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Two and a half years ago, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that experts said would upend America’s gun laws.

On the surface, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen centered on how New York issued permits to people who wanted to carry their guns in public. The Court said that the state’s practice of issuing concealed carry permits only to those who could prove they had a special need to carry a gun — like a threat to their personal safety — was a violation of their constitutional rights.

The ruling invalidated not only New York’s laws but also the regulations in California, New Jersey, Maryland, and other states that are home, collectively, to more than 80 million Americans. But it wasn’t just that a few states’ laws were overturned. The Court also established a new standard for judging gun laws: Going forward, government officials had to prove their regulations were consistent with the Second Amendment by pointing to a similar gun law from American history.

Legal experts blistered the Court for the decision, pointing out that this new standard would open up nearly every gun law in the country to legal challenge. Gun violence researchers worried, too, about the possibility of more gun deaths, pointing to research showing that states that allowed people to carry guns had higher rates of violent crime.

Since the Bruen decision, much has been written about the havoc it has unleashed in the lower courts. Judges have protested that they’re not trained to be historians. Scholars in niche corners of legal academia have become in-demand expert witnesses. And several laws that were relatively uncontroversial, including banning guns from churches and other places of worship and prohibitions on young adults from carrying, have been challenged as unconstitutional. In United States v. Rahimi over the summer, the Court appeared to narrow the scope of Bruen, clarifying that the government had the right to prohibit people with restraining orders for domestic violence from owning firearms. But the clarification still left plenty of questions, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted numerous complaints about Bruen from lower courts in her concurring opinion.

Bruen is still a very new decision. The true fallout will likely take years to unfold. Rahimi is the only other Second Amendment case the Court has resolved since. Other cases, involving more legally and morally challenging disputes, are likely still to come.

Since Bruen, there have been more than 1,000 court cases in which people convicted of felonies have contested their bans on gun ownership, according to nonprofit newsroom The Trace. And there are hundreds of legal challenges to gun laws now working their way through the courts.

Less discussed has been what the change has meant for policing and for criminal justice in America. The worst-case scenario experts warned about — where gun violence rose because more people were carrying weapons — hasn’t yet materialized.........

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