The conservative columnist Robert D. Novak, who often reflects views from inside the Bush administration, wrote Thursday in The Washington Post that there was “puzzlement over Clement” and an expectation “in government circles” that the solicitor general would “amend his position when he actually faces the justices.”

Those who have watched the 41-year-old Mr. Clement, a veteran of nearly four dozen arguments who enjoys the respect of justices across the ideological spectrum, think it most unlikely that he would bow to pressure of this sort. “Don’t count on it,” Martin S. Lederman, a Georgetown University law professor and former Justice Department lawyer, wrote on the Web site Scotusblog, adding that “the institutional cost to the office of such a reversal” would be high.

However it eventually plays out, the inside-the-administration drama underscores a point that has largely been lost in the run-up to the argument in this high-profile case: a ruling that the Constitution guarantees an individual as opposed to a collective right to gun ownership would be far from the end of the age-old debate over the meaning of the Second Amendment. To borrow from Winston Churchill, it would only be the end of the beginning.

The court would then have to move to the next stage, defining what an individual right actually entails and what government regulations it permits. In constitutional analysis, this is where the rubber meets the road. For every constitutional right, the court chooses a standard of review, essentially a determination of how high a bar the government has to clear in order to justify a regulation impinging on the right.

“Strict scrutiny,” the most protective standard, accorded to rights the court deems “fundamental,” almost always dooms to failure an effort at government regulation. The briefs on the individual-rights side of this case, District of Columbia v. Heller, No. 07-290, argue for applying strict scrutiny, and it is Mr. Clement’s refusal to embrace that standard that has caused such consternation.

The government’s brief argues for judicial review that would be “heightened” but not strict, employing a sliding scale that balances the impact that any restriction might have on the “protected conduct” of private gun ownership against “the strength of the government’s interest in enforcement” of the restriction. The District of Columbia’s law “may well fail such scrutiny,” the brief observes.

To its opponents, the District of Columbia law means that “individuals may never possess a functional firearm at home,” in the words of the brief filed for the plaintiff, Dick Anthony Heller. He is a security guard who carries a gun on duty at the building on Capitol Hill that houses the administrative offices of the federal judiciary. His request for a permit to keep the gun in his Capitol Hill home for self-defense was turned down.