In this episode, Joseph Blocher of Duke University School of Law and Clark Neily of the Cato Institute trace the ongoing debates over the Second Amendment. They analyze recent Supreme Court decisions on this key provision, preview a case on the Court’s docket this term, and look ahead to the issues on the horizon. Thomas Donnelly, lead scholar at the National Constitution Center, moderates.
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This episode was produced and mixed by Bill Pollock. With production support from Charles Sahm. Research was provided by Anna Salvatore and Tristan Worsham.
Participants
Joseph Blocher is the Lanty L. Smith ’67 Distinguished Professor of Law at Duke Law School and the faculty director and co-founder of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. He is the co-author of Free Speech Beyond Words and The Positive Second Amendment: Rights, Regulation, and the Future of Heller.
Clark Neily is the senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute. He is the author of Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution's Promise of Limited Government. Clark served as co-counsel in the landmark Second Amendment case, District of Columbia v. Heller.
Thomas Donnelly is lead scholar at the National Constitution Center and a law professor at the University of Richmond. Prior to joining the Center in 2016, he served as counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center, as a Climenko Fellow and lecturer on law at Harvard Law School, and as a law clerk for Judge Thomas Ambro on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Additional Resources
- The Second Amendment, Interpretation & Debate, National Constitution Center
- District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) Supreme Court Cases Library, National Constitution Center
- McDonald v. Chicago (2010)
- New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen (2022)
- United States v. Rahimi (2024)
- “No earthquake, but did the Supreme Court shift a bit in its approach to guns?,” NCC’s Constitution Daily blog, (June 24, 2024)
- United States v. Hemani (2025)
- “Supreme Court rules in favor of man facing gun ban for using marijuana,” NCC's Constitution Daily blog, (June 18, 2026)
- Josephe Blocher and David Pozen, “The Excluded Middle of Law: Constitutional Drivers of Extremism in Gun and Drug Policy,” Duke Law School 2026 Supreme Court Review (forthcoming)
- Wilford v. Lopez (2025)
- “Supreme Court strikes down Hawaii law regulating firearms possession,” NCC's Constitution Daily blog, (June 25, 2026)
- Brief of the Cato Institute as Amicus Curiae in Support of Petitioners, Viramontes v. Cook County
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