I don’t think gun owners were ever going to be jumping for joy over any of the candidates on Joe Biden’s short list to replace the retiring Stephen Breyer as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court, but Ketanji Brown Jackson, a judge who was confirmed to her current position on the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit just last year, might actually have the potential to side with the right of the people to keep and bear arms, at least in certain circumstances.
Now, don’t misunderstand me. I don’t think that Jackson is the second coming of Antonin Scalia, and if she’s confirmed as a Supreme Court justice I would expect her to generally adopt a Breyer-esque view of the Second Amendment that allows for all kinds of restrictions, regulations, and even infringements on the right to keep and carry a firearm for self-defense. Jackson hasn’t really dealt with many gun-related cases while serving on the D.C. Court of Appeals, and her testimony during her confirmation hearing for that position doesn’t shed much light on how she views the issue, but as the New York Times notes, during the several years she spent as a U.S. District Judge in D.C., her rulings were generally what you’d expect from a progressive member of the judiciary.