From Texas Law Shield:
With the announcement by Justice Anthony Kennedy that he will retire after serving on the U.S. Supreme Court for thirty years, years of uncertainty on how the nation’s highest court might decide cases involving the Second Amendment may soon become more clear.
Justice Kennedy has long been considered a ‘swing vote’ on the court, having sided on issues favorable to conservatives as well as on issues championed by liberals. That is why some court observers have speculated the Supreme Court has only taken up one gun rights case in the ten years since it issued its landmark decision in D.C. v. Heller in 2008, and that was in 2010 when it ruled in favor of the Second Amendment rights in McDonald v. City of Chicago.
In both of those cases, Kennedy sided with the majority but did not offer a written opinion in either case, leaving in question the depth of his commitment to the Second Amendment. Faced with the uncertainty as to how Kennedy may vote on gun cases, speculation is that neither the liberal nor the conservative side of the Court was eager to take up any of the dozens of cases that were presented for consideration.