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There is a certain danger there but we're farther from that "dooms-day" scenario that it would first appear. Heller and McDonald couldn't have come any later. One swing vote the other way and we'd have lost.
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I agree that the timing was vitally important. However,
Heller and
McDonald were not the beginning. They represent a consensus that's been built over the last two decades to change the minds of politicians and academics regarding the meaning of the 2nd Amendment.
In 1990, you'd have been hard-pressed to find any academic or lawyer who believed the 2nd Amendment protected an individual right. It would have been folly to bring a case like
Heller, and if it had been heard then, I shudder to think what precedent would have been set.
It wasn't the right time then; it
is now.
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If one of the majority in Heller and McDonald is replaced by President Obama, they would be EXTREMELY unlikely to overturn Heller or McDonald. Such a decision would create too much political fallout.
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They'd have to do some real scrambling to explain how they abruptly dumped a precedent set only a year or so before. While we saw that to some extent in
Citizens United, it was done in the interest of protecting civil rights and not government interest.
Furthermore, how would someone bring a challenge to the Supreme Court that would lead to a decision overturning
Heller or
McDonald? I can't imagine a scenario like that.
Irregardless of the Supreme Court at this point, it's the district and Circuit courts where the issue will continue to play out. Many of our battles are to take place in the legislature, where we have also made great gains.
(I'd like to point out that the spell-check software does not see "irregardless" as a misspelling.)