Across the American legal landscape, a quiet but consequential struggle is unfolding over the boundaries of democratic self-governance and individual constitutional rights. State legislatures, responding to public concern about firearm violence, have drawn lines around certain weapons — only to find those lines contested in courtrooms where the meaning of the Second Amendment is still being written. The outcome of these cases will not merely settle a legal question; it will shape the relationship between community safety and personal liberty for a generation.