The Supreme Court on Monday will hear oral arguments in the first major Second Amendment case the justices have considered in nearly a decade.

At issue are now-defunct New York City rules barring certain gun permit holders from transporting handguns outside of the city. But the case is complicated by the fact that the rules in question were revised earlier this year in a move widely seen as a pointed effort to encourage the Supreme Court to dismiss the lawsuit. The city now argues that the rule changes render the whole case moot.

Though the case concerns extremely narrow restrictions, gun rights advocates are hopeful that the court will use the niche case to say something broader about gun rights. They are buoyed by the fact that the court both agreed to take up the case in the first place and said it would not dismiss it after the rule change.

The issues in play are also politically fraught as public support for gun control measures grows amid an uptick of mass shootings, and any decision by the court will be released months ahead of the 2020 election, in which Democratic candidates have pledged to take action on gun control.

The court has in recent years shirked from hearing cases involving the Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to bear arms – a pattern that in 2018 prompted Justice Clarence Thomas to declare the Second Amendment the "Court's constitutional orphan."

It's the first gun-rights case the court has taken up since the addition of conservative Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch to the bench, and by hearing the case the court appears to be signaling an eagerness to address Second Amendment law, legal experts say. Kavanaugh in particular has in the past taken an expansive view of the Second Amendment.

In the case being heard Monday – New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. City of New York – the judges will decide if the case is moot and then if New York gun laws were unconstitutional.

New Yorkers must have a license to possess a firearm, and New York City offers two kinds of licenses: "carry" licenses and "premises" licenses. The latter is the focus of the case and allows the holder to have a pistol or revolver in their home. The gun can't be removed from the permit holder's address except in very limited situations.

Three people with premises licenses sought to bring their handguns to shooting ranges or second homes outside of New York City, which was prohibited under the law. So the three people, along with the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, sued, asking a federal district court to rule the city's restrictions unconstitutional.

Instead, the federal court found that the restrictions did not violate the plaintiffs' Second Amendment rights, nor did it find that the rules violated the Commerce Clause, the First Amendment or the right to travel. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit affirmed the lower court's decision, and in January the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

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But this summer, the city changed the rules challenged in the court, making it so premises license holders can bring their guns outside city limits to gun ranges, second homes and shooting competitions – exactly what the plaintiffs originally wanted. The state then enacted a law codifying basically the same provisions.

The effort was widely seen as acquiescence on the part of the city, which may have predicted that it would lose the case should it be considered by the Supreme Court. Paul D. Clement, the lawyer representing the New York gun group and the former solicitor general during the George W. Bush administration, is among those who have argued the case is a broader test of the Second Amendment and that the city was looking to avoid a wider defeat on the issue.

"The City's undisguised effort to avoid a precedent-setting loss and to frustrate the Court's discretionary review falls short by every measure," Clement wrote in a court brief arguing that the case was not moot, referring to the city's decision to change the rules in question.

He has also depicted the case as a battle over "draconian restrictions on the possession and transport of handguns."

The city eventually asked the court to send the case back down to the lower courts with instructions to dismiss it as moot, arguing that the rule changes make it so the city "no longer has any stake in the constitutional questions regarding the former rules."

The justices, however, said last month that the case would continue and that both sides should be prepared to argue whether the case was moot during oral arguments.

The plaintiffs say there are still live issues at play: License holders can't stop at other locations on their way out of the city, they argue, and a ruling dubbing the rules unconstitutional would prevent the city from enacting similar rules in the future.

Some amicus briefs similarly argue that the case should not be dismissed because of a legal doctrine that provides that a court can retain jurisdiction over a case even if the defendant stops the illegal behavior in order to prevent the defendant from simply continuing the behavior once the case is dismissed.

But that doctrine is not in play here because the state law prohibits the city from reinstating the nullified rules, says Adam Winkler, a professor of law at the University of California Los Angeles and the author of a book about the battle over gun rights.

The court's decision to move forward with the case – a choice it made without explanation – may indicate that it's prepared to make broader determinations about the Second Amendment, Winkler says.

"The Supreme Court said over 200 years ago that the court will not issue an advisory opinion – opinions on hypothetical legislation. The provisions at issue in the current Supreme Court case are purely hypothetical at this point, and the court would be issuing an advisory," Winkler says.