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It still irritates me that that NRA helped lay another layer to the bad precedent barrier to full incorporation, but I really don’t think it could be helped.
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Many people felt that way, but the NRA didn't change the course of the case. Scalia made it very clear at the beginning of orals that the Court wasn't interested in Gura's primary strategy (total incorporation), so Clement's testimony was a helpful supplement.
In reality, let's consider the question as originally posed to the Court:
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Petitioners base their case on two submissions. Primarily, they argue that the right to keep and bear arms is protected by the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and that the Slaughter-House Cases’ narrow interpretation of the Clause should now be rejected.
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Only one Justice agreed with that interpretation, and if Gura had stuck to his guns, we'd have lost 8-1.