Something Feels Off About Hemani and Wolford (Updated)
What the left has said
Inferred left“Supreme Court's Conflicting Gun Rulings Leave Second Amendment Law in Disarray”
For those hoping the Supreme Court would use these two cases to clarify the limits of gun regulation after Bruen, the Court's handling of Hemani and Wolford is a disappointment verging on dysfunction. The fact that Wolford does not even acknowledge Hemani signals that the justices may be more divided internally than their public opinions let on, and that division has real costs for states and localities trying to craft firearms laws that will survive judicial review. Left-leaning coverage frames this as a failure of institutional responsibility: the Court took two bites at a consequential constitutional question and left the lower courts, and the public, without a coherent answer. The practical effect is that gun regulations remain in legal limbo, which tends to benefit challengers over regulators. Advocates for stricter gun laws note that doctrinal uncertainty is not neutral territory, since litigation costs and injunctions fall hardest on the governments trying to enforce safety measures.
What the right says
Lean right“Supreme Court's Gun Rulings Raise Questions About Second Amendment Consistency”
From a right-leaning and libertarian perspective, the disconnect between Hemani and Wolford is less a sign of dysfunction than a symptom of a Court still working through the implications of Bruen, its landmark 2022 ruling that finally gave the Second Amendment the same serious textual and historical scrutiny as other constitutional rights. Reason, which flagged the inconsistency, approaches this from a gun-rights standpoint: if the Court is going to protect the individual right to keep and bear arms, it needs to do so with the same rigor it applies in other constitutional domains. A ruling that ignores a companion case suggests either internal disagreement or a reluctance to fully commit to the Bruen framework. For gun-rights advocates, the concern is that a muddled doctrinal record gives lower courts cover to uphold restrictions that Bruen should have foreclosed. The demand here is not for more regulation but for cleaner, more principled jurisprudence that consistently honors the constitutional text.