The Wolford ruling didn’t just reaffirm that the Second Amendment protects the right to carry; it exposed how little some commentators actually understand about constitutional text, history, and the post-Bruen framework. Mark Joseph Stern’s reaction—framing the decision as some kind of radical departure—ignores the straightforward application of the Supreme Court’s own test: if a modern restriction lacks a historical analogue from the Founding era or Reconstruction, it falls. What Stern treats as unhinged is simply the judiciary doing what Bruen demanded—rejecting interest-balancing in favor of text, history, and tradition. For the 2A community, this is less about one case and more about the slow, grinding work of forcing lower courts to stop inventing new exceptions every time a plaintiff walks in the door.

The real takeaway is how quickly the old “may-issue” mindset is being dismantled. Wolford joins a growing line of decisions that treat shall-issue permitting, sensitive-place restrictions, and magazine bans with the same historical scrutiny rather than reflexive deference to legislative say-so. That shift matters on the ground: it means more states will have to justify their rules with actual evidence from 1791 or 1868 instead of policy papers written last week. Gun owners in restrictive jurisdictions now have clearer precedent to challenge discretionary licensing schemes, training mandates that function as barriers, and the expanding list of “sensitive places” that sometimes seem designed to make carry rights theoretical rather than practical.

Longer term, cases like Wolford accelerate the normalization of constitutional carry and shall-issue permitting as the baseline rather than the exception. They also put pressure on the remaining holdout states and cities to either produce credible historical analogues or watch their restrictions fall. The 2A community should treat this not as a final victory but as continued momentum—each ruling chips away at the idea that the right to bear arms is a second-class freedom subject to endless modern balancing tests. The uneducated takes will keep coming, but the law is moving in one direction: toward treating the Second Amendment like the rest of the Bill of Rights.