The Supreme Court last week heard a challenge to New York's permit requirement for carrying a gun in public, a case the gun lobby hopes will further the trend of recent decades toward eviscerating gun restrictions everywhere. But even some conservative scholars are questioning whether that trend is pushing the Second Amendment beyond its original intent in the same way conservatives have long accused liberals of doing on issues like abortion.

Contrary to the carefully crafted mythology of the gun lobby, an unfettered right to firearms has never been the norm in America's history; gun laws of the past were routinely more stringent than they are in much of the nation today. It was only in 2008 that the Supreme Court (in District of Columbia v. Heller) first interpreted the Second Amendment's much-debated language — that a "well regulated Militia" could "keep and bear Arms" — to mean individuals also had that right, at least in the home.

And even then, the Constitution doesn't provide "a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose," the late Justice Antonin Scalia (a strong gun-right advocate) wrote in that landmark case.

The century-old New York law before the court last week requires a permit to carry a concealed handgun in public, with the applicant required to show "proper cause" for needing one and subject to restrictions on where it can be carried. Should the court strike down the law, it could effectively prevent states from setting their own rules for carrying guns in their own jurisdictions.

It could, in essence, make all of America like Missouri, which imposes no permit requirements at all — and which has a significantly higher firearm homicide rate than neighboring Illinois, where permits are required.

Beyond the practical dangers of such an outcome is what should be a philosophical conundrum for Republicans who have long warned against legislating from the bench. An amicus brief filed in the New York case from a group of prominent conservatives argues that both history and the Constitution mandate leaving this question to the states.

As one of those conservatives, retired appeals court Judge J. Michael Luttig, put it in a New York Times op-ed last week: "Conservatives, textualists and originalists believe — or should — that the Second Amendment ought not be interpreted to take from the people and their legislatures the historical and traditional authority they have had for centuries to decide where guns may be carried in public."

Among the questions the court's self-proclaimed conservative-originalists should be asking themselves is whether the Framers intended to remove states' ability to set their own laws on an issue that directly affects the lives and safety of their citizens. That doesn't sound very conservative.

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