The Supreme Court on Tuesday, March 2, will hear oral arguments in a case that will provide justices their first opportunity to clarify the scope of Second Amendment gun rights since its landmark decision in District of Columbia v. Heller. In that 2008 case, the court found an individual right to keep and bear arms for self defense.

This latest case, McDonald v. Chicago, challenges the constitutionality of Chicago's handgun ban and aspects of its gun registration requirements. In order to decide whether those laws are constitutional, the court will first have to determine whether the Second Amendment binds the states as well as the federal government, said a Duke University legal expert.

"Heller answered one big question by holding that the Second Amendment extends beyond militias," said Joseph Blocher, a law professor at Duke who studies the Second Amendment and worked on behalf of the District of Columbia when District of Columbia v. Heller went before the Supreme Court. "But in terms of practical effect, it has really been less than meets the eye. For one thing, it only involved a federal law, and most gun control is done at the state and local level."

Whether the Second Amendment applies to the states as well as the federal government a process called "incorporation" is the main question for the Supreme Court in the current case, said Blocher. He also noted a novel aspect of the petitioner's argument that invokes a much-debated but little-used portion of the 14th Amendment.

A finding that the Second Amendment binds the states won't automatically invalidate all state-level gun control, Blocher said.

"All constitutional rights, even the ‘fundamental' ones, are subject to some regulation, and many states almost all of which have Second Amendment analogues in their own constitutions have a long history of gun regulation. Heller didn't establish a test by which to evaluate the constitutionality of gun control, and lower courts have basically muddled through without one. McDonald could be the case in which the Supreme Court articulates such a test."