms throughout the country.
That is, of course, if "to keep and bear arms" is actually a right as listed in the Bill of Rights. The Attorney General formally said it is and we should believe him. The Court will, too, and that counts for a lot here.
In the case of Emerson, the Court MUST agree with the Attorney General that to keep and bear arms is a Constitutionally protected right because there will be no one in the matter attempting to stipulate otherwise.
What the Attorney General did was to make this a win-win situation for us -- but not necessarily for Emerson. However, I believe, the only way a favorable majority opinion will come out of that Court is if government is allowed some restrictions on our Second Amendment right. All we can do is hope to somehow limit what restrictions are allowed to government. And, we'll need to hire a better quality of people to send to Capitol Hill.