In theory, yes. As a practical matter, probably not much. They rule the way they want, then craft a justification.
Nope, in actuality, you might actually want to read up on that as you can find in both law reviews and political science journals where researchers have analyzed thousands of court cases. The research repeatedly indicates that lower courts more or less follow Supreme Court precedent despite the judges' individual preferences for a variety of reasons. Even Supreme Court justices are constrained by first assembling a winning coalition of votes and then keeping that coalition--a justice that goes their own way usually becomes a dissenting or at best concurring justice. People are individuals and they are no more predictable in every case than the posters here.
Research shows that political attitudes of justices do predict merit votes (that is the vote for who wins or loses) at the Supreme Court pretty well, less so for Courts of Appeals, and even less for street level judges. However, when you get into whether the opinion is narrow or broad or employ bright line versus balancing tests along with other issues important to lawyers, it becomes less clear that attitudes determine actual outcomes.
What we are seeing is that the legal consensus since at least the early 1900's was to allow governments to restrict firearm ownership with even the NRA more or less agreeing until about 1968 with the Gun Control Act. Thus, the Scotus decision in Miller during the 1930's on the NFA and the odious Cruikshank decision in the 1870's effectively redefined the 2A as collective rights to have a militia was the law of the land until Heller this century. This is despite the Court's movement to broadly define all other rights and government powers to actually exceed what originally was intended at the same time. Thus, all lawyers were trained in law school to treat the 2A as an ahistorical joke and the right to bear arms as a privilege revocable by the state even to the point of effectively banning all of them as did DC and Chicago. It is no wonder that the NRA turned to political activism at the time as clearly the legal community, even many conservatives such as Warren Burger, during the 1960's through 1990's was not comfortable with the idea of the rabble being armed without the comfort of state regulation. Guns were associated with crime and terrorism for a lot of folks as polling at the time indicated.
It took roughly twenty years of concentrated Supreme Court attention to overturn segregation which only really occurred when the threat of losing funds, business opportunities, electoral victories, and civil rights prosecutions/lawsuits became possibilities for public entities fighting it. We are still in the early phases of the battle in the courts to define the 2A and cannot say how it will turn out as nothing is guaranteed. Nevertheless, the cynical or deterministic position that individual efforts are worthless in the long run and that we will fail regardless may be comforting to those individuals in the short run but pave the way for the strong man or the rule by oligarchs to destroy the republic. The powers that be promote that idea via the media, schools, etc. with such rhetoric as the right side of history. My study of history, politics, economics, and even warfare indicates the opposite, it is individuals in the end that make the difference, not the meaningless drivel of determinism. My work in state and local politics confirms this.
Instead, consider the SAS motto, Who Dares, Wins or L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace." by Napoleon, and later General
George Patton made "Audacity, audacity, always audacity." One major problem that those favoring 2A rights are splintered and mainly distinguishes itself as a defensive movement. Those who are anti's are active all of the time regardless of whether defeat in the short run is likely. In other words, they have the audacity, we often do not. Furthermore, the defensive crouch demoralizes supporters in the long run and either promotes utopian or purist ideals in some that are counterproductive --e.g. guns for felons and the like or push to adopt ignorant tactics such as if we only explain ourselves better, were more welcoming, and make sure that we are better than that when contesting limits on gun rights. Both the purist and those who are too proud to fight and wish to concede needless grounds to the enemies of the 2A in the name of "compromise" are in the end loser strategies that are promoted by many in the "conservative media."
For example, today the media is doing their usual macabre dance over the NZ shootings and blaming the usual suspects for the usual reasons. A good offense by gun rights groups would be that a good person(s) with a gun could have stopped all of that mess and thus the greater availability of guns to good guys actually saves lives while the massacre shows the futility of trying to prevent bad guys from obtaining firearms in a world of mass smuggling of drugs, humans, and other contraband.
Instead,gun rights groups go into radio silence and issue mush mouthed platitudes of being sorry for the victims etc. instead of challenging the wrong headed policies that led to the victims being shot without challenge. It is as if we actually believe that the gun grabbers are right on some level. Folks that do not believe in their own cause deep down in their hearts will always lose in the long run whether in court, in the legislature, or in society.
The study of the French during the rise of Hitler from 1934-1939 is instructive. The notorious infighting in French politics at the time sabotaged an effective response to an identified rising danger. For example, the spending on much of the defense force's budget on the Maginot line was instructive as it was an incomplete defense barrier leaving open a broad field for German armies to outflank but lulling some French to believe in its efficacy. The French could have moved to the attack during Germany's invasion of Poland and probably forced its way through the Siegfried lines to the German detriment. The French had quite good tanks and airplanes at least as good as the Germans if not better. Instead,they let the Germans finish the Poles off, ally with the Soviet Union to protect their Eastern flank, and as a result the Allies faced much worse odds in 1940. At the actual time of the Germans invading France, the French cabinet fell apart due to the PM Reynaud wanting to fire General Gamelin, Supreme Commander of the French. He was the worthless political protege of the Defense (and former PM) minister, Daladier and did little to nothing to prepare for the German onslaught. Enough of the French in WWII, unlike 1914, essentially did not believe in defending France from the Germans was as worthwhile as preserving their individual lives or political ideologies.
